DATA ISSUES

Data gaps

The ABS has always highlighted where there is no suitable data to measure the progress of important areas of life. These data gaps signal to government and the community areas where future development of the evidence base is required, to provide a comprehensive view of progress across all domains of importance. In 2013, there remain data gaps across all four domains.

In MAP 2013 there will be several types of data gaps:

1. data gaps where there is a clear concept, but data of sufficient quality is not available to inform on progress;
2. the element or theme is conceptually challenging or complex and development is required to identify an appropriate indicator to measure its progress; or
3. the concept is important for progress, as a feature or enabler, but may not lend itself to meaningful statistical measurement.

The final MAP product will clearly identify these data gaps.

Contextual elements

Some elements are not able to be readily represented by progress indicators. This is because these elements can currently only be described, rather than statistically measured. An example of this is ‘International conventions and laws’ within the Governance domain, where it is not clear exactly what would be measured to indicate progress. Rather, the existence of international conventions and laws are important where they enable other areas of progress to occur, or restrict progress if they are not effective.

Data sources

The proposed indicators have been primarily sourced from official statistical sources. For the Social and Economic domains, the proposed indicators have primarily been drawn from ABS data collections. For the Environment domain the proposed indicators were compiled from several sources including, but not limited to, the Department of Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities, Geoscience Australia, Tourism Australia and the ABS. The proposed indicators for the Governance domain have been sourced from ABS data collections, the Australian Electoral Commission and the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.