The Diputació de Girona, as part of its programme to support local initiatives for economic growth and employment, has developed the Local Socioeconomic Information System (XIFRA), which takes advantage of new information and communication technologies, in the belief that the availability and use of information are central to everyday life, in the social, economic and political spheres.

Objective

To provide information and technical assistance to institutions, organisations and management bodies so that they can make strategic operational decisions in the field of promoting employment and the economy.

Beneficiaries

The Local Socioeconomic Information System is initially addressed to three types of user:

• politicians and those responsible for the management of local and trade union organisations
• the technical staff of social and economic organisations
• businesses, institutions and the public

Products

The system provides:

• municipal data
• provincial data
• indicators
• reports

The information they make available has been obtained through agreements with various institutions and public bodies which own the data. They include the Statistical Institute of Catalonia (IDESCAT), the National Statistics Institute (INE), the Government of Catalonia's ministries of Labour and the Environment and Housing, and the Waste Agency of Catalonia (ARC).

The information is updated on a regular basis depending on the frequency with which the sources supply data and produce studies and reports.

Statistical data can be viewed or downloaded in Excel format. Users will be able to view thematic maps on line when they are relevant.

All variables have a technical description that helps users to understand the information they contain. Indicators are accompanied by a methodological explanation.

The new information corresponding to "Update data and reports" is indicated in a special section.

By default, information is accessed via a short menu that can be expanded to provide a more comprehensive view of all the variables.

Municipal data

The municipal information system is the basis for the other products. It brings together most of the existing socio-economic information for the 221 municipalities in the province of Girona and allows users to compile information according to their requirements: they can select a municipality, a group of municipalities or predefined areas (consortia and associations of municipalities).

Information is divided into five main blocks:

• Environment: territorial framework for information
• Demographics: matters related to the population and its basic characteristics (births, deaths, migration, origin, education, etc.)
• Economic activity: economic data, such as the number of companies and their characteristics, family income, housing statistics, tourism, etc.
• Job market and local economic development policies: statistics on registered unemployment, contracts, labour mobility and data concerning action taken under policies for local economic development.
• Quality of life: cultural and sports facilities, environment, health, education, welfare, security, etc.

Provincial data

Two types of information are included:

• Information generated by combining data for the 221 municipalities in the province, also available via the menu for municipal data.
• Provincial, county or other statistics that cannot be broken down at municipal level: labour force survey, population projections, wage earners by group, according to the 2-digit Catalan classification of economic activities, and, in general, many statistics for Spain that only come down to provincial level.

Indicators

The municipal and provincial data sections mainly generate absolute data; they reflect a statistical variable. XIFRA Indicators uses these figures to generate new information by creating ratios, indices, rates, variations, percentage structures, etc.

Reports

This section shows data reports and automated indicators which can be extracted for any municipality or group of municipalities selected, except in the case of the synthesis of indicators, which can only be consulted at municipal, county and provincial level.