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STRATEGIC DIRECTIONS

C. IMPROVING SELF HELP

31 Whilst cost recovered services like information consultancies will continue to be provided, our strategic direction is for ABS services to focus more on the high value adding and complex information consultancy, leaving the simpler data extraction tasks to "self help". Self help facilities need to be easy to use. Ideally, self help facilities should provide users with the flexibility to select ("slice and dice") and format tabular data on-line, before having to decide what to purchase/download.

32 The strategy for achieving this is to make more detailed, but confidentialised, data cubes available on the web site, supported by on-line data catalogues, meta data search and manipulation tools.

33 Other areas of self help that we will be pursuing are:

• the provision of spatial data services (e.g. Web mapping services) and geography services (e.g. aggregating Mesh Blocks to higher level Australian Standard Geographic Classification (ASGC) units, or non-ASGC boundaries);
• the extension of our self managed subscription system to allow for ordering of print-on-demand publications; and
• the development of a self help knowledge database. With similarities to an on-line national information service, the self help knowledge database will provide advice on frequently asked, or encountered, questions relating to statistics.