The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) has recently developed a new geography to replace the Australian Standard Geographical Classification (ASGC) that has been used for the collection and dissemination of geographically classified statistics since its introduction in 1984. The Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) was released in December 2010, and the first statistics based on the ASGS were released in August 2011.
The 2011 Census of Population and Housing will be the first Census to feature data released on the ASGS, and Census data will become available later in 2012.
The ABS has in place a number of strategies to assist clients in making the transition from the ASGC to the ASGS. For instance, data from the 2011 Census will be released in time series for 2001, 2006 and 2011 on both Statistical Local Areas (ASGC) and Statistical Areas Level 2 (ASGS) to enable users to maintain continuity. Other collections will release parallel datasets for a short time to allow statistical benchmarking.
A summary of the ASGS implementation schedule for other ABS publications is available on the web site: http://www.abs.gov.au/geography
Strategies for converting existing data onto the ASGS are detailed in the paper “Converting Data to the Australian Statistical Geography Standard, 2012” available at http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/mf/1216.0.55.004?OpenDocument
Allocation tables, coding indexes and geographic correspondence tables will all be made available free of charge through the ABS website, while address coding of unit record data to the ASGS is also possible if address information is held with the data.
