Capability 2.2.10
Infrastructure
Definition
Operational and asset data from transport, energy, telecommunications, water and digital networks, including sensor feeds, traffic and mobility data, grid telemetry, maintenance logs; asset inventories critical for national resilience and automation.
Examples
- National Road and Rail Datasets (Geoscience Australia)
- Bureau of Infrastructure and Transport Research Economics Aviation Statistics (Infrastructure)
- Energy Grid Telemetry Data/AREMI layers (Australian Renewable Energy Agency & Australian Energy Market Operator)
- Australian Competition & Consumer Commisison Mobile Infrastructure Data Releases.
Indicators
- Real-time data availability (e.g. traffic or grid feeds)
- Percentage of datasets exposed via open APIs or dashboards
- Public coverage of private-sector utility and asset data (energy, telecoms)
- Standardised metadata schema
- Federated compliance and scalability (legal and institutional interoperability)
- FAIR compliance (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable)
- CARE compliance (collective benefit, authority to control, responsiblilty and ethics)
- Provenance and lineage tracking
- Consent frameworks
- Onshore hosting and secure processing environments (e.g. SURE)
- Clear licensing
- Longevity and version control
- Domain specific data standards
- Machine readiness formatting
National AI Plan
PLAN COMMITMENT
Limited commitment
See general comment at 2.2.1 (Language, Arts, Culture & History). No specific reference to infrastructure datasets, including operational and asset data from transport, energy, telecommunications, water or digital networks, as inputs to AI systems in the plan. Limited commitment by government in the plan represents a missed opportunity. More should be done to leverage this very high agency. This is one of 8 capabilities over which Australia wields very high agency; national priority should be given to maintaining this advantage and leveraging it internationally to offset gaps in other capabilities of low agency.
Stocktake
National Road & Rail Datasets. Australian Government / Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications & the Arts (DITRDCA). Accessed October 2025. https://catalogue.data.infrastructure.gov.au/
BITRE Aviation Statistics. Bureau of Infrastructure, Transport and Regional Economics / Australian Government Accessed October 2025. https://www.bitre.gov.au/statistics/aviation
ACCC Mobile Infrastructure Report – data release. Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). Updated 11 November 2025. Accessed October 2025. https://www.data.gov.au/data/dataset/accc-mobile-infrastructure-report-data-release
Australia mobile network benchmarking certificate. umlaut / Accenture. 3 October 2023. https://www.accenture.com/content/dam/accenture/final/industry/communications-and-media/document/Accenture-Australia-Mobile-Benchmark-Certificate.pdf
City of Melbourne Open Data Platform. City of Melbourne. Accessed October 2025. https://data.melbourne.vic.gov.au/pages/home/
Radio Frequency National Site Archive (RFNSA). Australian Mobile Telecommunications Association (AMTA) / Mobile Carriers Forum. Accessed October 2025. https://www.rfnsa.com.au
Is the Stocktake missing evidence?
Share additional information for potential future Assessments