Data Freshness and Provenance

Every value ausecon returns is fetched live from an official source and stamped with where it came from. This page explains the guarantees behind the “fresh and fully source-traceable” promise.

Every value is source-traceable

Each retrieval response stamps provenance onto metadata:

• retrieval_url — the exact upstream ABS, RBA, or APRA URL the data was read from.
• retrieved_at — UTC timestamp of the fetch.
• server_version — the ausecon version that produced the response.
• updated_after — echoes any upstream “updated after” filter you supplied.

Because the source URL travels with the data, any number can be traced straight back to the official source that published it.

Fresh by default, honest when stale

Values are fetched live on every call. A short-lived cache exists only for performance (so repeated calls and fresh client processes do not re-hit upstream needlessly).

If — and only if — an upstream request fails and a previously cached payload exists, ausecon may serve that last-good payload rather than error out. When it does, it says so explicitly: metadata.stale is set to true alongside cached_at and expires_at. Stale data is always flagged, never served silently. Parse errors are never masked this way — they surface so upstream shape changes stay visible.

Continuously verified

A nightly integration suite exercises the live ABS, RBA, and APRA sources and checks both:

• Shape and availability — datasets resolve and return well-formed observations.
• Golden values — specific known-good observations for finalized, non-revising periods (for example, the RBA cash-rate-target change on 3 August 2016) must still match the live source.

The pinned facts live in integration_tests/golden_values.yaml. If any check drifts, a tracked issue is opened automatically, so silent value or shape regressions cannot go unnoticed. The current status is the Integration badge in the project README.

See the Response Schema for the full list of metadata fields.