In last some months I happened to see the vast amount of data and statistics available in our govt. portals. I was always surprised at the amount the data available to public in western countries. Cities like NewYork provide charts on various topics available to people. They used a business intelligence tool (OBIEE) I work on for providing many useful graphs too. (No I did not not work on that project) Check the NewYork CPR (City Wide Performance Reporting) here: http://www.nyc.gov/html/ops/cpr/html/home/home.shtml Even UN made its database available to public for along time and has been updating the way people can access it. ( http://unstats.un.org/unsd/cdb/ updated to http://data.un.org/ ) One can see numerous infographics made out of these by people e.g: http://projects.flowingdata.com/state-of-the-world/ http://www.npr.org/news/graphics/2009/apr/electric-grid/ http://www.candychang.com/desk/2008/11/12/vendor-power/ Now the best news of theme all is this: http://googleblog.blogspot