Colchester UK - February 26, 2004

Nesstar Ltd. and Nesstar Americas Inc. are pleased to announce that Statistics Canada has acquired licenses for the NESSTAR suite of software.

“This will be used to support a number of internal and external projects including data dissemination and the agency's own research and analysis activities. The reasons Statistics Canada has selected NESSTAR are threefold: It is very powerful, yet easy to use; it adheres to an important data documentation standard called DDI (data documentation initiative) and; because of its ability link microdata files with the appropriate metadata and related data across multiple servers.”

”Internal to the agency, Statistics Canada envisions NESSTAR's use in creating a research and analysis portal. The benefits that NESSTAR brings are similar to those sought by external users, i.e., the ability to browse, visualize and extract data that are relevant to the researcher's needs. Its ability to integrate survey level information with aggregate tables and text files makes it ideal as a research support tool. Archived survey files will ensure that the data remain accessible over time and that survey components will be reusable. NESSTAR will make it possible for Statistics Canada to manage its survey files as a collection rather than as a series of 'stove pipes'.”

Ernie Boyko
Director, Library and Information Centre Statistics Canada Ottawa,

The adoption of the NESSTAR suite of tools by Statistics Canada further supports investment made by Health Canada into the same core technology.

About Nesstar

Nesstar software provides tools for rapid web based data liberation, analysis and decision making.

Nesstar uniquely offers publishers and users of statistical, survey or similarly data the tools to efficiently analyse, visualise and disseminate data over the web, to international standards, leading to smarter quicker evidence based decision making, all from within one cost effective, easy to use and rapidly deployed product suite.

Nesstar was formed in 2001 by the University of Essex in England and the Norwegian Social Science Data Services (NSD) at the University of Bergen in Norway, to continue the software development and to take to market products arising from two European Union (EU) funded projects. Two of the leading contributors to these projects were the UK Data Archive (UKDA) at the University of Essex and NSD. Individuals from these institutions who joined the company typically have between 5 and 15 years experience developing software and systems for management and analysis of statistical data. The company possess world-leading expertise in statistical metadata and have among other things being heavily involved in the development of the DDI metadata standard. Nesstar is located in Colchester, with an additional development team in Bergen Norway

Nesstar Ltd. is a wholly owned subsidiary of the UK Data Archive and the Norwegian Social Science Data Services.

Nesstar Americas Inc., a subsidiary of Sharbot.com Inc., was formed in 2003 through a relationship agreement with Nesstar Ltd to deliver and support the Nesstar suite of products to the North American marketplace.”

Contact: Mark Witter – Sales & Marketing Director +44 (0) 1206 873 292 sales@nesstar.com