Visualising official statistics

Data are everywhere: on the internet, in newspapers, in computer games, at school, at work and on TV. Data are essential to our daily information needs and people are increasingly becoming used to reading and interpreting data. Companies use advanced technologies to present their data in fancy and visually attractive ways. Animated and interactive graphs, mapping tools, charting components are now common techniques, and many examples of attractive and well-designed data visualisation are to be found on the internet in particular. Many of these concepts can be used to visualise official statistics. Indeed, we think people expect official statistics to follow these trends so that they can use the same tools and concepts to consult official statistics. This paper presents an overview of visualisation trends on the internet. It highlights visualisation initiatives that can currently be found on the web and are likely to be useful for official statistics. It also describes the status of visualisation activities at Statistics Netherlands, in the field of regional statistics as well as other more specific data visualisations, and touches on some of the more experimental features currently being developed.