Media Feed System

Latest News

Federal By-Elections for the Divisions of Lyne and Mayo

26 August 2008

• A draft preload feed for the Lyne By-Election is available from the Media Feed Test Environment at ftp://mediafeedtest.aec.gov.au/13827.
• A draft preload feed for the Mayo By-Election is available from the Media Feed Test Environment at ftp://mediafeed.aec.gov.au/13826.
• The release of Two Candidate Preferred information and results is restricted until Saturday 6 September 2008 6:00pm.
• To obtain Two Candidate Preferred information under embargo, prior to Saturday 6 September 2008, please email info@aec.gov.au (please include your name and contact details) or telephone us on (02) 6271 4411.

13 August 2008

• The AEC Media Feed system will be active during the Federal By-Elections for the Divisions of Lyne and Mayo.
• A draft preload feed for each By-Election will be available through the Media Feed Test Environment in the week commencing Monday 18 August 2008.
• The offical results for the Lyne By-Election will be available from Saturday 6 September 2008 6:00pm at ftp://mediafeed.aec.gov.au/13827.
• The offical results for the Mayo By-Election will be available from Saturday 6 September 2008 6:00pm at ftp://mediafeed.aec.gov.au/13826.

Overview

The AEC Media Feed System is a companion product to the AEC's Virtual Tally Room (VTR) website. The VTR provides election results in HTML and simple text format which is easily browsed.

The objective of the AEC Media Feed System is to deliver uninterrupted, real-time election information and results to media organisations and interested third parties. The Media Feed is formatted as XML and is provided for those users wishing to do further processing and formatting.

To achieve this objective the AEC Media Feed System:

• Provides election results and information which is available from the AEC website using the File Transfer Protocol (FTP).
• Publishes new data to the FTP site every 90 seconds on election night and every 15 minutes in the post election period.
• Generates election results and information as a set of XML messages based on an Election Markup Language (EML) schema. EML is an international standard for the structured interchange of data among service providers who engage in providing election or voter services.
• Compresses all XML messages into ZIP files called feeds, to optimise download times. Each media feed will contain a complete set of election results.

Media Feed System Documentation

• Media Feed System User Guide Version 2.0 [PDF 935KB]
• Media Feed AEC Schema Documentation [ZIP 14MB]
• Media Feed EML Schema Documentation [ZIP 3MB]
• Media Feed XML Schema [ZIP 100KB]
• Media Feed Change Log [XLS 40KB]

Please Note: Because of its complex nature, the AEC recommends the use of an XML software engineering tool when investigating the XML schema for the Media Feed System. The XML Schema for the Media Feed System was developed using XMLSpy (http://www.altova.com).

Election Markup Language (EML)

• OASIS Election and Voter Services Technical Committee Home Page
• EML v4.0 OASIS Standard [ZIP 1.6 MB]

Test Environment

A test version of the Media Feed System is available with samples for a number of elections:

• Media Feed System Test Environment (ftp://mediafeedtest.aec.gov.au)
• 2004 Federal Election (ftp://mediafeedtest.aec.gov.au/12246)
• 2005 Federal By-Election for the Division of Werriwa (ftp://mediafeedtest.aec.gov.au/12426)
• 2007 Federal Election (ftp://mediafeedtest.aec.gov.au/13745)
• 2008 Federal By-Election for the Division of Gippsland (ftp://mediafeedtest.aec.gov.au/13813)

Please Note: The sample data in the test environment is provided for testing purposes only and may not contain factual information.

More Information

For further information please email info@aec.gov.au (please include your name and contact details) or telephone us on (02) 6271 4411.