Data.NSW provides access to open data publishing services for NSW Government Agencies. These services are for agencies within Department of Customer Service, for central agencies such as NSW Treasury and Department of Premier and Cabinet and for other NSW Government Agencies that do not have their own open data publishing capabilities.
Publishing Open data as APIs
An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. If open data is loaded into Data.NSW in CSV format for example, the program will create a web API endpoint. This creates the functionality for the open data to be accessed via code. This means that the published open data has a much wider use, for example it can be used for developing applications. Data.NSW on behalf of NSW Health published COVID-19 case and location data that was made available via API. This data was then used by developers to create several different applications for the community that showed the number of COVID-19 cases in different suburbs.
Connecting to other NSW Government open data portals
Some NSW Government agencies already have their own open data portal or open data publishing capabilities. For example, the NSW Department of Environment and Planning have the “SEED” open data portal that publishes environmental data. If open data is published on other NSW Government open data portals, Data.NSW will copy the links and information about this data across, so that there is a central location for searching for all NSW Government open data.
Connecting to the Australian Government open data portal
The Australian Government open data portal picks up links from Data.NSW and publishes this information on the Data.gov.au open data portal. https://data.gov.au/ This means that any open data published on Data.NSW will also be published on Data.gov.au.
If you would like to publish NSW Government open data on the Data.NSW open data portal, please contact datansw@customerservice.nsw.gov.au.
How open data publication works on Data.NSW
Open data publication on Data.NSW is organised by “organisation”. Each agency has its own organisation. For example, “NSW Fair Trading” is an organisation. Approved users that are given access to these organisations to publish open data and are referred to as “Data Custodians”. A data custodian for an organisation is responsible for uploading new data, updating, and editing existing data and metadata and deleting resources if they are no longer relevant.
Guidelines have been created to assist agencies publishing NSW Government open data.
Information for Data.NSW data custodians
The Data.NSW team will train new open data portal data custodians on how to use the open data portal. Training includes how to load new datasets onto the portal, how to edit existing datasets, how to make datasets public or private and how to delete datasets. Guidance materials can be requested by sending an email to datansw@customerservice.nsw.gov.au.
Last updated 26 Sep 2023