Publishers

Who are TDO publishers today?

Publishers on the TDO are organisations that produce trusted data — data created under internationally recognised statistical principles, documented methodologies and transparent governance. In the current phase, the TDO focuses on publishers that are:

• National Statistical Offices (NSOs / NSIs)
• International Organisations with recognised statistical divisions (IOs)

These organisations compile official statistics under frameworks such as the UN Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics (UN FPOS) and internationally agreed statistical standards and classifications. This ensures methodological rigour, impartiality, comparability and accountability.

Note: The TDO is a metadata platform; data remain fully under the control of the publisher.

Why are publishers essential to the TDO?

Trusted data from authoritative producers are increasingly hard to discover in AI‑enabled search environments. Even high‑quality official statistics can remain invisible if their metadata are not open, harmonised or machine‑readable. By exposing standardised, AI‑ready metadata, publishers ensure that authoritative sources are found first — by people and by AI systems.

What do publishers provide?

• Discovery‑ready metadata: Structured, harmonised, machine‑readable metadata aligned with the TDO profile and the Minimum Viable Metadata (MVM) for discovery.
• Links to authoritative sources: Landing pages, API endpoints or download URLs that point back to the original data environment.
• Provenance & transparency: Core metadata describing ownership, stewardship, update cycles, scope and methodological context.
• Automation, not duplication: Metadata can be pushed or pulled automatically via APIs from existing catalogues to minimise workload.

What types of content can publishers expose?

• Statistical releases and publications
• Aggregated indicators and time series
• Online databases and APIs
• Public‑use microdata
• Synthetic microdata
• Restricted microdata (metadata only; access policies remain with the publisher)

How to participate as a publisher

In the current phase, onboarding is open to NSOs and IOs willing to:

• adopt or map existing metadata to the discovery‑oriented MVM profile,
• expose metadata in a standardised, machine‑readable, AI‑enabled format,
• and participate in the collaborative development of the TDO.

For practical steps, see the Onboarding page and the Metadata page.

Future: who else may become a publisher?

The long‑term vision is to include all trusted data from states and international organisations. Over time, the community may also consider additional trusted producers (e.g., NGOs, research institutions, domain agencies), once global governance defines inclusion criteria and validation processes.

Contact

For publishing enquiries, please contact: tdo@xxxx.xxx