CData Online

CData Online is a great tool available from the ABS which allows you to manipulate data from the 2006 census. While Sutherland Shire Council's Community Profile is great for finding statistics for the Shire and it's suburbs and comparing them to the greater Sydney area, CData allows you to create geographic areas as small as a collection district, or as a combination of collection districts or suburbs and view data as tables, graphs or thematic maps.

You can use CDATA Online to:
* Construct tables using 2006 Census Data
* Compare geographic areas * Create custom geographic areas & data groups
* Add totals and view data as percentages
* Produce thematic maps of Census data which can be exported and saved to a file
* Produce a variety of graphs of Census data which can be exported and saved to file.
* Export data in Excel or CSV format

If you register for this free service, you then have the ability to save your customised geographies, data items and tables for reference in future sessions.

While the service is reasonably user friendly, with an online user manual as well as online help, both Julie and I have some experience in constructing tables of local data so please don't hesitate to ask for help.

The Sutherland Shire Council's Community Profile at http://www.id.com.au/profile/default.aspx?id=150 is a great starting point for community statistics and will probably answer most statistical enquiries from customers. It also includes results from the 2006, 2001, 1996, and 1991 Censuses of Population and Housing for many key statistics. However, for customised geographies and data groups check out CData Online at http://www.abs.gov.au/CDataOnline.