Australia’s information deficit

Australia is falling behind on access to data, thanks to apparently indifferent government at the Federal and State level—and it has nothing to do with proposed NBN. The United States, however, is moving ahead wth plans for the creation of a government-wide data access facility.

data.gov will be managed by Obama's 'Chief Information Officer', Vivek Kundra. Here is an example of what he has done in the past, for the government of the District of Colombia where he was CIO until Obama pinched him for the White House.

Australian government data can be accessed—in principle—through a search at australia.gov.au. A search on 'data' at that site returns a paltry total of 33 results: surprisingly few.

But an indicator of the problem with the way the Australian government presents existing data collections is that I could have tried a dozen other 'keywords' with different—no doubt overlapping—results. There seems to be no single access route. You have to know how to describe what you're looking for before you can find it.

I clicked through to a selection of sites…

They ranged from the highly graphic (like this flash-based atlas of public health data) to the promising but dysfunctional (this 'Geo Map' database would not work in any of my browsers), to the slightly intimidating (but rich) Bureau of Stats national economic data collection and the fascinating but out-of-date (like this 'baseline' data on Australian water resources).

Technically a hodge-podge of flash maps, tabular data and impenetrable html forms; an apparent salad of underlying data-structures; inconsistent representation, no apparent attempt at government-wide meta-data; many of the reports were the result of a single survey rather than an historical collection. I found few data archives and predominantly technical rather than policy-oriented data. Why aren't there data on customs clearances, or quarantine inspections?… It impossible to avoid the conclusion that Australian government on-line data provision is a mess.

But it's also true that we get the government we demand. Here, too, the United States is showing the way. This wiki compiled by Wired Magazine is a great resource, identifying data collections that can, and should be digitized (most are, already) and made available to a consistent and catalogued collection on the web.

Tags for this entry: policy data evidence ideas nbn map empricism government