Welcome to Data WA

Welcome to the Data WA Help Centre - your resource for working with and understanding data published at Data WA. The Help Centre 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.

First time here?

Your key links for getting started with Data WA.

• A brief introduction to discovering government data
• When would I need a SLIP login?
• Understanding access to data
• For geospatial data professionals:
  • How to use APIs and data services with QGIS and ArcGIS
  • Troubleshooting geospatial APIs and data services
  • How to download data snapshots, including automating downloads
  • 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 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 we recommend reading through our introductory resources below.

Key links: APIs, data services, and technical guides

• Should I use APIs or should I download data directly?
• How does SLIPs’s authentication system work?
• A brief introduction to working with geospatial data
• Our How To Guides:
  • Guides for accessing data
  • Code samples for developers

Your responsibilities

The responsibilities of data users fall into three 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, 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. 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.

2. Respect licensing and usage terms

Make sure you understand the licensing and usage terms for any data you’re using - for example, how you should attribute and cite the source of the data. In many cases data custodians will opt to use one of the licenses from the Creative Commons suite - a set of simple to understand licenses (written in plain English) that are used all over the world that. However, you may also encounter data that has multiple licenses applied (for example, commercial and non-commercial licenses), or even data that has yet to have a license specified. If you find yourself confused or uncertain about how a dataset is licensed, you should contact the dataset maintainer listed to explain how you wish to use the data and ask them to clarify the licensing for you.

3. Keeping data up to date

If you need to download copies of data from Data WA for ongoing use it’s important to ensure that you keep your copies of the data up to date, and they don’t become stale. How often you need to refresh the data will depend on your particular use:

• 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 using stale data.

Information about the intended and actual frequency of updates to data is published with the data on Data WA. As always, if you need further clarification we encourage you to reach out to the dataset maintainers.