The Estimates Questions On Notice system is used by Committee staff to store and maintain the large number of Questions on Notice that are asked of Departments and Agencies during a Senate Estimates round. Due to the volume of answers that a single committee may have to deal with, to ease in the entry of the questions into the system, an automated data ingestion process is used by the committee staff, using a Comma-Separated Values file (CSV) with a format defined below.

The Ingestion File Format

The Estimates QON file format is in a Comma Separated Values (CSV) file format. In effect, every value in this data format is separated by a comma - fields with a comma in it are enclosed in double-quotes(") to indicate they are a contiguous field of data, and double-quotes within a field are indicated by a two double-quotes ("").

The first row is always a header row, and indicates what data is in the rows following. The rows afterwards follow the format laid out by the header row.

The format of the CSV has the following 6 headers:

WholePortfolio

Takes a single value, either True or False. This indicates whether the answer is directed at the entire portfolio, rather than a single or multiple agencies in the portfolio.  This will only work if a matching question can be found for every agency in the specified portfolio. If not the processing will fail, citing the missing  questions and agencies. Note that this also depends on the Portfolio and Agency lookup values being correctly completed in the QON Admin interface.

Note that this will only be inserted as a whole of portfolio question if the value for this field is True, and the value for the DepartmentOrAgency field is empty. Will default to False if the value cannot be parsed into one of the two accepted values, or the DepartmentOrAgency field is non-empty.

E.g.

• "True"

• "False"

DepartmentOrAgency

Takes a single value or multiple values, separated by a semicolon(;). Must include the full name of the Agency such that it matches the Prefix and the Name fields in the database, separated by a single space. Multiple questions may be created from this field, one per Agency specified. Note that a value in this column will override the WholePortfolio field.

E.g.

• "[Prefix] [Name]"

• "Department of the Senate"

• "Parliamentary Budget Office"

• "Department of the Senate; Department of Parliamentary Services"

AnswerDate

Takes a single value as a formatted Date, in the format [dd/MM/yyyy], where dd is the date, MM is the two-digit month, and yyyy is the four-digit year or ISO-8601 standard. Note that while other formats may be parsed correctly an accepted, these prescribed formats are the only ones officially supported and recommended.  This value indicates the date that the question was answered.

E.g.

• "9999-12-01"

• "1753-01-01"

PortfolioQuestionNumber

Takes a single value, up to 256 characters long. This is the secondary number used for the question and the format may vary between committees.

E.g.

• "bud/01"

• "No. 0001"

AnswerText

Takes a single value of characters with no specified limit. This is used to indicate the actual text of the answer.

E.g.

• Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed tempor nec sapien vitae volutpat. Nunc pulvinar accumsan quam ac fermentum. Nunc pharetra tempus leo, vehicula interdum nisi faucibus sit amet. Mauris at iaculis erat, in molestie risus. Vivamus nec justo rhoncus, elementum purus id, dapibus sapien. Cras mollis congue risus in feugiat. Aenean faucibus, eros eu tincidunt semper, nulla sem sagittis enim, in molestie turpis ex a sapien. But we will take that on notice."

AnswerAttachmentFilenames

Takes a single or multiple values, separated by a semicolon(;). These must reference filenames (including the file extension) stored in an attached zip archive, in a flat file structure. If the attachment cannot be found in the attached zip archive the processing will fail. Note that different answers may reference the same answer attachment if necessary.

E.g.

• "answer_attachment.pdf"

• "answer_attachment1.pdf;answer_attachment2.pdf"

Attachment Zip Archive

A zip archive with answer attachment files can also be uploaded to provide answer attachments. The folder structure of the zip archive requires that the attachments be stored in a flat arrangement - there should be no nested folders storing attachments or they may be missed and the upload process fail. The file should be in zip file format with no password protection. This upload is not mandatory.

An example zip archive can be downloaded here. 

Editing the File

The CSV file can be edited directly with any text editor, however if manually  editing, it is recommended to use Microsoft Excel to edit the CSV. Excel will format the CSV columns into a table, and ensure that any formatting is CSV compliant when you select to save the file as a CSV file. Note that for maximum compatibility, the CSV file should be saved to use Windows-style line endings (CRLF).

An example file can be downloaded here.

Technical Schema

WholePortfolio+: Boolean

DepartmentOrAgency+: String

AnswerDate*: DateTime

PortfolioQuestionNo: String

AnswerText*: String

AnswerAttachmentFilenames: String

*: Always mandatory

+: Mandatory depending on values in other fields