Meeting of the Royal Statistical Society, Official Statistics Section
Wednesday 24 February 1999, 5:00 pm (tea 4:30pm)
At the Royal Statistical Society, 12 Errol Street, London EC1

INTERNET ACCESS TO STATISTICS - THE NEW STATBASE AND NESSTAR DEVELOPMENTS

Speakers: Brian Meakings (Office for National Statistics) and Simon
Musgrave (The Data Archive)

Synopsis: The internet is creating new opportunities for rapid access to
statistics.  StatBase, which has been launched by the ONS, provides access
to a wide range of information about official data, as well as a key
selection of official statistics.  NESSTAR is being developed to enable
users to identify and locate information across all the European social
science data archives.  Both projects illustrate the potential for further
development of Web access.  Further details of the projects are given
below.

ALL WELCOME AT THE MEETING

Details posted by Paul Allin, Senior Hon Sec, RSS/
Chief Statistician, Department for Culture, Media and Sport


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STATBASE – Official Statistics On-Line

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) has launched an on-line
information resource called StatBase.  This has been developed by the ONS
on behalf of the whole Government Statistical Service (GSS).  StatBase has
been designed to increase public awareness of official statistics, and to
provide users with direct access to those statistics.  It consists of two
linked components, one holding metadata and the other holding data.

* StatSearch is the heart of the system and contains a comprehensive
catalogue of all the information sources, products and services which are
the responsibility of the GSS and other custodians of official statistics. 
It includes a Search Directory to help users find the information they
need, as well as contact details for further information and advice.
  
* StatStore is a database linked to StatSearch which will eventually
contain an extensive range of statistics covering a wide spectrum of
social, economic and socio-economic affairs.

The first version of StatBase was launched on the Web in October 1998, 
with an initial catalogue and a limited range of statistics.  Over the next
year, the ONS will be expanding and updating the system contents to provide
fuller coverage of official statistics. 

Users can find StatBase via the GSS Website at:

http://www.statistics.gov.uk

Access to StatSearch and to the range of core statistics held in StatStore
is free.  Access to the more extensive data holdings that will become
available in StatStore will be chargeable.   

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NESSTAR: Networked Social Sciences Tools and Resources

The NESSTAR project at The Data Archive is developing a Web-based data and
metadata browsing tool that will allow researchers and data disseminators
to distribute data or search for them over the Web.

Data disseminators will be able to distribute their data freely or to
authenticated clients.  Researchers will be able to search widely
distributed data archives for data of interest, browse the data and
metadata, subset the data, carry out statistical analysis online and
download the data and metadata as required.  The project is providing tools
to strictly defined standards, such as DDI and XML, using such protocols
and  languages as Java, Z39.50 and CORBA.  Future work will focus on
organisational and commercial issues.  The prime objective will remain to
support the academic sector but that needs funding.

For further information about NESSTAR please visit their Web page at

http:// dawww.essex.ac.uk/projects/nesstar.html/

or contact the project manager:

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