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Australian business is looking for more open data
Australian business is looking for more open
data
The Observatory Team – 18 March 2021
Tags:
Data (/taxonomy/term/17) Observatory (/taxonomy/term/412)
Service design (/taxonomy/term/64)
Australia’s open data is a national resource. It underpins digital services and creates economic
and social benefit.
As managers of the Commonwealth’s open data products, data.gov.au (https://data.gov.au/)
and
nationalmap.gov.au (https://nationalmap.gov.au/), the Observatory explored how the
community can create greater value from open data.
This research showed that there is a strong demand by business for open data.
What is open data?
If you have ever used an app to read a bus timetable or find the nearest public toilet, chances
are you used open data.
Open data (https://toolkit.data.gov.au/Policy.html) is data that is freely available, easily
discoverable, accessible and published in ways and under licenses that allows reuse.
Government organisations collect and create vast amounts of data. Often, this data has
economic and social value in ways unforeseen by those managing it. The
Productivity
Commission (https://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/completed/data-access#report) found that
increasing the release of open data can fuel business activity and increase public sector
efficiency.
It is challenging to accurately estimate open data’s value. The Productivity Commission
estimates (https://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/completed/data-access/report) the value of public
sector data value between from $625 million to $64 billion. A 2015
EU analysis
(https://www.europeandataportal.eu/en/highlights/benefits-and-value-open-data) of open
data’s value, projected that it would have a €75.7 billion direct market value, and a total market
value between €265 billion and €286 billion in 2020.
How the community uses open data
Rather than trying to estimate Australian open data’s value to business, we asked what types of
data are Australian businesses requesting?
The Observatory receive requests from members of the community for new open data. The
team analysed 750 of these requests and categorised them by the type of data being
requested and the requester’s organization.
A graph showing how the community uses open data, with business as the highest with 31%
and housing as the lowest with 2%.
A graph showing percentages of the community who use open data
We found that the most common requests were for business-related data, and the most
common requesters are people in private business. We also interviewed open data users to
find out how they use it. These interviews reinforced our findings from the data
requests: Australian businesses, governments, and researchers are using open data for their
work and study.
The research uncovered a variety of uses Australians have for open data:
small businesses connecting Australians to the internet wanting the latest information on
local broadband speeds and infrastructure
mining companies using our infrastructure for desktop research, identifying potential
new sites while understanding what regulations apply to that area
companies using blackspot information to identify potential customers for their
equipment
a recreational paraglider who uses open data to identify potential landing sites while
avoiding sensitive locations, such as areas under native title.
Requests for data (as categories) by requester type
Table 1: None
None
Request category
Percentage
Business
21.3%
Spatial
10.6%
Health
9.2%
Environmental
8.2&
Social services
7.7%
Utilities/Telecom
7.3%
Housing/Development
6.3%
Transport
6.3%
Demographics
4.8%
Government
4.8%
International
3.4%
Agriculture
2.4%
Table 2: Business
Business
Request category
Percentage
Business
22.1%
Spatial
12.5%
Environment
7.7%
International
7.7%
Utilities/Telecom
7.7%
Housing/Development
6.7%
Demographics
5.8%
Health
4.8%
Transport
4.8%
Government
3.9%
Other
3.9%
Agriculture
2.9%
Table 3: Government
Government
Request category
Percentage
Spatial
23.6%
Demographics
10.9%
Environment
10.9%
Health
9.1%
Social Sciences
7.3%
Utilities/Telecom
7.3%
Agriculture
5.5%
Business
5.5%
International
5.5%
Transport
5.5%
Government
3.6%
Other
3.6%
Table 4: Academia
Academia
Request category
Percentage
Environment
19.3%
Health
14.5%
Spatial
9.7%
Business
8.1%
Demographics
8.1%
Social sciences
8.1%
Education
6.5%
Other
4.8%
Social issues
4.8%
Utilities/Telecom
4.8%
Holiday
3.2%
International
3.2%
Our open data ecosystem is complex
To find out who can respond to these requests, we analysed who contributes open data, how
much they contribute and whether they publish manually or automatically.
The 3 largest individual open data contributors are the CSIRO, Geoscience Australia, and the
Australia Antarctica Division. At an aggregate level, state and territory governments are the
biggest open data publishers. Local councils are also significant contributors, and an
interesting trait is that they form the largest group of manual publishers on data.gov.au.
A common attribute among many successful data publishers is that they have a scientific focus.
Following our analysis of open data publishers, we interviewed 15 major publishers from the
Commonwealth, State and Territories and Local government. We found that scientific
organisations tend to have formal data publishing standards and a culture that encourages its
staff to build on existing knowledge.
Prolific open data publishers also took advantage of automated systems. Data.gov.au’s catalog
is powered by Data61’s Making Australian Government Data Available system (
MAGDA
(https://magda.io/)). MAGDA automatically searches for open data that is published by on the
internet. It then creates a page for the external data on data.gov.au, federating open data from
different places so it can be found on the one website. Around 94% of the open data on
data.gov.au is ingested by MAGDA.
Find out more
Australia’s current open data environment is the result of the effort and passion of hundreds of
people across the country. While a great amount of open data is available, there is unmet need
and untapped potential.
Find out how you can publish your organisation’s open data. Contact us at
xxxx@xxxxxxx.xxx.xx (mailto:xxxx@xxxxxxx.xxx.xx).
The Observatory Team uses data science to learn how people interact with government, and
manage several whole-of-government data services.
© Commonwealth of Australia. With the exception of the Commonwealth Coat of Arms and
where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under the CC BY 4.0 license.
