Methodology

How every figure here is sourced, dated and classified.

Most published analysis of Australia's AI economy repeats numbers without saying where they came from or when they were true. This page sets out what we do instead, so you can check us, and so you know exactly what you are relying on when you quote something from this site.

Rule one

We never publish a number we cannot source.

Where a figure exists but we could not verify it, we say so and leave the space empty. Where a vendor or agency publishes nothing, the field reads not published, which is different from zero, and different from an estimate. We do not fill gaps with modelled figures, industry projections or a plausible-looking round number.

This rule costs us coverage. Several models on our comparison page carry no price because their vendor publishes none, and several data-centre figures that circulate widely in Australian media do not appear here because we could not trace them to a primary source. We would rather have a smaller table that is right.

Evidence tiers

Where a figure comes from decides how much weight it carries.

Every source in our register is assigned a tier. We use the highest tier available for any given figure, and we say when we have had to fall back.

Primary. The organisation that owns the fact, publishing it itself: legislation on legislation.gov.au, a regulator's own guidance, AEMO and network operator planning reports, a company's own disclosure, a vendor's own pricing page. Nearly everything on this site is Tier 1.

Secondary. Credible reporting or analysis of a primary source, used only where no primary source exists or the primary is inaccessible. Always labelled, and we name the primary it is reporting on.

Discovery. Used to find things, never to state them. Industry press, vendor blogs and market-research summaries point us at sources, but they are not sources themselves.

Our source register currently holds 162 catalogued sources across energy and grid, data centres, compute, models, policy, adoption, investment and competitors, each with its tier, update frequency, access limitations and the date it was last checked.

Labels on every figure

What the markings mean.

Verified date: The day a person or process last opened the source and confirmed the figure still said what we say it says. Not the day the source was published, and not the day we first recorded it. If a figure has no verified date, it should not be on the site.
Confidence: HIGH: Read directly off the primary source on the verified date, with no interpretation in between.
Confidence: MEDIUM: Traced to a source, but with a step in between: a secondary report of a primary figure, a value inferred from a stated discount, or a page whose relevant section could not be read directly.
Confidence: LOW or UNKNOWN: Recorded for completeness but not relied on, and never used as the basis of a headline figure or a chart.
Not published: The organisation publishes no figure for this. It is not zero and it is not an estimate. Where relevant we say why, for example a vendor that quotes only on application, or a pricing page whose values are rendered by script and cannot be read.
Previous value and change date: Where a figure has moved, we keep what it was and when it changed. We do not overwrite. A price cut, a delayed project or a withdrawn policy is often more useful than the current number on its own.

The split we hold to

Fact and interpretation are never mixed.

What the source says

A restatement of the source, as close to its own words as accuracy allows, with the source named and dated. If you disagree with this half, one of us has misread the document and we want to know.

What we make of it

Our reading of what it means for an Australian business. This is judgement, it is ours, and it is fallible. You are free to take the first half and ignore this one.

You will see this split on the policy pages, the model comparison and the tools. It exists because the most common failure in this field is an interpretation hardening into a fact through repetition. Keeping them visually separate makes that harder to do by accident.

Rechecking

How often each thing is looked at again.

What	Rechecked	Why that interval
Model prices	Monthly, and on any announced change	Vendors change list prices without notice and sometimes without a changelog.
Policy and regulation	Fortnightly, and on any commencement date	Commencement dates, consultations closing and guidance being finalised all move quickly.
Sector regulator guidance	Quarterly	Regulator guidance is revised on a slower cycle than legislation.
Infrastructure and data centres	On each planning-report release	The authoritative figures are annual: AEMO's ESOO and the network operators' planning reports.
Adoption statistics	On each ABS or agency release	There is no continuous series. The data appears when the agency publishes it.

A figure past its recheck interval is marked stale on the page it appears on rather than quietly left in place.

Corrections

When we get something wrong.

Tell us and we fix it. Corrections to a figure are made on the page and noted with the date and what changed. We do not silently edit a number and carry on. If a correction changes the conclusion of an insight or a tool output, we say so at the top of that page.

If you believe something here is wrong, the fastest route is hello@aieconomyindex.com.au with the page and the figure. You do not need to be polite about it.

Limits

What this site is not.

It is not legal, financial or compliance advice, and nothing here creates a professional relationship. It is a research and reference resource: it tells you what the sources say and what we think that means, so you can have a better-informed conversation with an adviser who knows your business.

We do not forecast. Where a figure is a projection made by someone else, such as a regulator's demand forecast or a vendor's roadmap, we label it as that organisation's projection and date it. We do not publish projections of our own, and we treat market-sizing numbers from commercial research firms as Tier 3 discovery material, not as facts about Australia.