Definition of open data provided by opendefinition.org

Australian Government's Public Data Policy Statement.

At a minimum Australian Government agencies will made data available:

1. on or linked through data.gov.au for discoverability and availability;
2. in a machine-readable, spatially-enabled format;
3. with high quality, easy to use and freely available API access;
4. with descriptive metadata;
5. using agreed open standards;
6. kept up to date in an automated way; and
7. under a Creative Commons By Attribution licence unless a clear case is made to the
Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet for another open licence.

So how do we support agencies to do this?

Was first launched back in 2009 at data.australia.gov.au.

It came about as an outcome of the declaration of open government and gov 2 taskforce.

In 2013 we relaunched the site using CKAN.

CKAN is open source data cataloguing software.

It comes with a few additional extras.

Where agencies publish machine readable formats (such as csv) they get

We dded the ability to host and serve spatial data directly from data.gov.au

Back in 2013 the site had around 500 discoverable datasets.

Now there are over 28,000 discoverable datasets listed on data.gov.au.

Launched in 2015 the NationalMap

provides easy access to authoritative and other spatial data to government, business and the public

facilitates the opening of data by federal, state and local government bodies

provides an open framework of geospatial data services that supports commercial and community innovation

It was built in a collaborative effort between the Department of Communications, Geoscience Australia and Data61.

You can access around 8,000 spatial datasets through the NationalMap.

It is now managed by the Digital Transformation Agency.

The NationalMap demonstrates one of the very fundamentally important things in data discovery.

It is agnostic about data source.

The only thing that is required by the NationalMap is that spatial data is available openly via an API.

You can find, and combine, spatial data on the NationalMap from Federal, State and Local Government sources.

You can even add your own data to the mix.

NationalMap is also open source software that means with a little bit of knowledge anyone can pick it up and stand up their very own NationalMap.

For the last year we have been working with Data61 on the next stage of data.gov.au

You can find the alpha version at search.data.gov.au

Its still an early version of the software but we wanted to make something available early and test our assumptions

One of the core things we wanted to achieve was to take the things we learned from NationalMap

Key amongst that was the agnosticism of source

We decided to approach the new data.gov.au as a search engine for data rather than a data catalogue

The new data.gov.au connects to more catalogues than ever before

And as a result you can now find around 64,000 datasets available

We also wanted to make searching easier so we introduced the beginnings of a semantic search by letting use operators like by, as, from and to

And like all good search engines we have done some work to introduce a ranking algorithm the new search weights results based around 5 star open data.

We are working towards being able to add even more data sources and better integration with data visualisation tools like the NationalMap.

Like NationalMap the new search is based on completely open source software.

So there are lots of open data use cases - you can see a selection of them the showcase page of data.gov.au

This one is my favourite

There is lots of different kinds of data local government data

One type is pet registrations

When I came across the first pet registration dataset, I knew exactly what I wanted to know

What is the most popular dog name in the area - I think it was Geelong.

Any guesses?

It's Bella.

Then I came across another pet registration dataset and again Bella was the most popular name.

I knew there was a story in this - but I didn't have a platform

I was not the only person that came up with the insight

On 5 August 2016 The Guardian published an article based on a 11 pet registrations datasets.

It included information on over 130,000 dogs

And... Bella was still the most popular name.

There are lots of other interesting facts in the story and I encourage you to have a look at it later on

To me though one of the most interesting things about is how popular this story, based on open data, is

It has been shared 3,506 times and had over 145 comments

This made me realise that one of the most important things that open data can be is relatable

It is also a great example of using open data in a way that governments would never really do - and at the same time making it profitable

This brings me to my last point

The primary reason the government needs to have data is to deliver better services.

We collect and use data in delivering those services to the public

We are getting better at the secondary uses of data to help inform policy decisions. You may have heard of the

> Multi Agency Data Integration Project (or MADIP) from the ABS which helped give a better understanding the characteristics of those at risk of homelessness

> Business Longitudinal Analysis Data Environment (or BLADE) which told us that new firms make up the bulk of new hires in Australia

> Australian Priority Investment Approach to Welfare which has given us a better understanding of welfare payments in Australia and will support the test, try and learn fund

Finally - the tertiary use of data, the creative things like the dog names article is where we do not play a role apart from releasing the data.

It is where we you do interesting things with open data released from government.