Glossary

Every abbreviation this site uses in its own words is listed here with what it stands for. Publishers' own titles, codes and cell values are quoted as published, so they can hold abbreviations this list does not explain.

AA

the middle of the three conformance levels in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

AAA

the highest of the three conformance levels in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines

AADT

annual average daily traffic, the vehicles a day a counting station records averaged over a year

ABN

Australian Business Number, the eleven-digit identifier the Australian Business Register issues

ABS

Australian Bureau of Statistics

ACARA

Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority, which runs the My School website

ACN

Australian Company Number, the nine-digit identifier ASIC issues to a company

ACNC

Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission

ACT

Australian Capital Territory

AEST

Australian Eastern Standard Time, ten hours ahead of UTC

AFL

Australian Football League

AFP

Australian Federal Police, which also polices the Australian Capital Territory

AGPL

GNU Affero General Public License, the licence the site's code is under

AI

artificial intelligence, here the assistants and agents that read the site's files

AIC

Australian Institute of Criminology

AIHW

Australian Institute of Health and Welfare

API

application programming interface, an address a program reads data from

APRA

Australian Prudential Regulation Authority

AQI

air quality index

ASCII

the plain seven-bit character set, as in a file name with no accents or symbols

ASGS

Australian Statistical Geography Standard, the ABS boundaries such as SA2 and LGA

ASIC

Australian Securities and Investments Commission

ASX

Australian Securities Exchange

ATO

Australian Taxation Office

AU

Australia, as in the country code of a web address or a licence

BDM

Births, Deaths and Marriages, a state registry

BITRE

Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics

BOCSAR

NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research

BPAY

the bill payment service run by Australian banks

CAAB

Codes for Australian Aquatic Biota, the CSIRO species code list

CC BY

Creative Commons Attribution, a licence that allows any use with credit to the publisher

CC BY-SA

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike, the Attribution licence with a condition that derived works use the same licence

CED

Commonwealth electoral division, a federal electorate

CFA

Country Fire Authority, Victoria

CKAN

the open-source data portal software most Australian government portals run

CSIRO

Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation

CSV

comma-separated values, a plain-text table one row a line

CSVW

CSV on the Web, the W3C standard that describes a CSV file's columns

CTH

Commonwealth, the Australian Government

DBI

the R database interface package

DCAT

Data Catalog Vocabulary, the W3C standard for describing datasets

DCCEEW

Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, Australian Government

DEECA

Department of Energy, Environment and Climate Action, Victoria

DETSI

Department of the Environment, Tourism, Science and Innovation, Queensland

DISR

Department of Industry, Science and Resources, Australian Government

DOI

digital object identifier, a permanent reference for a published work

DPIRD

Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development, Western Australia

DTP

Department of Transport and Planning, Victoria

EGM

electronic gaming machine

EPA

Environment Protection Authority, a state agency

EPSG

a coordinate reference system code from the register the European Petroleum Survey Group began

EULA

end user licence agreement

FAQ

frequently asked questions

FDSV

family, domestic and sexual violence, an AIHW reporting program

FDV

family and domestic violence

FENICS

a market data provider whose overnight indexed swap rates the RBA quotes

FTE

full-time equivalent

FY

financial year, which in Australia runs from 1 July to 30 June

G-NAF

Geocoded National Address File, every Australian address with its coordinates

GB

gigabyte

GDA2020

Geocentric Datum of Australia 2020, the coordinate reference frame Australian coordinates are published in

GDA94

Geocentric Datum of Australia 1994, the frame GDA2020 replaced

GDAL

Geospatial Data Abstraction Library, the open-source library most mapping software uses to read and write spatial files

GL

gigalitre, a thousand million litres

GLS

Government Licensing Service, the NSW licensing system the report is drawn from

GML

Geography Markup Language, an XML map file format

GNAF

G-NAF written without its hyphen

GNU

the free software project whose General Public License the site's code is under

GPS

Global Positioning System, the satellite system a receiver uses to work out where it is

GST

goods and services tax

HTML

the markup language of web pages

HTTP

the protocol a browser or program uses to fetch a web address

HTTPS

HTTP over an encrypted connection

ICSEA

Index of Community Socio-Educational Advantage, the scale ACARA uses to compare the backgrounds of schools' students

