Data vs Reports

I’m sure I’ll have to spend a lot more time trolling the DataBC site before I have discovered all the jewels therein amongst the dross, but one thing I noticed while searching for “birth” was a large number of entries like this entry from Vital Statistics: “Table 25 - Infant Mortality by Gestational Age and Birth Weight, British Columbia, 2005”

Is this data? Kinda. There’s numbers. It’s an Excel sheet. But let’s get real here, this is a report. It’s a summary. That’s why Vital Statistics has hundreds and hundreds of “data set” entries like this in the catalogue instead of the number they should have: ONE.

There is one database of births and deaths in the province. Strip out the names and addresses, leave the causes, dates, ages, postal codes, and release THAT please, instead of the hundreds of year-by-year (not even longitudinal summaries! arg!) summaries.