Editorial: The UIS should post data on Google Fusion Tables

The UNESCO Institute of Statistics is an important repository for international statistics on education, science, culture and communications and information.

Google has provided the Fusion Data website to facilitate sharing and visualization of data. It is an experimental system for data management in the cloud. It draws on the expertise of folks within Google Research who have been studying collaboration, data integration, and user requirements from a variety of domains.

Thus Google Fusion Data offers the possibility to users to easily combine data from various sources, and to visualize that data using charts, maps, etc. Public information already available on the site includes country GDP and Child Survival.

Adding publicly available data from UNESCO would help contribute to public understanding of UNESCO's key concerns as people used the facilities, help social scientists to carry out statistical analyses, and help public policy makers to do analyses using the data more quickly and easily.

Read the Google Research Blog posting on Fusion Tables

Take the Guided Tour

This seems like a no brainer, and a great partnership between UNESCO and a leading American firm.