Transparency report on data quality and integrity
AustraliaMetrics tracks 50 national performance metrics across 8 categories, drawing from 12+ authoritative sources including the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Reserve Bank of Australia, World Bank, and Productivity Commission. Our database holds over 9,900 native observations spanning 26 years, expanded to 45,900+ monthly records through carry-forward derivation.
We run comprehensive audits across this data to confirm its accuracy, currency, completeness, and internal consistency. These audits are not just internal checks — we publish the results here so that citizens, journalists, researchers, and policymakers can have confidence in the numbers they see on this dashboard.
Every audit evaluates data quality across four dimensions. Each dimension is scored from 1 to 5. The scores shown below are the actual results from our most recent audit on 31 March 2026, in which automated scripts queried every table in the production database across all 50 metrics.
Is the data up to date? We check every table for staleness against its expected refresh interval — weekly for ABS and RBA, quarterly for government services, annually for World Bank.
Audit result: Core monthly data (ABS, RBA) is fresh within expected windows. Several quarterly metrics remain naturally stale due to source agency publication delays (population growth, labour productivity, dwelling completions). Freshness endpoint now uses UTC consistently, preventing timezone-dependent staleness miscalculation on edge-region deployments.
Is the data correct? We sample-verify stored values against live source APIs, scan for statistical outliers (3-sigma), and validate that negative and zero values are explainable.
Audit result: All sampled values matched their source APIs exactly. No 3-sigma outliers detected. All negative values (e.g. budget deficits, deflation periods) are legitimate. Scoring engine percentage-of-baseline mode fixed — division-by-zero guard added, and unfavorable-trend RED escalation rule removed to prevent metrics near the green threshold from incorrectly skipping AMBER.
Is all expected data present? We check NULL rates across every column, verify all 8 states are covered for state-level metrics, and confirm every metric has a scoring rule.
Audit result: All 50 metrics have scoring rules (confirmed present). Some state-level coverage gaps remain where source data is not published by state.
Is the data internally consistent? We check for orphaned records, duplicates, out-of-range scores, referential integrity, and verify that category weights sum to 100.
Audit result: Zero orphaned records, zero duplicates, all scores within 0–100 range, all foreign keys valid, category weights sum to exactly 100.
Our audit process is automated and reproducible. Purpose-built scripts query the production database directly via Prisma ORM, executing checks across every table and every metric.
Last audit: 31 March 2026 · Overall score: 4.38 / 5 — Good · Tables audited: 19 · Metrics checked: 50
The following changes were made immediately following the audit to address its findings:
Added safe divisor guards in the percentage-of-baseline scoring mode. When green or red thresholds are configured as 0, the score formula now uses a floor of 1 to prevent division by zero, ensuring valid score output for all threshold configurations.
The scoring engine previously escalated metrics from AMBER to RED if their trend was unfavorable, even when the value was only slightly above the green threshold (within a hardcoded 5-point buffer). This caused metrics near the green zone to display as RED incorrectly. Traffic lights now reflect position within the threshold range only; trend direction is reported separately via the trend badge.
Fixed the data freshness health check to use getUTCFullYear()/getUTCMonth() consistently instead of mixing local-time getFullYear()/getMonth() with Date.UTC(). This prevents incorrect staleness calculations when the endpoint runs on non-UTC edge regions.
Amber-zone gradient (prior audit), step-level pipeline logging, government-services scoring rules, and composite index timeout fix all confirmed present and functioning correctly.
The full technical audit report is maintained internally and available on request. For questions about data quality or to report a data issue, please contact us.
View all data sources on our Data Sources page, or check real-time ingestion status on the Data Status page.
