The 2006 OECD Factbook

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The 2006 OECD Factbook

• Enrico Giovannini
• OECD Chief Statistician
• March 2006

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• The inspiration
• Information is not knowledge (Albert Einstein)
• Today we are bombarded by information
  (Jean-Claude Trichet)
• An investment in knowledge pays the best interest
  (Benjamin Franklin)
• Beware of false knowledge it is more dangerous
  than ignorance (George Bernard Shaw)
• By adopting key indicator systems, we will be
  able to generate quality information that can
  help individuals, institutions and nations
  accelerate progress and make better choices
  (David Walker)

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• Risks coming from uniformed decisions
• Citizens people often use ideology as a
  short-cut heuristic for deciding what position to
  take, when properly informing oneself is
  difficult (Blinder and Krueger, 2004)
• Businesses New economy bubble started with
  public statements based on wrong facts about the
  importance of Internet and e-commerce Internet
  traffic is doubling every 100 days (2000)
  E-commerce a digital tsunami (1997)
• Policy makers I saw some statistics which show
  the bad performances of our schooling system. I
  do not know if they are true or not and I do not
  care. However, I decided to address this
  important issue

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• Demand for quality statistical information about
  the performance of countries
• A lot of information is available
• Very uneven quality
• Users are not fully able to distinguish between
  good and bad quality information
• Need to go beyond the measurement of economic
  performances (GDP)
• Participation of the civil society in defining
  societys goals
• Three main approaches
• Integrated economic/environmental and social
  accounts
• Composite Indicators
• Key Indicators

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• The first OECD World Forum on Statistics,
  Knowledge and Policy (Palermo, November 2004)
• (see www.oecd.org/oecdworldforum)
• The Forum addressed key issues for the
  development of modern democracies
• the transparency and accountability of public
  policies
• peoples capacity for understanding the
  characteristics and the evolution of the
  economies and societies in which they are living
• the role of statisticians, media, civil society,
  etc. in contributing to the development of a
  common facts-based knowledge among citizens
• the measurement of overall progress of a
  country/region/community.

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• World Forum follow-up
• The Forum asked the OECD to
• launch a medium-term process on key indicators,
  through electronic discussion groups, specialised
  workshops, etc.
• organise a second World Forum in two-three years
  time.
• To respond to this request, the OECD has
• Developed the OECD Factbook
• Designed a horizontal project on Indicators for
  measuring progress and indicators for policy
  making
• Commenced the preparation of the second World
  Forum (Turkey, June 2007).

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• The OECD Factbook (1)
• The Factbook presents, in an integrated way, a
  carefully selected range of more than 150
  indicators covering 10 broad thematic areas
• Population and migration,
• Macroeconomic trends,
• Prices,
• Labour market,
• Science and technology,
• Environment,
• Education,
• Public policies,
• Quality of life.
• Special chapter (energy in 2005, economic
  globalisation in 2006)

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• The OECD Factbook (2)
• Tables and graphs illustrating in a user-friendly
  manner long-term trends and the relative ranking
  of countries
• Definitions of the indicators and comments on
  their comparability, thus enabling users to
  evaluate the relevance and value of specific data
• Portal to other OECD statistical and analytic
  publications useful for further research and
  understanding
• Factbook data are also used to prepare individual
  Country Statistical Profiles, available in the
  new country pages of the OECD Web site.
• The Factbook provides tables and charts organised
  by topic Country Statistical Profiles present
  the same information by country.

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• The OECD Factbook A great success
• Paper version available in
• English, French, German, Japanese
• Soon also in Spanish and Portuguese
• The online version of the Factbook is available
  for free
• Visits and hits
• 25,000 monthly downloads of Factbook tables
• 30,000 monthly visits to Country Statistical
  profiles
• The most visited special OECD site
• 3,500 paper copies sold

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• The 2006 OECD Factbook new features
• More tables, improved chapters (especially
  Quality of Life)
• Data for Brazil, China, India, Russian
  Federation, South Africa
• Longer time series in the on-line version
• More metadata (footnotes) in the on-line version

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• And now, lets look at some tables

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