Taxpayers are demanding more for their money, and statistical information can no longer be the domain of the highly educated few with the access to expensive computer resources. Better statistical graphics, and easier access to data will increase both the range of use and the influence of the important statistical datasets carefully maintained by the different government agencies, at taxpayer expense. The Cost of Data Dissemination Lower Data more Accurate - Information can be rapidly updated Data that Interacts and can be Manipulated Information that can be stored once and maintained for different points of view by the original content provider. Government information more Democratic. The growth of the web is growing faster than the growth of previous information technologies including radios, televisions and telephones.
New technologies have growing pains.
The very success of the Internet Web is achieved by an explosion of complex innovation which is often inconsistent and difficult to master. The explosion of information makes it difficult to find information quickly. However, for many users, access to complex data and statistics still requires a time consuming searching effort that may often be unsuccessful. They want to go to one place and easily find the answer to their question. Users want to navigate to data on the basis of the topic, not on the basis of the organizational structure of the statistical community.