Data.NSW Frequently Asked Questions (Admin)

No, not unless you are a Data.NSW Administrator. Because it’s open data, all the data on Data.NSW can be accessed without logging in.

If you are a NSW Government employee who has authority to upload and share your organisation’s data, you can request administrator access to Data.NSW by emailing the team. Admins can upload, edit or delete data on behalf of their agency.

Only open data can be uploaded to Data.NSW. Open data is data that can be freely used, re-used and redistributed by anyone. Agencies must ensure that open data does not identify an individual, species, object, or location, which if disclosed could introduce a risk of discrimination, harm, or unwanted attention.

Please notify Data.NSW if you discover that any sensitive data, including personal or health information has been uploaded.

1. Action > Go to: https://data.nsw.gov.au/data/dataset. Action > Select Add Dataset
2. Action> Complete ‘Create dataset’ form – see example below
3. Action > Select Add Resources
   
   NB: A resource can be any file or link to a file containing useful data. The primary resource you will add is a dataset. However, you can add multiple other resources for each dataset, such as a data quality statement or data dictionary to help users interpret or understand your data.
4. Action > Select Save & add another or Finish

1. Go to the dataset’s “Edit dataset” page (steps 1-2 above).
2. In the left sidebar, there are options for editing resources. You can select an existing resource (to edit or delete it), or select “Add new resource”.
3. You can edit the information about the resource or change the linked or uploaded file. For details, see steps 4-5 of “Adding a new resource”, above
4. When you have finished editing, select the button marked “Update resource” (or “Add”, for a new resource) to save your changes. Alternatively, to delete the resource, select the “Delete resource” button.

Note: The data on Data.NSW is highly used by the public. It is not possible to track all the business and community uses of Data.NSW data and so removing datasets can have unforeseen consequences to businesses and the community. Datasets should therefore not be deleted unless there is a compelling reason to do so. Please contact us at Data.NSW to discuss your concerns if you need to delete a dataset.

1. Go to the dataset’s “Edit dataset” page (see “Editing a dataset”, above).
2. Select the “Delete” button.
3. CKAN displays a confirmation dialog box. To complete deletion of the dataset, select “Confirm”.

The “Deleted” dataset is not completely deleted. It is hidden, so it does not show up in any public searches, etc. However, by visiting the URL for the dataset’s page, it can still be seen (by users with appropriate authorization – does this mean admins for the organisation?), and “undeleted” if necessary. If it is important to completely delete the dataset, contact your site administrator – is this us? If so, we should put the Data.NSW email address in here.

Organisations in Data.NSW generally represent NSW agencies and NSW government bodies. Datasets are listed under organisations, to identify where the datasets were created. All datasets on Data.NSW need a parent organisation.

To ensure you’re not duplicating an existing organisation registration, please fully check the existing list of Data.NSW organisations at https://data.nsw.gov.au/data/organization to see if your organisations is already listed.

In general, each dataset is owned by one organisation. Data.NSW admin users are also registered under organisations. Admin users are given certain permissions relating to their organisation’s datasets, for example to modify existing datasets or to create new ones. Different levels of access privileges within an organisation can be given to users, e.g. some users might be able to edit datasets but not create new ones, or to create datasets but not publish them. Each organisation has a home page, where users can find some information about the organisation and search within its datasets. This allows different data publishing departments, bodies, etc to control their own publishing policies.

To create an organisation:

1. Select the “Organisations” link at the top of any page.
2. Select the “Add Organisation” button below the search box.
3. CKAN displays the “Create an Organisation” page.
4. Enter a name for the organisation, and, optionally, a description and image URL for the organisation’s home page.
5. Select the “Create Organisation” button. CKAN creates your organisation and displays its home page. Initially, of course, the organisation has no datasets.

Do not create a new organisation if yours is already registered because this will create confusion for users and will reduce use of the datasets you upload under the duplicated organisation.