Open Redatam is a software for extracting raw information from REDATAM databases.
For the standalone C++ command line application and desktop app, see the main directory of this repository.
Please read our article for the full context of this project (Open Access):
Vargas Sepúlveda, Mauricio and Barkai, Lital. 2025. "The REDATAM format and its challenges for data access and information creation in public policy." Data & Policy 7 (January): e18. https://dx.doi.org/10.1017/dap.2025.4.
To install the R package, run the following command:
remotes::install_github("pachadotdev/open-redatam", subdir = "rpkg")
If you only need the processed data, you can download the microdata repository. It is available in RDS format for easy loading into R.
Available datasets:
R 4.0 or higher.
For a given census, such as the Chilean Census 2017, run the following command:
redatam::read_redatam("input-dir/dictionary.dicx")
Please read the vignette for a more detailed explanation and how this package can be used in conjunction with dplyr and other packages.
The R package uses a modified copy of the C++ code to read the REDATAM databases that parses data into a list of tibbles instead of writing to CSV files.
Open Redatam was created and is supported by Lital Barkai (barkailital@gmail.com).
The tests, installation instructions and R package were created by Mauricio "Pacha" Vargas Sepulveda (m.sepulveda@mail.utoronto.ca)
The original converter was created by Pablo De Grande. See here for more information.
This project uses pugixml created by Arseny Kapoulkine to structure a part of the output data.