Australian Bureau of Statistics
Celebrating the International Year of Statistics 2013

Rate the ABS website
ABS Home
Online Action Plan May 2006
  

AUSTRALIAN BUREAU OF STATISTICS
ONLINE ACTION PLAN
May 2006


Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. About the ABS
3. Appropriate and inappropriate online services
4. Key development initiatives
5. Accessibility
6. Indicators of use of ABS online services
6. Contact Us


1. Introduction
This plan outlines further development of Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) online services.
Online service delivery is an integral part of ABS operations and we remain committed to continuous improvement of these services.

Back to Top


2. About the ABS
The Australian Bureau of Statistics is Australia's official statistical organisation. We assist and encourage informed decision-making, research and discussion within governments and the community, by leading a high quality, objective and responsive national statistical service.

Back to Top


3. Appropriate and inappropriate online services
The ABS provides its information services in a manner fulfilling the undertakings of its Service Delivery Charter. In deciding whether it is appropriate to provide a particular service online will be considered in relation to:
      • value to the external data provider/supplier/client or significant user demand for the service
      • compliance with all relevant legislation, including the Australian Bureau of Statistics Act 1975 and the Census and Statistics Act 1905
      • potential for contribution to the ABS mission and objectives
      • maintenance of the ABS organisational principles of Relevance, Integrity, Access for All, Professionalism and Trust of Providers
      • strength of the business case i.e. sound business practice
      • practical capability and likelihood of achieving desired outcomes.

An overriding aspect is that online service provision will be inappropriate if data quality or confidentiality are compromised.


Back to Top


4. Key development initiatives
ABS provides a wide range of online services which are well used by our users. To support our users, the ABS is committed to an ongoing program to improve their experience when using ABS online services. We will continue to provide interesting and innovative ways to provide statistical data and related services through an accessible and useable web site.

Facilities already available on the ABS web site can be found in the ABS web site map.

Specific directions for the future include:
      • Providing more relevant, understandable and interesting statistical information targeted to a range of audiences.
      • Presenting statistical information effectively utilising opportunities presented by web technology.
      • Allowing clients to interact with data to design and populate their own tables, charts and maps - initially with data from the Census of Population and Housing.
      • Improving the breadth and quality of small area data available for quantitative measurement, evaluation and comparison of regions.
      • Allowing the Australian public to complete and submit their Census forms electronically via the Internet.
      • Understanding clients' use of the web site to focus future improvements.

Back to Top


5. Accessibility
We are committed to making our online services as accessible as possible so that no group is excluded from access to our services. We will meet our obligations under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 and are working to comply with World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C’s) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0.

Our web site met W3C Priority 1 Guidelines by December 2000, except for W3C guidelines 5.1 and 5.2 relating to ensuring the accessibility of tables (by using appropriate meta-tags). Our web site contains many thousands of tables for data and layout, and these tables are continually being updated. For technical reasons, tables in these formats are not easily tagged. We have investigated numerous potential solutions to tagging these tables, but at this stage have not found a means to do it at a reasonable cost. We will continue to investigate how tables can be tagged to meet the W3C guidelines.

In the mean time, we provide a free conversion service where visually impaired users can ask for files to be converted to a suitable format. For further information see Information for Visually Impaired Clients on our web site.

Back to Top


6. Indicators of use of ABS online services
Specific indicators showing use of ABS online services can be found in the ABS Annual Report.

Back to Top

Bookmark and Share. Opens in a new window

© Commonwealth of Australia 2013

Unless otherwise noted, content on this website is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Australia Licence together with any terms, conditions and exclusions as set out in the website Copyright notice. For permission to do anything beyond the scope of this licence and copyright terms contact us.