Application of Open Data for Official Statistics, Case Study Data of Instagram Social Network

Abstract. Open data notion is based on the idea that emphasizes on free access of users to data to reuse them on their own and republish the result far from some restrictions of copyright, patent etc.  Due to the ever increasing trend of Information and Communication Technology (ICT), more data is producing every day and this brings brilliant opportunity for National Statistical Offices (NSOs) that are responsible for producing official statistics to produce more and more official statistics on lesser cost and more velocity. Beside, in modernization process of statistical system using the alterative data sources has been under considerations and open data is salient example. Labour force statistics in Iran has been one the prominent kind of official statistics which is conducting quarterly and it results put the center of attentions. In the other sides, there has been increasing trend in the number of employment as a result of boosting in the number of social network users. In this study, the Instagram data as a second favorable social network in Iran was used as criteria for macro validation of employment statistics. Interestingly, the obtained results from statistical hypothesis testing revealed that there is a significant relationship between employee statistics from surveys and Instagram employee trend though they are mostly unregistered. These results can be used by statisticians as a macro criterion for validation of employee trend from survey.