Data Dissemination in the Brazilian
Institute of Geography and Statistics
Working Session on Emerging Trends and
Best Practices in Data Dissemination
New York - 3rd March, 2006
Background

The majority of information used to get to the public in an
indirect manner, that is:
(a) By means of communication through a journalistic
language, especially that which affected all persons´ lives
(Price Indexes, GDP, Unemployment Rate, etc. )
(b) Through a third party in publications partially
reproducing the information, as in analytic or didactic texts,
etc.
(c) By means of the Institute’s call center.
WEB Page - The first steps

The first steps in the elaboration of a WEB page were taken
with institutional information, conjuncture indexes and
synthesis of the most recent statistical information in HTML
pages. From that point, we verify an outstanding growth in
this communication channel.

Due to Institutional decision, a policy of free dissemination
of all products in Internet was adopted since 2001.

Today, we can notice the success of the decisions that were
taken at that time.
The Current Scenario
Users
12 000 000
10 000 000
8 000 000
6 000 000
4 000 000
2 000 000
0
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
Users: 320,835 in 1997 and 10,057,236 in 2005
.
2002
2003
2004
2005
The Current Scenario
Pageviews
900 000 000
800 000 000
700 000 000
600 000 000
500 000 000
400 000 000
300 000 000
200 000 000
100 000 000
0
1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
Pageviews: 1,873,665 in 1997 and 835,017,975 in 2005.
The Current Scenario
Downloads
2 500 000
2 000 000
1 500 000
1 000 000
500 000
0
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
Downloads: 14,169 in 1997 and 1,831,764 in 2005.
2002
2003
2004
2005
The Current Scenario

Internet – The Institution Web site
The Web page contents

IBGE Web page has 43,411 pages. It is organized by
themes or by surveys.

Database
 Multidimensional Statistical Database – BME
 Cidades@
 Interactive Maps
 Municipalities Profile
 Aggregated Statistical Tables (SIDRA)
The Web page contents

Thematic Channels
 Brazil in Synthesis
 “IBGE 7 to 12”
 IBGE Teen
Millennium
Development
Goals
The Web page contents

Products and Services
 Library
 IBGE Catalog
 Virtual Shop
 IBGE text mode
 IBGE Wap

Electronic Questionnaires
The Web page contents

Historical Contents
 Brazil – 500 Years of Settlement
 20th Century Statistics
 Institutional Memory
The Web page contents

Projects and Entities
 Statistical Classifications (Concla)
 European Community and Mercosur
 Confest/Confege (National Meeting of Producers and Users)
 ENCE (National School of Statistics Sciences)
The Web page contents

Download: 35,060 files are available for download.
Data are available for download at the Web site at the
moment when they are published.

Dissemination calendars on the website in advance

Two kinds of calendars put on the website in the end of
each year for the next year
 one shows release dates of the annual and special
surveys


other covers the regular monthly and quarterly
surveys
Any alteration to a pre-announced release date being
made public as early as possible
Comments

In a country with continental dimensions such as Brazil,
composed by 27 states and 5,561 municipalities, there were
few media which received our releases or any
communication at all, except those ones which came from
news agencies.

In Brazil, 16,3% of the households have computer and only
12,2% have web access in their households.

Nowadays, the access to information is immediate, which
helps to direct it to thousands of means of communication,
not only releasing it in journalistic language but also
providing all the information which is being published.
The Current Scenario

Every year since its implementation, in 1995, IBGE is
among the three finalists of the best Brazilian governmental
homepages, either in the public election or in the
specialists´, and, in some years, it has conquered the first
place award.

Publications – The quantity of pages and tables of all paper
publications have been decreasing.

Publications have an enclosed CD-ROM presenting more
tables than those in the printed volume.

We have created a public university library service network
which receives our printed publications and CD-ROM and
intend to expand it with the private universities service
network.
The Current Scenario

Digital media products - A software to explore spatial data
(Estatcart) was developed, and it has been well accepted by
the users. A specific database has been generated for this
software.

Training – We have developed courses called “Digital Tools
Workshop”. In these courses, the principles for the use of
the main Institution tools for data search have been passed
on either to the Government, or the private sector.
Relationship with the Press




In 2005, IBGE produced 169 releases distributed to the press.
IBGE has a mailing-list of 425 journalists of different media in
the country and overseas. The list is periodically updated and
classified by editor.
From August to December 2005, IBGE had 1086 attendance
press
The relationship with the press is made through:


Courses for journalists, where researchers explain
surveys, their range and limitations for a more efficient
work, and
There is a way to previously release to the press the
structure of the survey results. The press has an
agreement with IBGE to keep such information secret up
to the publishing day, enabling to prepare more
elaborated and reasonable subjects.
Releasing statistics under embargoed


Since 2000, embargoed access to the annual and special
surveys has been given to accredited journalists
•
it is essential to provide them with a period of time to
assimilate and understand the data
•
to provide for informed comment at the time of release.
These releases take even entire blocks of the main
television news, headlines and whole newspaper pages.
Embargoed access cannot apply to regular monthly and
quarterly statistics releases
Releasing statistics – privileged early access

According to the regulations of the Ministery of Planning
•
•
Regular monthly and quarterly statistics are delivered 24
hours in advance to the Minister and at 7:30 to authorities
identified that have privileged access (2 hours in advance)

The list of authorities is publicized at IBGE website

The authorities belonging to the list must observe the
confidentiality of the information until IBGE releases the
information
Annual and special statistics are delivered 48 hours in
advance to the Minister and released for press and internet
at 10:00
Questions

What are the practices relating to release statistics

under embargo to the press?

and privileged early access to the government?
On going projects

To publish the results through “Cross Media” technology

Media center

Context Search

The whole site in English
Popularization of statistical information

Today it is possible to access channels such as Cidades@
and SIDRA through Google Earth, directing to a larger and
more diversified public, information about the country and
tools to manipulate such data.