Homepage  |   Contact  |   Feedback  |  Suomeksi  |  På svenska
 

About the site

What, why and who?

Findicator is a condensed collection of indicators on social progress. The service brings together statistics and indicators already in use.

The service is targeted at everyone needing up-to-date, reliable information on social progress in their work or other activities: decision-makers, civil servants, specialists, teachers, journalists, citizens. The indicators have been selected in consultation with user groups and providers. The set of indicators will be updated as appropriate.

The technical infrastructure of Findicator incorporates solutions enabling real-time updates of selected tables and graphs from the data sources.

Please note that the whole service is only available in Finnish. The main page of the service and a list of the indicators is available in English.

Selection of indicators

The process of selecting the indicators went through four phases:

  1. Survey of national and international sets of indicators and identification of the most common indicators:
    When Findicator was conceived, a number of national and international sets of indicators measuring social or sustainable development were looked at (Sweden, Ireland, Great Britain, New Zealand, the OECD, Eurostat, etc.). This analysis resulted in a list of some 100 indicators for social progress, and these were then grouped according to theme.
  2. Consultation with potential users:
    The indicator list was further refined on the basis of feedback received from 15 individuals working in close contact with political decision-making (including Members of Parliament, their assistants, civil servants from parliamentary group offices, information specialists, etc).
  3. Consultation with experts:
    Experts from a variety of ministries and sectors along with researchers and contacts from statistics providers were asked to comment on the list as modified on the basis of user requests. Sources and their ability to make data available for the service were also looked into.
  4. Content production:
    The list of indicators served as the basis for the online service. As the process of compiling the statistics got under way, the indicator set was further refined according to the actual availability of data.

Technical infrastructure

Efforts have been made to ensure that the technical infrastructure of the service is as user-friendly as possible. The service allows easy retrieval of tables, graphs and text directly to the user's own computer for further manipulation.

The service utilises new solutions enabling automatic updates of tables and graphs directly from the StatFin database maintained by Statistics Finland. Graphs have been tailored for each indicator so that they meet the best practice requirements for statistical graphics and are of a high technical quality.

For further information on the technical solutions, please contact findicator@stat.fi.

Referring to the service and its data

When referring to data from this service, the user must cite the organisation that produced the statistical or indicator information in question as the source.

Developers

Findicator has been set up as a joint project between Statistics Finland and the Prime Minister's Office. Some 15 experts with interests ranging from indicator development and information services to web publishing and statistical data presentation collaborated in the project.

Participants also included designated contact persons from different ministries who were responsible for relaying information in their own sectors during the indicator selection process.

Below is a list of organisations providing data for Findicator. Their experts also contributed to the development of the service content.



About the site    Contact    Feedback