IBGE official web portal gets a facelift. Launched 20 years ago, this is the first time that it is redesigned and gets new contents. Counting on more than 15 professionals in its implementation, the new version went live last Thursday, September 28, and took six months to be available.

According to Ian Nunes, manager of Online Services at the IBGE and coordinator of the project, the major concern of the team was arranging the information on the web portal in a way that it makes more sense to users. "We worked towards ensuring that all pages of the IBGE surveys, like the IPCA and PNAD, have the same structure in terms of contents", pointed him.

In the new web portal, pages and tools with more access were highlighted. "The idea is that the user finds what he/she wants without unnecessary clicks", stresses Ian. Now users can easily check the total number of inhabitants of Brazilian cities, visit the page with the maps produced by the IBGE and check the latest results of surveys like, for example, the GDP directly from the home page.

Another news is the content division. Every survey produced by the IBGE was gathered in the higher "statistics" menu, subdivided into "social", "economic" and "multidomain", which includes the more thematic and specific surveys. Every sub-site of the IBGE web portal can be found in the higher "our sites" menu. "We strove to make the content less technical and more understandable to the ordinary citizen", highlights Tarsus Pinheiro, one of the team designers.

Timeline: history of IBGE web portals

New website follows international standards for browsing

The new website is hosted in a fully-manageable platform and follows international rules for browsing. According to Hugo Setta, team designer, it will make easier the internal work of disseminating surveys, since the pages will be included in a single database, thus assuring more organization and coherence.

According to Ian, part of the website is also accessible by visually and hearing-impaired persons and this content will be increased very soon. He also explains that the design of the web portal focused on the reduction of the size of pages, in order to minimize the bandwidth usage on the Internet. Previously available in the old portal, the English version will be transferred to the new portal.

The IBGE official web portal currently includes 36 sub-sites. The pages added up to more than 8 million hits just in September this year. The new version can be accessed on www.ibge.gov.br. Nevertheless, the old version will remain temporarily available. Users can access it clicking on the "old ibge portal" link at the top right of the new website.

Text: João Neto and Karina Meirelles (trainee)
Image: J.C. Rodrigues
Video: J. C. Rodrigues