Team Name:
Data Mafia
Team Members:
Data Mafia
Data Genie is a simple, explainable hub where you ask a question and instantly get the right Australian government datasets with ABS first. It shows what is inside, how to access by API or download, and how they connect, helping people who “don’t know what they don’t know”. Each dataset has clear metadata, a custodian and lineage, plus a Reddit style “How I used this” thread for unique use cases and shared notebooks. With one click you can open a ready to run notebook or dashboard, and the app learns over time to suggest smarter links and quality badges.
Government data is open, but not always easy to find or use.
Students, small businesses, policymakers, and researchers often waste time hopping across portals or guessing which dataset fits.
Data Genie fixes this by combining:
ABS core stats (Census/SEIFA, Business Counts, Earnings, Approvals, Prices)
data.gov.au open data (e.g., transport/GTFS, infrastructure, environment)
ATO taxation & income distribution (optional)
ACARA/My School profiles for education context (optional)
How it works: You describe a problem. Genie asks 2–3 smart follow-ups, then returns a plan: the right dataset bundle, join keys (e.g., SA2/ANZSIC), a simple chart for context, preview rows, copy-paste code, and links back to the official source.
Example questions Genie can handle:
“What is youth unemployment by state?”
“What are 10-year trends in housing approvals around Sydney?”
“Which industries are growing fastest in my region?”
It’s about making public data accessible, trustworthy, and useful—so anyone can go from question to evidence, fast.
Description of Use Benefits of DataGenie for Government 1. Usage & Demand Intelligence Shows live data usage by agency, program, and dataset. Helps retire low-use datasets and invest in high-demand ones. Tracks what citizens and businesses search for (e.g., local services). Identifies data gaps when searches return no results. 2. Less Waste, More Reuse Direct links to ABS Data Explorer and APIs (no generic pages). Makes data easy to reuse in agency tools. Tracks 90-day dataset usage to flag under-used collections. Encourages fixing metadata, adding examples, or retiring low-value datasets. 3. Lower Cost-to-Serve APS has ~185,000 staff; ~10% (18,500) are frequent data users. At $40/hour, saving just 30 mins per week = $17.8M/year saved. Saving 1 hour per week = $35.6M/year saved. Goal: reach 1 hour savings per user, doubling efficiency gains.
Eligibility: Open to contestants from any State. At least one dataset from the ABS must be used.
Go to Challenge | 20 teams have entered this challenge.
