Transcript 2000 SDS Objectives

The 2006 OECD Factbook
Enrico Giovannini
OECD Chief Statistician
March 2006
Risks coming from uniformed decisions
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Citizens: “people often use ideology as a short-cut heuristic
for deciding what position to take, when properly informing
oneself is difficult“ (Blinder and Krueger, 2004)
Businesses: New economy “bubble” started with public
statements based on wrong facts about the importance of
Internet and e-commerce: “Internet traffic is doubling every
100 days (2000); “E-commerce: a digital tsunami (1997)
Policy makers: “I saw some statistics which show the bad
performances of our schooling system. I do not know if they
are true or not and I do not care. However, I decided to
address this important issue”
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Demand for quality statistical information
about the performance of countries
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A lot of information is available
Very uneven quality
Users are not fully able to distinguish between good and
bad quality information
Need to go beyond the measurement of economic
performances (GDP)
Participation of the civil society in defining society’s goals
Three main approaches:
 Integrated economic/environmental and social accounts
 Composite Indicators
 Key Indicators
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The OECD Factbook (1)
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The Factbook presents, in an integrated way, a carefully
selected range of more than 150 indicators covering 10
broad thematic areas:
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Population and migration,
Macroeconomic trends,
Prices,
Labour market,
Science and technology,
Environment,
Education,
Public policies,
Quality of life.
Special chapter (energy in 2005, economic globalisation in
2006)
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The OECD Factbook (2)
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Tables and graphs illustrating in a user-friendly manner
long-term trends and the relative ranking of countries
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Definitions of the indicators and comments on their
comparability, thus enabling users to evaluate the
relevance and value of specific data
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Portal to other OECD statistical and analytic publications
useful for further research and understanding
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Country Statistical Profiles
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Factbook data are also used to prepare individual Country
Statistical Profiles, available in the new “country pages” of
the OECD Web site.
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The Factbook provides tables and charts organised by
topic; Country Statistical Profiles present the same
information by country.
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See www.oecd.org/statistics
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The OECD Factbook: A great success
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Paper version available in:
– English, French, German, Japanese
– Soon also in Spanish and Portuguese
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The online version of the Factbook is available for free
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Visits and hits
– 25,000 monthly downloads of Factbook tables
– 30,000 monthly visits to Country Statistical profiles
– The most visited “special” OECD site
– 3,500 paper copies sold
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The 2006 OECD Factbook: new features
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More tables, improved chapters (especially Quality
of Life)
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Data for Brazil, China, India, Russian Federation,
South Africa
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Longer time series in the on-line version
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More metadata (footnotes) in the on-line version
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And now, let’s look at some tables
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