Start from the question, not the dataset.
Every open data portal in the country is organised around what agencies decided to publish. That structure is incapable of showing you what is missing — a catalogue of holdings can never contain the thing nobody holds. So this register starts at the other end: with questions Australians actually ask, and an honest answer about whether anything published can answer them.
10 questions could be answered tomorrow, with no new data collection at all
These are blocked only by how information is published — locked in a PDF, aggregated past the point of usefulness, released under a licence that forbids reuse, or scattered across bodies that use incompatible categories. The data exists. Somebody already collected it, at public expense.
That distinction matters more than any other on this site, because the usual objection to a transparency request is that collecting the data would be expensive. For these, it already has been.
How a question gets answered here
Each question carries an honest verdict:
- yes — answerable now from published data.
- partial — answerable in part, or only at a granularity too coarse to be useful.
- derived — answerable only by combining sources and doing real work.
- foi — not published, but obtainable by formal request.
- no — cannot be answered from anything available.
And where the answer is not a plain yes, the question records why — because "the government won't tell us" is not actionable, and "it is published quarterly as a PDF with no consistent category definitions" is.
What this is not
It is not an accusation that everything withheld is being hidden. Some data genuinely cannot be released: small-cell counts that would identify individuals, live law enforcement material, information held in confidence. Where that is the real reason, this register records it as a legitimate constraint and says so on the page.
The credibility of the whole project depends on that being true. A register that treats every refusal as a scandal will be dismissed, correctly, by the people best placed to fix the ones that are.
It is also not a dataset catalogue. data.gov.au and the state portals already do that, and do it with resources we do not have. We link to them and assess what they contain.
Why questions go unanswered
Counted across every question in the register. Rows in amber are publishing choices rather than facts about the world — they can be changed by a decision, not a budget.
| Obstruction | Questions affected | Kind |
|---|---|---|
| aggregated | 7 | A choice about how to publish |
| not published | 7 | A choice about how to publish |
| format | 5 | A choice about how to publish |
| fragmented | 3 | A choice about how to publish |
| inconsistent | 3 | A choice about how to publish |
| not collected | 3 | A constraint on what exists or may be released |
| commercial | 2 | A constraint on what exists or may be released |
| exempt | 1 | A constraint on what exists or may be released |
| stale | 1 | A choice about how to publish |
| identifiable | 1 | A constraint on what exists or may be released |
What do you want to know?
The register grows by questions, not by datasets. If you have tried to find something out about an Australian government and could not, that failure is worth recording — it is evidence, and right now nobody is collecting it. Add your question.