Australia Planning an Open Source Census

December 29, 2010 / Melody Smith / Comments Off on Australia Planning an Open Source Census

December 29, 2010 – The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) is preparing for a massive change to its use of data standards, with plans to move to open source formats for next year.

ComputerWorld brought this news to our attention in their article, “Australian Bureau of Statistics plans open source census.” This is the first dry run of the bureau’s implementation of XML-based Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) and Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange (SDMX) formats. If the implementation is successful, users will be able to access Web services from the bureau, including better search capabilities for both statistics and metadata.

The two standards were developed by separate international statistical communities, though they are seen as complementary. The ABS has been working with the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) on ways of standardizing metadata ahead of the Federal Government’s final data repository launch.

Melody K. Smith

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Melody Smith

Melody K. Smith has provided organizational, social media and digital communication services to a large non-profit for the past twenty years. Prior to that she championed employee engagement and communications in the healthcare field. She holds a Bachelors degree in Marketing. When not wrangling and writing TaxoDiary content for your reading pleasure, Melody writes fiction, rescues dogs and throws legendary dinner parties.