The Agricultural Bulletin Board on Data Collection, Dissemination and Quality of Statistics project (ABCDQ) was established in 2000 to guide users that might seek information,
on the sources and methods of national agricultural data collection and
dissemination.
The ABCDQ is an important reinforcing element to the quality of FAOSTAT
database.
Quality is defined as
- Relevance, Accuracy, Timeliness and Punctuality, Accessibility and Clarity,
Comparability, Coherence and Completeness, and sound Meta Information.
Metadata in the FAO context here covers data describing different
quality aspects of statistical data, e.g.,
1- Contents aspects, describing concepts, definitions and classifications
of variables (an example of this is the notes next to items in FAOSTAT.
2- Accuracy and reliability aspects analysing different kinds of errors
associated with the estimates.
3- Availability aspects describing which statistical data are available,
where located, how they can be accessed, etc.
4- Methods of data collection, describing how data were collected.
This aspect is addressed by ABCDQ.
The ABCDQ is currently under development and this version is being provided
to stimulate country input as well as gathering national meta data contributions
in an organized and systematic way. It is hoped that by the positive response
to this initiative the data quality of FAOSTAT, the database of The Statistics
Division, will be enhanced in a significant way.
The main objective of this site is to foster FAOSTAT data quality.
|