ID

identifier

IP

Internet Protocol, as in the address that identifies a device on the internet

IPC

interprocess communication, in the name of the Arrow file format that passes a table between programs

ISO

International Organization for Standardization, as in the ISO 8601 date format

JP

Justice of the Peace

JS

JavaScript, as in Arrow JS, the Arrow library for JavaScript

JSON

JavaScript Object Notation, a plain-text data format programs read

JSON-LD

JSON for Linking Data, the form of JSON that carries schema.org descriptions

KB

kilobyte

KML

Keyhole Markup Language, a map file format

KMZ

a zipped KML map file

LGA

local government area, a council's boundary

LPG

liquefied petroleum gas

MB

megabyte

MCP

Model Context Protocol, the standard an AI agent uses to call a server's tools

MMM

Modified Monash Model, the remoteness classification used for health workforce programs

NATA

National Association of Testing Authorities, which accredits laboratories

NDJSON

newline-delimited JSON, one JSON record a line

NHMD

National Hospital Morbidity Database, held by the AIHW

NHMP

National Homicide Monitoring Program, run by the Australian Institute of Criminology

NMD

National Mortality Database, held by the AIHW

NSW

New South Wales

NT

Northern Territory

OLGR

Office of Liquor and Gaming Regulation, Queensland

PCI

pulverised coal injection coal, a grade used in steelmaking

PDF

Portable Document Format

PM&C

Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet

PNG

Portable Network Graphics, an image format

POA

postal area, the ABS approximation of a postcode

PSMA

PSMA Australia, now Geoscape, which compiled G-NAF

Power BI

Microsoft's reporting tool, which reads a CSV from its address

QBCC

Queensland Building and Construction Commission

QFD

Queensland Fire Department

QGIS

a free and open-source desktop program for viewing, editing and analysing maps

QLD

Queensland

QPS

Queensland Police Service

RBA

Reserve Bank of Australia

RCV

Recorded Crime, Victims, the ABS series the AIHW tabulates

REST

representational state transfer, the style of web API that answers plain HTTP requests

RFC

Request for Comments, a numbered internet standard

RTA

Residential Tenancies Authority, Queensland

SA

South Australia

SA2

Statistical Area Level 2, an ABS boundary of about 10,000 people

SA3

Statistical Area Level 3, an ABS boundary that groups SA2s

SA4

Statistical Area Level 4, the largest ABS sub-state boundary

SAL

suburb and locality, an ABS boundary

SAPOL

South Australia Police

SED

state electoral division, a state electorate

SEQ

South East Queensland

SES

State Emergency Service

SHA-256

a cryptographic hash, the fingerprint of a file's exact bytes

SHS

specialist homelessness services

SLQ

State Library of Queensland

SQL

Structured Query Language, the language of database queries

SRO

State Revenue Office, Victoria

SW

south-west

TAS

Tasmania

TIFF

Tagged Image File Format, an image format also used for raster maps

TMR

Department of Transport and Main Roads, Queensland

TRAILS

Transport Registration and Integrated Licensing System, Queensland

TSV

tab-separated values, a plain-text table one row a line

UNSPSC

United Nations Standard Products and Services Code, a classification of what a contract buys

URL

web address

UTC

Coordinated Universal Time

UTF-8

the Unicode text encoding every file here is written in

VGCCC

Victorian Gambling and Casino Control Commission

VIC

Victoria

VIN

vehicle identification number

VS Code

Visual Studio Code, an editor that can connect to the MCP server

W3C

World Wide Web Consortium, the body that publishes web standards

WA

Western Australia

WCAG

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, the international standard for accessible web content

WFS

Web Feature Service, a standard interface for fetching map features

WGS

World Geodetic System, the coordinate frame GPS uses

WGS84

World Geodetic System 1984, the coordinate frame GPS uses

WKB

well-known binary, the standard binary encoding of a geometry such as a point or a polygon

WMS

Web Map Service, a standard interface for fetching map images

XLSX

an Excel workbook

XML

Extensible Markup Language, a plain-text data format

YAML

the plain-text format the register's entries are written in

ZIP

a compressed archive of files