Australia Publishing Itself Screensaver
The Australia Publishing Itself screensaver shows datasets newly published to data.gov.au, key-less from its CKAN catalogue, newest first with the publishing agency drawn beside each one. It's free, runs in your browser, and ESC exits.
Live preview
Press ESC to leave fullscreen. Settings are saved in your browser only.
How the Australia Publishing Itself screensaver works
The saver reads the source described above and draws it on a canvas — no account, no tracking.
Datasets newly published to data.gov.au, key-less from its CKAN catalogue, newest first with the publishing agency drawn beside each one.
It refreshes on a schedule, so what you see stays current.
Colours can be changed in settings; nothing is stored beyond your own browser.
About data.gov.au and its CKAN catalogue
data.gov.au is the Australian Government’s open data portal, a central catalogue of datasets that agencies choose to publish. It runs on CKAN, the open-source data-portal software, which is why entries share a familiar pattern: a title, a description, an owning organisation, a licence and a set of resources. Many datasets on the portal carry a Creative Commons licence such as Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia.
A catalogue entry is a listing, not the data itself. The record says that a spreadsheet, shapefile or API exists and points to where to fetch it, which is why one new listing can be anything from a small table to a large geospatial layer, and why the titles vary in style from one agency to the next.
The portal has been on CKAN since an open-source rebuild around 2013, and individual organisations, such as the Department of Finance, have their own pages listing their datasets and a contact address. Treat the stream as a view of what publishers are choosing to list, not a measure of how much government activity is happening.
A worked example
Datasets newly published to data.gov.au, key-less from its CKAN catalogue, newest first with the publishing agency drawn beside each one.
Settings & tips
- Accent and Background recolour the display.
- Every value on screen comes from the live source — nothing is simulated.
- Press ESC to leave fullscreen.
Frequently asked questions
- Is this real data?
- Yes — it comes from the source named on this page and is refreshed on a schedule.
- Is a key needed?
- No. This source is fully key-less.
- Is it free?
- Yes, and it runs entirely in your browser.
- What is CKAN?
- CKAN is open-source software for building data catalogues. data.gov.au uses it, so each dataset has an owning organisation, a description and downloadable resources.
- Is the data inside the listing?
- A listing describes a dataset and points to its resources. Open the dataset page on data.gov.au to see the files and licence.
- How do I tell who published a dataset?
- Each dataset belongs to an organisation on the portal, and the agency name beside each title shows which one.