[dundee] New Government Statistical Data Repository Web Site

[Marcel Hecko]

On 22/01/2010 10:06, gordon dunlop wrote:
>
>
> 2010/1/22 Marcel Hecko <marcel at shmu.org.uk <mailto:marcel at shmu.org.uk>>
>
>     The next step would be to provide all the information in an open
>     format.
>     Just a very quick (random) search for some statistics pointed me
>     to this page with XSL data only, which is kind of sad.
>     http://www.isdscotland.org/isd/1918.html
>
>
>  True Marcel, but the NHS uses Microsoft Office for storing research 
> data and documents (or a database), which is why I have an XP 
> partition as my wife is involved in NHS research.  At least the XSL 
> data can be viewed using OpenOffice Calc which means she can look at 
> the data using Fedora.

Well, nevertheless using propriatery software and formats to publish 
government public documents is outrageous. Govermnent should not be paid 
to undergo a research and release the outcomes of the research in a 
format which needs paid software to read/use the information/data. Even 
PDF would be better. Even HTML! But XLS? C'mon! How difficult is it to 
teach folks to save documents in PDF (or have a simple automatic 
XLS->PDF convertor on the website)? Is this even legal on a EU level?

Marcel

>
> Gordon
>
>     Dissapointing :(
>
>     m.
>
>
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