New South Wales (NSW), Australia is one of six states, and each state has a government structure similar to the Commonwealth or Federal branch (Australian government, n.d.). NSW has web resources available that include information on all government services. The site is a one-stop place to find government services related to policy, digital services, and user tools (NSW Government, 2019a). A section of the NSW website, under the “policy,” is the Data and Information services discussed in this paper. This article describes the NSW Data and Information plan and describes similar data and information systems in Colorado and the U.S. Government as a comparison.
A part of NSW’s mission is to make available a digital government that is transparent and accountable. The web resources are progressive, and the government has created one place to find all digital information for the state of NSW. The intended users are local government agencies, businesses, and citizens of the state. The datasets are licensed so that data can be open and available for interested parties (Open Data Institute Australian Network., n.d.). Links divided under the Data and Information are in nine areas that contain the data, expert advice, learning resources for data use, data management, geospatial data, data legislation, and useful tutorials on how to use the Data & Information section (NSW Government, 2019c). There is a convenient area that links to health, education, family & community services, transportation, and the Office of Environment and Heritage NSW Government, 2019d). The main datasets for the NSW Government contain 3,350 datasets, and filtering is available by topics such as government organization, groups, tags, format, type, and licenses (NSW Government, 2019b).
NSW is a state like Colorado. The State of Colorado has an information market place with links to agriculture, business, education, government, health, public safety, recreation, and water (State of Colorado, 2019a). Colorado has a similar data catalog to NSW’s and contains fewer datasets at 1,926 and filtering available by authority, category, type, tags, and federated domains (counties) (State of Colorado, 2019b). The only other similar service to NSW’s site is video tutorials with how to work with data. The help menu is an adjunct to working with the data and offers links to various knowledge base articles. There is no legislation or topics like cybersecurity and transportation on the Colorado site. The State of Colorado has open data, but it is not a one-stop place for all state data, there are other website resources to visit such as CDOT for transportation, Colorado Parks and Wildlife for natural resources information, and DORA the Department of Regulatory Agencies (State of Colorado, 2019c) among others.
The U.S. Government equivalency to NSW’s government data site is an open data site found on Data.gov. It contains fourteen different categories from agriculture, climate, consumer, ecosystems, education, energy, finance, health, local government, manufacturing, maritime, ocean, public safety, to science and research (data.gov, 2019a). As of February 2019, there are 305,211 datasets available (data.gov, 2019b). There are twenty-five Federal agencies listed with various amounts of datasets available (data.gov, 2019b). As expected, the U.S. Government’s open data is much larger than NSW’s in Australia and covers all types of information. There is information for developers that want to use the data for various projects, and the site offers examples of business apps that have used the open data. Missing are tutorials on how to use data, cybersecurity-focused content, and policies or legislation which NSW has on their site. Data.gov requires more filtering and time to research through all the links as the site is very large compared to NSW. On Data.gov, there is a place for developers and has open-source, data harvesting, APIs, and challenges for experienced data professionals to use and integrate the open data into projects outside of the Government (Data.gov, 2019c). “Challenges” are competitions where the public can help solve data problems for cash prizes (Challenges.gov, 2019). Find the data competition elsewhere on NSW’s data site, and perhaps the NSW government has other ways to engage citizens to help solve problems with data.
The first impressions with NSW’s Government data site is a thorough site that covers just about all one would need to understand the state’s accountability and transparency with government data. While Colorado and Data.gov had similar data they did not mention transparency and accountability, however, were more like a data repository. The other observation is NSW was clear on policy and legislation involving data and listed all of the laws (Acts) related to data. Colorado and the U.S. Government didn’t mention policy/ legislation on their data sites. One interesting tool the NSW used was the Digital Policy Landscape and is a visualization app connecting all the various data and shows the relationships between different data, strategies, policy reach, government departments and legislation (NSW Government, 2019e). The U.S. Government does have much more data than a state in Australia due to size and reach. One other area that the U.S. Government’s data was more in-depth, particularly with Health and Human Services and its Center For Disease Control (CDC) data. NSW only had a hospital, ambulance, patient survey types of data (Bureau of Health Information, 2019). All are excellent sources for data research and are updated often.
References
Australian Government. (n.d.). State and territory government. Retrieved from: https://www.australia.gov.au/about-government/how-government-works/state-and-territory-government
Bureau of Health Information. (2019). Healthcare Observer. Retrieved from: http://www.bhi.nsw.gov.au/Healthcare_Observer
Challenge.gov. (2019). Welcome to challenge. Retrieved from: https://challenge.gov/list/?type=SoftwareApps
Data.gov. (2019a). The home of the U.S. Government’s open data. Retrieved from: https://www.data.gov/
Data.gov. (2019b). Federal agency participation. Retrieved from: https://www.data.gov/metrics
Data.gov. (2019c). Developers. Retrieved from: https://www.data.gov/developers/
NSM Government. (2019a). Helping you deliver great government services. Retrieved from: https://www.digital.nsw.gov.au/
NSM Government. (2019b). Datasets. Retrieved from: https://data.nsw.gov.au/data/dataset
NSM Government. (2019c). Data & information. Retrieved from: https://www.digital.nsw.gov.au/policy/data-information
NSW Government. (2019d). Accessing datasets. Retrieved from: https://www.digital.nsw.gov.au/policy/data-information/access-datasets
NSW Government. (2019e). NSW digital policy landscape. Retrieved from: https://www.digital.nsw.gov.au/policy/nsw-digital-policy-landscape
Open Data Institute Australian Network. ( n.d.). Why do we need to license? Retrieved from: http://accelerate.theodi.org/#/id/588a2d9ab61c46e176e7e913
State of Colorado. (2019a). Colorado information marketplace. Retrieved from: https://data.colorado.gov/
State of Colorado. (2019b). Data catalog. Retrieved from: https://data.colorado.gov/browse
State of Colorado. (2019c). State agencies. Retrieved from: https://www.colorado.gov/state-agencies