Introduction

I am pleased to welcome you to Idescat's new website. This new portal aims to be yet another tool for facilitating citizens' access to official statistics in Catalonia.

In the past few years, Idescat's website has become one of the main means of disseminating the official statistics generated by the different departments within the Generalitat and other bodies that make up the statistical system in Catalonia, which has led us to decide to update this powerful tool of inquiry.

This new website has been designed to improve access to statistical information, such that information may now be accessed by three different means: thematic pages, the site map and the search engine.

The thematic, or main, access route aims to facilitate access to information in an intuitive fashion for many different types of users. This is why the information has been grouped into overarching themes. Each theme is in turn divided into thematic groupings that contain all the information on a chosen field. At this level, the information is organised into two columns: basic information is on the left and monographic or expanded information is on the right.

The site map and search engine are two new alternatives providing easy access to information. It should be noted that for the first time the search engine enables statistical information to be found by means of one or two keywords.

Information may also be accessed by means of a request form for cases in which it has not been possible to find certain information.

The new website contains millions of statistical data and includes tools for making it easier to download documentation on spreadsheets and in pdf files. In certain cases, it also includes graphic information to aid in interpreting the statistics.

For a more detailed description of the contents and navigation of the website, please check the website guide.

Finally, our aim is to keep improving this tool on a daily basis so that it becomes a useful service for everyone.

The Statistical Institute of Catalonia is the Generalitat de Catalunya's organisation specialising in statistics. Its mission is to manage the statistical system in Catalonia by planning, co-ordinating and normalising statistical activities and by providing technical statistical assistance. To this end, each year it must prepare and develop the draft Annual Programme for Statistical Activities in order to submit it to the government for approval.

The Statistical Institute of Catalonia produces official statistics in the fields of the economy, demography and society. It also generates estimates of the gross domestic product for the Catalan economy, statistics on the population structure and the linguistic census for Catalonia, and it follows up on other statistical activities being carried out in Catalonia. It is the institution in charge of disseminating all the official statistical results generated in Catalonia by publishing them via its library, its website, or by responding to inquiries or requests that reach the Institute.

As part of its role as manager of the statistical system in Catalonia, one service Idescat provides is technical assistance to the institutions that participate in the production, analysis or dissemination of statistical information, including regulations on statistical codes and classifications, the standardisation of definitions being used, the design of probability samples, and so forth, in order to enhance the comparability and reliability of the statistical data being generated.

Likewise, the Statistical Institute of Catalonia is entrusted with creating and managing the Population Registry of Catalonia, an administrative registry containing obligatory current data on residents registered in the municipal censuses of inhabitants from the Town Halls of Catalonia, which may be referred to by the public administrations when exercising their competences.

Finally, we should mention Idescat's co-operation with state and European statistical institutions in order to improve the quality and comparability of the statistics, as well as to promote and disseminate research and training in the field of statistics.

From an administrative standpoint, Idescat is an independent administrative organisation associated with the Generalitat de Catalunya's Department of the Economy and Finances with its own legal personality, with administrative and financial autonomy, and with the full capability to act as it sees fit in order to fulfil its purposes. As such, Idescat's Annual Report provides information on the activities performed by Idescat in the corresponding financial year.

Official statistics are all those statistics that are included in the Statistical Plan of Catalonia and that are thus deemed to be of public interest by the Parliament of Catalonia and which must consequently involve citizen collaboration. At the same time, inclusion of these statistics within the Plan also brings with it a commitment to generate statistics in accordance with specific norms which ensure technical accuracy, comparability of the results and all those precepts established by the Catalan statistical legislation.

The current Statistical Law of Catalonia states that official statistics must fulfil a series of requirements that differentiate them from other statistics that frequently appear in the media. These requirements include:

• To be declared to be of public interest by the Parliament of Catalonia.
• To be objective in their framing and results, which must then be made public and disseminated.
• To be comparable to other statistics being generated in Spain or the European Union by applying a normalised system of concepts, definitions, classifications and codes, as well as a methodology that ensures this comparability.
• To ensure that they do not duplicate other existing statistics in order to avoid unnecessarily bothering citizens and to ensure a better use of public funds. To accomplish this, the priority source of information will be information that is already available, such as the contents of archives and government registries.
• To respect individual privacy, to ensure the statistical secret and to enable interested parties to find out the characteristics of a given survey.