title: Adapting set up of data in R
body: <p>Often I am working with data from the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). Their data is in my opinion not very script friendly. I always need to manually adapt the data a lot before I can get it on my maps. Which is what I do, I am a Geo Information Scientist. </p>
  
  <p>Today I started to script in order to adapt the data I get from the CBS and convert it in my datafile. So far I have been doing this manually. Today I remembered why. I find it quite hard to work with this data. Levels and factors are bugging me often. I do not need more literature about that, I am trying to learn why and when it is wrong. </p>
  
  <p>I have data that looks like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>municipality name         first data col    second data col    third data col    etc.
  2004
  2005
  2006
  2007
  2008
  othermunicipality name
  2004
  2005
  2006
  2007
  2008
  Etcetera
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>What I want is something like:</p>
  
  <pre><code>              Municipality name                           Other municipality name
  years         first data col    second data col    etc.   first data col    second data col    etc. 
  2004
  2005
  2006
  2007
  2008
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I understand I can not expect a whole script as a response. But I think I need a boost in the right direction at the moment. How should I approach this situation? </p>
  
  <p>Is it even possible to work with a double column name? A name of a municipality, and then the name of the data itself.</p>