Welcome to DataWA
Welcome to the DataWA Toolkit - your resource for working with and understanding data published at data.wa.gov.au. The Toolkit provides a wealth of guidance, how to guides, and examples for both publishers and users of data and is supported by the WA Government Open Data Policy.
Data Professionals
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Data professionals are a key player in the data lifecycle and part of the process of turning raw data into knowledge and wisdom. You’ll work with data to inform decision making in your organisation, in analyses for reports and publications, and as part of any process where you need to turn data into actionable insights. You’ll play a key role in supporting your less data-savvy colleagues to start using data day-to-day - through your own work in data visualisation and in introducing them to a wide range of readily available tools. They may also call on you for help in using data they’ve found, in discovering the right data to support their work, or help in requesting new datasets. As a data professional you’ll also develop a strong understanding of the nature, limitations, and provenance of the data that your organisation is leveraging. You’ll also be responsible for understanding the licensing terms applied to data, and confirming that any use - commercial or otherwise - is in line with the attribution and use requirements of the data custodians. |
First time here?
Your key links for getting started with Data.wa.gov.au.
- A brief introduction to discovering government data
- When do I need an account to access data?
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For geospatial data professionals:
- How to use APIs and data services with QGIS and ArcGIS
- Troubleshooting geospatial APIs and data services
- FAQs for geospatial APIs and data services
- Geocentric Datum of Australia
- How you can preview and visualise data in 5 minutes - no prior experience necessary
- Understanding Geographic Boundaries in Western Australia
APIs, data services, and technical guides
The data infrastructure that powers Data.wa.gov.au provides a range of powerful APIs and data services for data professionals. You can either directly leverage our services to visualise and query data within your existing data visualisation and analysis tools, or automate the process of retrieving and updating data snapshots to feed into your own data stores for use within your corporate network. While integrating with an API is our recommended approach, the choice between the two isn’t always a simple one, and we recommend that you read our guide on the pros and cons of the two approaches.
We host a wide range of types of data, from complex geospatial datasets through to large tabular datasets. Geospatial data can be tricky to work with if you’re not familiar with the fundamental concepts of the field (Did you know the Earth is not round? - Ed), the data formats, and the technical terms. Before you start using any geospatial data that you find on Data.wa.gov.au we recommend reading through our introductory resources below.
Lastly, our technical team is a strong believer in dogfooding our own APIs and services. We’ve put together a range of step-by-step How To guides that demonstrate using our APIs to query data, and automatically extract and filter datasets using a range of popular programming languages and pieces of software.
Key links: APIs, data services, and technical guides
- Should I use APIs or should I download data directly?
- Working with geospatial data:
- Our How To Guides:
Your responsibilities
The responsibilities of a data professionals fall into four broad categories -
1. Understanding and using data responsibly
You should develop a strong understanding of the nature, limitations, and origins of the data that you’re using by reading and understanding the contextual metadata provided (the information about how the data was made). The creators of government data will publish this through metadata on Data.wa.gov.au, and will often include a range of additional collateral and supporting material for their data, including:
- data dictionaries
- methodology statements describing how the data was constructed
- and more.
You should take all of this supporting information into account to ensure that you’re using the data appropriately and responsibly.
For geospatial datasets it is important to note the geographic coordinate system of the geospatial data source. Since geographic coordinate systems or datums can differ between geospatial datasets, it is important to record the native coordinate system or what datum the source data is in. This informs the user on how to display the data in a projected coordinate system or which transformation to use that will match their data.
If you find the material is lacking, or that you have further questions that aren’t answered in the material, you should contact the authors and maintainers listed for the dataset on Data.wa.gov.au.
2. Respect licensing and usage terms
As the person responsible for working directly with, and likely sourcing data for your organisation, you’ll be responsible for understanding the licensing terms applied to data. You should make sure that any data your organisation is using, commercial or otherwise, is in line with the attribution and any usage constraints specified by the data custodians. In many cases data custodian will opt to use one of the licenses from the Creative Commons suite, but you may also encounter data that has multiple licenses applied (commercial vs non-commercial), or has yet to have a licensed specified. If you find yourself uncertain about how a dataset is licensed, you should contact the dataset maintainer listed to explain your use case and ask them to clarify the licensing stance.
3. Keeping data up-to-date
Where you are designing systems that extract and take copies of data from Data.wa.gov.au it’s important to put processes (both technical and human) in place to ensure your copies of the data are refreshed and don’t become stale. How often you need to update the data will depend on your particular use case:
- how often the data you’re using is updated
- how much of an impact using a stale copy of the data would have on your use of it
- whether there are any risks to your organisation in using stale data.
As the person working directly with the data, and the one responsible for putting update processes in place, you should ensure your organisation carefully considers all of these issues. Information about the intended and actual frequency of updates to data is published alongside all of the data on Data.wa.gov.au. As always, if you need further clarification we encourage you to reach out to the dataset maintainers.
4. Showcasing your use data
The data lifecycle doesn’t stop with your application and use of data. There’s a final key step in the lifecycle - contributing your data stories back to the community of data publishers and users. One of the most effective drivers for government to release more data openly is demonstrating the value of open data. This can be done through showcasing the innovative applications and solutions built using government data as well as showing to data publishers in government how their data is used. Data.wa.gov.au enables you to contribute your data story simply by submitting a showcase that will be published and linked back to the dataset you’re using. Where there’s an interest from the data community, we’ll also occasionally pick showcases for a more in-depth study and publish that through our blog and mailing list.
Key links: Your responsibilities