Abstract

In the past, the Census and Statistics Department (C&SD) of Hong Kong, China disseminated official statistics to data users through statistical products in the form of static files, e.g. statistical tables in static HTML, Excel or CSV formats, and reports in PDF formats, on C&SD’s departmental website. The functionality of these statistical products and their interactivity with data users were limited, affecting their usefulness to data users. Besides, these statistical products were usually produced by silo IT systems with different data specifications and highly customised processes, causing extra efforts in their preparation.

Nowadays, data users’ expectations on official statistics in terms of data readiness, user customisation and data download format are increasingly demanding. They require to access statistics through online channels effectively and conveniently for real-time data exploration according to their unique perspectives. In addition, they demand not only key summary statistics, but also the functionality to drill into detailed statistics along with their data exploration, as well as extraction of the statistics in various open data format to fulfill further analytical needs.

In view of the above, C&SD has been modernising and standardising the online data dissemination processes and services in recent years, with a view to enhancing the services to data users and improving the efficiency of data dissemination work. This paper introduces the revamped framework of online data dissemination services of C&SD, which includes a more efficient and standardised data dissemination infrastructure, streamlined data dissemination procedures, and new multi-function online statistical products.