Australian Bureau of Statistics Website Case Study
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) is Australia’s national statistical agency. The ABS’s mission is to assist and encourage informed decision-making, research and discussion within governments and the community. It will achieve this by leading a high-quality, objective and responsive national statistical service, and is deeply committed to encouraging access to their statistics.
The ABS website has presented a vast amount of data free-of-charge since late 2005, and is the primary access point for the majority of users of ABS information. It is one of the most popular government sites in Australia, and its pages are accessed about 1.5 million times each week (76 million times per year). However, until December 2008, any significant redistribution (more than 500 cells of data) or enhancement of the free data or information available from the ABS website was subject to licensing arrangements, administered by the ABS. Although the ABS allowed quite broad use of the content of its website under licence (at no cost to the user), the licensing process itself had the potential to pose an undesirable barrier to those wishing to re-use or enhance the data.
The ABS has now introduced Creative Commons (CC) licensing for the bulk of the content on its website. This considerably lessens the restrictions on the use of the free data available from the website by changing the copyright from “all rights reserved” to “some rights reserved”. In effect, what the ABS is asking is only that it be acknowledged as the source of the data. People are free to re-use, build upon and distribute ABS data, even commercially. This makes a wealth of data readily available to the community, researchers, business and government. It facilitates innovative research and development projects based on quality statistics, and promotes the wider use of statistics in the community – and this supports the ABS’s core objectives.
By introducing Creative Commons on the ABS website, the ABS also improves the visibility of ABS material. Advanced options in search engines such as Google and Yahoo allow for filtering by usage rights. This is based on which Creative Commons licence is carried by the work. Consequently, using Creative Commons Licences assists in maximising the penetration of ABS data to the wider community and, in doing so, furthers the ABS’s mission.
The move to Creative Commons licensing followed a process of investigation and consultation with various stakeholders including relevant Commonwealth Government Agencies and the Creative Commons community of interest. The change was achieved through the release of a new copyright statement on
It should be noted that Creative Commons licensing does not apply to customised data provided via information consultancies. These are covered by the ABS Conditions of Sale, and require a separate licence from the ABS for secondary distribution. Further information on ABS copyright is available in our website Copyright Statement.
