NSW's SEED environmental data platform turns 10 and wins Good Design Award

The New South Wales Sharing and Enabling Environmental Data (SEED) platform reached its tenth anniversary in 2026. It was set up in 2016 after the 2014 Biodiversity Legislation Review and Coal Seam Gas Review, to make environmental data easier to find and to build public trust in government decisions.

SEED now offers more than 6,900 datasets, web maps and data insights from over 160 organisations, and has more than 74,000 monthly users. Annual visits rose from just over 14,000 in 2017 to more than 650,000 in 2026. It supports over 60 legislative and policy frameworks. User research found 92% of users trust it as a data source.

SEED also took the web design and development prize in the 2026 Australian Good Design Awards, digital design section, for its platform refresh. The jury called the redesign a "well-considered transformation" of a large public data platform.

Why it matters: SEED shows how a single government portal, with built-in web mapping, can make environmental data usable without specialist GIS software. Agencies building national or state data portals, including in Africa, can use its decade of growth and user-trust figures as a benchmark.