Media Feed System

Updated: 7 January 2011

News

Media Feed System Version 3.0 has been released and will be used for the next Federal Election (08/06/2010)
Media Feed System to operate using Passive Mode File Transfer Protocol (FTP) for the next Federal Election (22/01/2010)

What's changed in Version 3.0?

Overview

The AEC has released Version 3.0 of the Media Feed system to support a possible legislation change that would allow a pre-poll vote cast within the elector's own division to be treated as an ordinary vote and counted on Election night. In general the changes are minor and the message XML schema remains largely unchanged. In some cases, consumers of the Media Feed may not even need to change their parsing and/or transformation software. For more information please refer to the User Guide [PDF 1MB] and the Schema Documentation [ZIP 33MB].

Passive Mode File Transfer Protocol (FTP)

During the last federal election the Media Feed site supported two types of FTP (Active and Passive mode FTP). Active mode is generally considered to be a less secure option than Passive FTP. The AEC's web hosting provider has strongly advised the AEC to allow only passive mode FTP connection to the Media Feed site to improve security. As such the Media Feed System will require the use of passive mode FTP for the next federal election. If your systems do not already support passive mode FTP, changes will be required to enable your systems to interface with the Media Feed FTP site during the election period.

Election Mark-up Language (EML) Version 5.0

The media feed messages are now based on the most recent publication of the Election Mark-up Language (EML) international standard, EML version 5.0. For more information please refer to the OASIS Election and Voter Services Technical Committee.

New XML Schema Files

The media feed messages are now based on a new set of XML schema files, aec-mediafeed-ballotpapers-v3-0.xsd, aec-mediafeed-core-v3-0.xsd, aec-mediafeed-groupvotingtickets-v3-0.xsd, aec-mediafeed-pollingdistricts-v3-0.xsd and aec-mediafeed-results-v3-0.xsd.

New polling place classification for pre-poll voting centres

A new polling place classification has been added to the core schema to support a possible legislation change that would allow a pre-poll vote cast within the elector's own division to be treated as an ordinary vote and counted on Election night. A new classification called "PrePollVotingCentre" has been added to the simple type "PollingPlaceClassificationType".

Enhanced Media Feed Element (File Header)

All messages that are based on the AEC schemas have the same file header. This header contains a unique ID for the message, the date and time it was created, the language used in the message, details of the organisation and system that created it and also information that links it to other messages created during the same processing cycle. Two new attributes have been added, SchemaVersion (Indicates the version number of the AEC Media Feed schema used to generate message) and EmlVersion (which indicates the version of the Election Mark-up Language standard referenced by the message).

Cycle Times

The Media Feed will be published every 180 seconds on election night and every 15 minutes in the post election period.

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) in passive mode.
Publishes new data to the FTP site every 180 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.