Toolkit

The South Australian open data toolkit, contains resources to help agencies release open data. The resources can be tailored to suit your requirements.
If you have any questions, please see our FAQs page.

Annual report data publishing

In line with PC013 Annual Reporting Requirements (website available only within South Australia Government), South Australian Government agencies and entities are required to publish their annual reports online and publish specific data as open data on Data.SA.

A Guide to publishing annual report data (PDF) has been created to assist agencies update their annual report datasets with open data.

Set up your organisation on Data.SA

South Australian Government organisations and local councils are invited to publish open data on Data.SA.

To publish on Data.SA, a Data Advocate from Executive level must be appointed. The Data Advocate overseas open data activities and processes, and manages any associated risks of releasing data publicly.   The Data Advocate can appoint a Primary Administrator who has overall responsibility for publishing datasets on Data.SA.   The Primary Administrator can add and edit datasets and also grant publishing access to others in their organisation. 

To set up your organisation and publishing access, email Data.SA with:

• Name of the organisation
• Description of the organisation (a couple of sentences on what your organisation does)
• Website address for the organisation
• Generic email address for the organisation where data queries can be directed
• Logo (jpeg, gif or png format)
• The completed Data.SA Publishing Access Form signed by the Data Advocate
• Name and Email address of the Data Advocate

The Primary Administrator will be contacted with further details once the permissions and organisation have been created.

Quick steps to release Open Data

1. Complete the Open Data Process Worksheet (Word) which takes you through the steps needed to openly release data, such as approvals and classification.  The Open Data Process Guide (PDF) provides more information on how to work through these steps such as how to classify data.
2. Prepare data for publishing eg format, metadata, and complete the Data.SA Publishing Content Summary (Word).
3. Send the Data.SA Publishing Content Summary and data files to your Primary Administrator or nominated Publisher.
4. Maintain your dataset, updating it in accordance with its update frequency.

The complete Open Data process

• The Open Data Process Guide (PDF) is designed to help agencies new to open data to Identify, Classify, decide on an Approach to release the data, obtain the required Approval, Publish and Maintain the dataset.
• The Open Data Process Worksheet (Word) takes agencies through the decisions needed to release the data openly.

The additional guidance tools provide more information on various aspects of open data:

• Data Classification and Marking Decision Diagram (PDF) - The Open Data Process requires you to Classify your data to determine if it is ready for public distribution.  Work through the diagram to determine the Security Classification of your data.
• The South Australian Information Classification System (ICS)  - The ICS is used to assist South Australian public sector agencies to assess the confidentiality, integrity and availability of their information assets and ensure that the appropriate protections are assigned.  Under the ICS, “UNCLASSIFIED” has been replaced by “non-security classification”. 
• Privacy and Open Data Guideline (PDF) - This guideline aims to assist agencies to understand and address the risks to privacy when considering open data.  It includes information on mitigating the risks through de-identification.

Tools for Data.SA publishers

Agencies and local councils can now publish their own datasets on Data.SA by nominating a Primary Administrator.  The Data.SA team will set up a Primary Administrator role for each organisation.  Once this role has been established, an organisation may choose to set up additional publishing accounts for others in their organisation.

• Data.SA Publisher Access Form (Word) - To request the creation of a Primary Administrator, complete this form and send to Data.SA.  Agencies can also use this form to manage publisher requests within their own organisations.
• Data.SA Publishing Content Summary (Word) - To publish data on Data.SA this form needs to be completed and given to the Primary Administrator or nominated publisher along with the data files and metadata.  The form contains the same fields that are on Data.SA to publish a dataset.
• Data.SA Publishing User Guide (PDF) - This user guide provides step by step instructions on how to add, edit and maintain datasets, manage your organisation details, set up publishing roles and download site statistics.

Tips for publishing

• Do not include dates/years in your dataset title.  Instead include dates in the dataset description and temporal coverage fields.  The resources (data files) can include date/years in their title.
  • Why?  When a dataset is created the system generates a unique URL.  This URL can be used as a quick link to access the data, it may be referenced by the public using your data and it also used in the website statistics.
    Amending the title of a dataset will mean the URL is incorrect and will break these linkages.  When a dataset is refreshed eg with a new year of data, the title quickly becomes out of date.
• Avoid using acronyms or ambiguous terms in your dataset title.  The title should be understood by members of the public.  Describe any terms or words specific to your field in the description.
• Provide the metadata which contains field definitions of your data.
• Provide any other contextual or supporting information with your dataset such as images, reports, website addresses.