The Central Statistical Office is extremely expensive to maintain, but the data which it collects could also bring billions to the economy. However, the Office makes the data in question available in an unfavourable manner, says Mr Maciej Bukowski, chairman of the Warsaw Institute for Economic Studies (WISE).
– It has come to a situation where Polish users who wish to gain access to Polish statistical data end up downloading such data from Eurostat databases, to which our own Central Statistical Office sends such data in a raw, unprocessed form, noted Mr Bukowski from WISE during his interview with the Polish Press Agency (PAP). He stated that the Eurostat databases contain enormous amounts of data and are very user-friendly. Users are able to download both selected data and the entire database. Other statistical offices, for example in the United States, tend to operate along the same lines. This allows various companies which know how to process the entire database or a part thereof, to do just that. In Poland, however, this is not possible, as Mr Bukowski pointed out.
– The Central Statistical Office gathers massive quantities of data on nearly all aspects of life in Poland, yet it makes such data available primarily through its own publications, such as the Statistical Yearbook, in the form of pdf files and not in the form of databases which may be processed digitally, said the chairman of WISE. He added also that the data warehouse of the Central Statistical Office is not user-friendly and does not contain all the necessary data. All this forms a huge barrier to the use of the data in question. If the Central Statistical Office chooses to make something available, it does not do so consistently; for example, it often changes the format in which the files are provided or the scope of information which it uses.
