The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) has now
become the primary contributor of statistical information to the
National Data Network (NDN), providing 43 of the 58 data sets now
available on the Internet library.
The Institute has long made its information available on its own
web site, but now that information is also available through the
NDN.
AIHW Director Dr Richard Madden congratulated the Australian
Bureau of Statistics (ABS) in leading the development of the NDN
and said the partnership provides another way for policy makers,
researchers and the community to access Institute statistics and
other information.
'The AIHW website currently has over 2000 visits per day, and we
believe that through this partnership that number will increase,
and more people will become aware of the quality and breadth of
data that AIHW offers,' Dr Madden said.
Head of the AIHW's Business and Information Management Division,
Dr Anny Stuer said an important point about the partnership with
NDN is that it provides a model for sharing best practice with the
community of information developers and users.
'A valuable aspect of the NDN is that it allows partners to
share best practice principles, particularly in such critical areas
as privacy protocols, and information standards.
'Through the NDN, users can also access METeOR, AIHW's Metadata
Online Registry, which contains the all-important definitions that
underlie our statistics.
'These definitions help ensure the statistics collected are of
the highest quality and can be meaningfully compared across
different data collections,' Dr Stuer said.
AIHW information currently available through the NDN includes
medical labour force, cancer, homelessness and supported
accommodation, mortality, disability, health and welfare
expenditure, drug use and treatment services, mental health
information, and many other topics.
21 October 2005
Further information: Dr Anny Stuer, AIHW, tel.
02 6244 1010, or Mike McGrath (technical inquiries), AIHW tel. 02
6244 1106