Universities Extend Access To ABS Data, Dec 2001
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Universities Extend Access To ABS Data CANBERRA. - The Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee (AVCC) and the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) will on Thursday sign two agreements to extend the university sector's access to an extensive range of ABS statistics. The first agreement is for the AusStats service which provides unlimited, online, desktop access by staff and students of 38 Australian universities to ABS data for academic and teaching purposes. AusStats delivers timely access to more than 2,000 ABS publications, time series data and tables (over 90,000 series in spreadsheet format), metadata (documentation of surveys, concepts and data items) and 1996 Census Basic Community Profiles. New data, including from the 2001 Census, will be added as it becomes available. The second agreement is for use of Confidentialised Unit Record Files (CURFs) by the 32 universities participating in this agreement for research projects. The CURF agreement allows universities to access CURFs which contain the unidentifiable record data from most of the key ABS social and labour household surveys. Under the original agreement, participating universities have used more than 480 files over the past three years. The ABS and the AVCC believe the extensive use of ABS data and product services demonstrates the value these agreements have provided in scholarship to universities and also to social and economic planners. The Chief Executive Officer of the AVCC, John Mullarvey, said the extensions of the agreements to 2004 provided an excellent opportunity for universities to continue to utilise ABS data to support academic and teaching endeavours and to minimise the costs to each university through the shared sector arrangements. "This in turn would support more informed decision making within the university sector, government and the community," he said. "The AusStats agreement also demonstrates the university sector's innovative response to the dynamic web technology environment. "Continued access to this greatly increased range of data will generate important opportunities for high quality academic research and teaching projects. "In turn, this should underpin a better informed planning process. Joint action by universities under this agreement significantly lowers the cost of providing desktop access to all staff and students using the latest technology." The Australian Statistician, Dennis Trewin, said that the new agreements represent the next logical step towards the ABS goal of making data more accessible to university staff and students for academic and teaching purposes. The universities that will benefit from the AVCC/ABS agreements are: AusStats and CURFs:
Australian National University Australian Catholic University University of Canberra Central Queensland University Charles Sturt University Curtin University of Technology Deakin University Edith Cowan University Flinders University Griffith University La Trobe University Macquarie University University of Melbourne Monash University Murdoch University Southern Cross University University of New England University of New South Wales University of Newcastle University of Queensland Queensland University of Technology RMIT University University of South Australia Swinburne University of Technology University of Sydney University of Tasmania University of Technology Sydney Victoria University University of Western Australia University of Western Sydney University of Wollongong AusStats only:
Bond University James Cook University Northern Territory University University of Sunshine Coast University of Southern Queensland This media release may be found on this site and http://www.avcc.edu.au/news/public_statements/media_releases/index.htm Document Selection These documents will be presented in a new window.
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