Data Skills

Data enables informed decision making. Using data to inform policy and service design can help deliver better services and increase community participation, government transparency and economic opportunity.  

• The Open Data Institute has published research on how data is being used to innovate and transform a range of industries. 
• The Open Data Institute has also conducted research into public services and the role open data plays in making them better and more cost effective. 
• There are many online training courses such as provider Coursera which has an introductory online course on data driven decision making.   

• NSW Government open data can be accessed for free via Data NSW. Data NSW brings together many NSW Government datasets into one searchable website. 
• The federal open data portal, Data.gov.au contains thousands of open data sets. 
• The Victorian, Queensland, South Australian, ACT, Western Australian, Tasmanian, Northern Territory governments also have their own, active open data portals. 
• If you are unable to find what you are looking for, reach out to Data.NSW to speak to a data professional

Data visualisations present insights from data analysis in engaging and visual ways to help anyone to understand key insights generated from data. 

• Class Central provides a comprehensive assessment of the best online visualisation courses, based on student reviews and content evaluations. 
• Some agencies have subscriptions to Lynda.com courses for staff. Data visualisation courses available through Lynda.com include: 
  • Data Visualization Tips and Tricks 
  • Learning Data Visualization 
• There are many online courses as well such as the Queensland University of Technology, which offers an online course, Big Data: Data Visualisation. 

• Data.NSW provides an overview of legislation that outlines key, high level data governance requirements across the whole sector. 
• The Data Governance Toolkit provides NSW Government agencies with practical and consistent guidance on the key components of an effective data governance program, as well as to create a shared understanding of what good data governance looks like. 
• Agency staff should talk to internal colleagues about the business specific rules and requirements that apply to datasets in their organisation. 
• The Open Data Institute (ODI) has developed a Data Maturity Web App to help assess how well your organisation understands and implements its data governance responsibilities, as well as its maturity in other areas of data management. Supporting documentation is also available for download.  
• ODI’s Open Data Essentials short online course, also provides a brief overview of key data governance considerations. 

It is critical to manage privacy and security throughout the process of making, using and managing data. 

• The NSW Information and Privacy Commission website contains comprehensive information on privacy protection.  
• The NSW Cyber Security Policy outlines the information security requirements for the NSW public sector. 

• The NSW Open Data Policy explains what open data is, why it’s valuable to the NSW government and community, and outlines NSW agency responsibilities in relation to open data. 
• The NSW Information and Privacy Commission has an open data e-learn that explains the value of open data in NSW. 
• Safeguarding your open data to ensure personal and sensitive information is protected is an important element of open data release.