New: The evaluation period is over and http://data.un.org can now be accessed without password protection. Have a look and give your comments!

The United Nations now has a unified statistical database search engine. The search interface supports keyword searching across multiple databases.

The United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) launched today a new internet based data service for the global user community. It brings UN statistical databases within easy reach of users through a single entry point (http://data.un.org/).

For those of you looking for more information about global projects, you're going to want to look at this site: http://data.un.org/ The United Nations keeps a database on all sorts of information across countries.

Thanks to Novalawcity for the pointer to UNData, a search tool for UN Statistics. It's available at http://data.un.org/ aaaaand it's in beta.

The new UN data access system (UNdata) will improve the dissemination of statistics by UNSD to the widest possible audience. An easy to use data access system was developed that meets UNSD's vision of providing an integrated information resource with current, relevant and reliable statistics free of charge.

At TED in 2007, Hans Roslings announced that the UN had agreed to make their data freely available. Previously it was paid only. Well they have not only followed up with action, they have done it in style.

Since its foundation, the United Nations system has been collecting statistical information from member states on a variety of topics. The information thus collected constitutes a considerable information asset of the organization. However, these statistical data are often stored in proprietary databases, each with unique dissemination and access policies. As a result, users are often unaware of the full array of statistical information that the UN system has in its data libraries. The current arrangement also means that users are required to move from one database to another to access different types of information. UNdata addresses this problem by datapooling major UN databases and those of several other international organizations into one single Internet environment. The innovative design allows a user to access a large number of UN databases either by browsing the data series or through a keyword search.