How we collect data from annual reports

Public organisations' published annual reports are the main source of our data on financial and service performance.

An organisation’s annual report provides accessible and publicly available information on how well the organisation has performed during its financial year (which is determined by its balance date).

We gather an organisation’s financial data from the following financial statements in its annual report:

  • Statement of financial performance.
  • Statement of financial position.
  • Statement of cash flows; and
  • Funding impact statements.

We use other sources when a statement in an annual report refers to another document. These can include Budget documents from the Treasury, annual plans, and long-term plans. We get these documents from the relevant official websites.

The financial data contains actual and budget values that we extract from each financial statement for key financial line items, such as:

  • revenue;
  • expenditure;
  • equity; and
  • cash from and applied to activities.

We also collect data from any consolidated accounts. Each downloadable data file has more details about the data in that file.

We get an organisation’s service performance data from the Statement of service performance or equivalent in its annual report.

Our data about service performance contains performance indicators for outputs. We extract and collate the following information from the organisation’s annual report:

  • the public organisation’s legal name;
  • the financial year of the annual report the data refers to;
  • the main category and sub-category (if applicable) that the performance indicator relates to (that is, what output it relates to);
  • the objective indicating what the organisation is trying to achieve (if applicable);
  • the indicator/measure of how the organisation is performing for the specific output;
  • the targeted and actual performance;
  • whether the performance indicator’s target has been achieved;
  • whether the achievement status of the performance indicator is explicitly stated in the annual report;
  • whether the performance indicator is new for the financial year; and
  • the source document and page number(s).

Each downloadable data file has more details about the data in that file.

How we check the quality of our data

Note: By data quality, we mean quality in terms of using the data for performance analysis. We don't mean quality in terms of the data’s ability to support a public organisation’s compliance with its reporting obligations.

To assess the quality of the financial and service performance data we've collected, we do a mix of manual checks, systematic checks, and data quality testing.  

These checks augment our processes and enable us to measure whether the data is fit for our purpose – in this context, whether it is an accurate representation of data we have collated from published annual reports. We consider the following factors:

  • Completeness: All the fields we require for our performance analysis are populated and data that is mandatory for our purposes is present.
  • Uniqueness: The data contains no duplicate records.
  • Validity: The data fields and elements match our expectations of their formats, valid data types, and expected ranges.
  • Accuracy: The degree to which our data reflects the data recorded in the public organisation’s document.
  • Consistency: The data is consistent within and throughout the organisation’s records.
  • Currency: The data is up to date or of the right age for how it is going to be used.

Data disclaimers

We have collected the public organisations’ data manually. A public organisation’s document, rather than this website, is the official version of its data. A public organisation might change its data after we collected it.

Although our data collection processes are robust and we make every effort to faithfully collect the data, we cannot guarantee that the data provided here is free from errors or omissions. We reserve the right to update or remove data from this website at any time, without prior notice.

Based on our measurement of the quality factors we apply to the data, we have provided specific data disclaimers in each of the downloadable files. These highlight the known and possible issues we have identified. Any discussion of data issues is in the context of using the data for performance analysis and is not related to the data’s ability to support a public organisation’s compliance with its reporting obligations. When using the data, please refer to the specific data disclaimers in each downloadable file.

If you identify any errors, please let us know.

We advise users to refer to the public organisation’s documents before making any decisions based on the data, and to review and interpret the data presented here carefully, seeking professional advice where necessary. We provide the data for informational purposes only, and it is not intended for commercial use.

Where a third-party link is provided, we are not responsible for the content, accuracy, or availability of those websites, nor do we necessarily endorse those websites.

Page updated: 6 June 2024