βetaWorks

What?

Australian Social Trends (AST) are trialling the use of podcasts to bring you short, easy listening highlights from the latest release of the Australian Bureau of Statistic's AST publication. Each quarterly release of AST contains several in depth articles, which cover many broad areas of social concern such as population, health, work and housing.

This first AST podcast discussed the 'Disability and Work' article from the latest AST publication. Are many people with disability engaged in work? If so, in what sort of jobs and how do their labour force characteristics differ from those without disability?

The most recent AST podcast discusses the 'Life on Struggle Street' article from the latest AST publication. It looks at the characteristics of people in households with both relatively low income and relatively low wealth.

Why?

AST aims to address current and perennial social concerns and to provide answers to key social questions in an interesting and easy to understand way.

While AST articles are designed to be easy to read, the AST podcasts provides an easier way to get the key messages across many different issues while on the go. The podcasts will allow AST to reach new audiences through the power of voice by adding a personal connection to the article.

The podcasts also allows listeners to download the audio files for listening afterwards on a portable device anytime anywhere, as well as providing a subscription-based service through RSS and iTunes.

When?

Currently released on a monthly basis, each podcast will focus in upon the highlights from a different article.

What do you think about the new AST podcast series?

What?

The ABS will be introducing a 'Key Stats' table to the homepage to give users access to key figures quickly. This is inspired by the Italian National Institute of Statistics homepage.

Why?

The ABS is focussed on improving the discoverability of ABS data and providing users with key figures much faster. The Table reads data from1345.0 - Key Economic Indicators web page and updates automatically with the latest data when that does.

When?

There is a planned release of this item by the end of the financial year. Would you find this Key Stats Table useful and which design would suit best?

What?

The ABS produces a wide range of statistics and publications that are readily accessible from the ABS website, but how much do you know about the surveys and questionnaires filled out by the millions of Australians and Australian businesses each year, capturing the information used to create a vital snapshot of Australia. Would you know where to find them?

Why?

Improving the discoverability of ABS surveys increases:

• The transparency and integrity of ABS collection methods through promoting good statistical design and data management practices
• Improved support for researchers and analysts
• Public awareness of survey design, limitations and informed use of ABS survey outputs.

When?

We have created a series of design mockups to garner public feedback on how best to make this service available to you, and gauge your level of interest. Please note that none of the indicated links within the mockups are active at this stage.

Please let us know what you think. Your feedback is very important to us and will help determine the success of this project.

What?

We are experimenting with some mobile friendly techniques for visualising data. Using the AM Charts package we have developed a number of examples of visualising ABS data. They use the scalable time series template allowing the user to naviagate through selected parts of a large time series or view the entire time series.

When?

There is no current release for this template as it is a proof of concept only, but dependant on demand this product may be investigated further. Would you find it interesting to have this data visualisation template included in ABS Publications?