Last modified: Thursday, November 8, 2007
IU's STATS Indiana relaunched with new features and more useful data
Online resource logs more than half million users annually
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Nov. 8, 2007
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- STATS Indiana, an award-winning Web site providing in-depth information about Indiana and other states, is being relaunched today (Nov. 8) with a new, user-friendly design, a large infusion of new data from state government agencies and other enhancements.
Maintained by the Indiana Business Research Center (IBRC) at Indiana University's Kelley School of Business, STATS Indiana provides Web access to a wide range of economic and demographic data about Indiana, along with presentation options such as maps and graphs.
It logs more than half a million user sessions each year and can be accessed at https://www.stats.indiana.edu.
STATS Indiana is the data foundation of the state's Information for Indiana (IFI) initiative, ensuring that policymakers, businesses, nonprofit organizations and citizens have access to key data and analysis needed to support intelligent policy choices and understand their implications.
"Making this information available through STATS Indiana ensures that Indiana decision makers can rely on a credible data system that is sustainable over the long term," observed IBRC director Jerry Conover.
Marty Morrow, chief operating officer of the Indiana Department of Workforce Development, said, "The IFI partnership has leveraged more and better information for Hoosiers, allowing each of us -- the state and the university -- to do what we do best."
The IFI project and STATS Indiana receive financial support from Indiana state government and Lilly Endowment Inc.
"STATS Indiana is a great resource for Indiana citizens, providing a wealth of information about our state and how it compares to others," said Neil Pickett, senior policy director for Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels and director of the Information for Indiana project. "The redesign makes it easier to use, and the addition of large amounts of new data from state agencies through the IFI project places it among the nation's premier statistical data utilities."
"Ongoing IFI work involves adding even more types of data, and building more powerful and convenient tools in STATS Indiana to help users easily find the information they need," Conover added. "We've made great strides in integrating data from different agencies to support more insightful analyses."
In IFI work completed to date, STATS Indiana has expanded access to data on the budgets of local governments, parcel-level property taxes and assessments, labor force and economic performance statistics, income and sales taxes by county, and childcare facilities. It drives more deeply into state data resources to provide income and retail taxes, top-ten health professions, business incorporations, exports and a searchable database of nonprofits.
The new site also features expanded national data for states, counties and metro areas, enabling Hoosiers to compare their communities to others with IRS migration and income tax data, and health data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In addition to its more user-friendly design and expanded data content, the new STATS Indiana contains a number of other enhancements, including a "dashboard" of key economic and demographic indicators. Other enhancements include multiple ways to search for data, expanded profiles of metropolitan areas nationwide, peer-finder tools, radius demographics, specialized map resources for school and library data, and a new time-series view coupled with more convenient download capabilities.
"STATS Indiana is the most comprehensive demographic tool we use. Our job would be more time consuming and more difficult if we had to gather all of the information contained in STATS Indiana from multiple sources," said J. Gregory Wathen, president and chief executive officer of the Economic Development Coalition of Southwest Indiana.
Businesses are among some of the most frequent users of STATS Indiana.
"Our firm does commercial real estate brokerage and appraising. Not only is STATS Indiana an invaluable resource for analysis of real estate market forces and trends, but its beautifully designed tables, charts and graphs are ready-made for presenting the data in the most compelling way possible," said Lou Zickler, president of Zickler Associates in Greenwood.
Established in 1925, the IBRC pioneered online access to economic and demographic data, offering Indiana's first such data link via a dial-up line in the 1970s, long before the birth of the Internet. This early work evolved into the sophisticated STATS Indiana data utility being unveiled today.
The IBRC can be found online at https://www.ibrc.indiana.edu/.
