The Australian government has released an online interactive map of national statistics, including population, birth rate, average income, number of businesses, broken down by each geographical region.

The ‘Data by Region’ map, developed by Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), allows users to search and browse data using a map interface, instead of sifting through tables of data.

It currently provides five years of data from the National Regional Profile, so users can track changes in their region over time, according to the ABS.

“Our aim is to eventually enable users to find more data on any region within Australia, by migrating other online map-based data published by the ABS to this one tool,” said Todd Sweeting, Director of Web Publishing at the ABS.

How does it stack up?

FutureGov looked at other countries’ statistical services in the region and only found two others - New Zealand and Japan - that use interactive maps besides the ABS.

Here is our breakdown:

Statistics Bureau of Japan

The Bureau’s interactive site, available only in Japanese, allows users to select a variety of data, including age, gender, household, home ownership, occupation and employment, and view them on the map.

Statistics New Zealand

The New Zealand site does not have as many data types and historical data as the ABS map. It focuses on census data, splitting the information over several maps, such as people’s age and income per region, ethnicity and home ownership. As a result, it loads faster and looks a little less intimidating to users.

The Singapore and Hong Kong governments do not have interactive maps. Instead, they present statistics using interactive infographics and other visualisation tools, allowing users to view selected data on a chart, or view how the data changes over time.