TEQSA API Reference

Location: docs/docs/ops/teqsa-api-reference.md

Worker: rtopacks-teqsa-sync

Last updated: 2026-04-10 (Session 48)

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Overview

TEQSA (Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency) publishes its provider, course, and regulatory decision data via the Australian Government's data.gov.au CKAN datastore API. This is a public, unauthenticated API.

The teqsa-sync worker polls this API monthly (cron: 0 5 1 * *) and on manual trigger from the Observatory. Data is stored in rto-licensing-db (LICENSING_DB).

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Base URL

https://data.gov.au/data/api/3/action/datastore_search

No authentication required. No API key. Public access.

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Resource IDs

Resource	ID	Records (approx)
Providers	07370e3f-780b-4a70-8c87-b6796d5ab237	269
Courses	9277422c-0281-46c2-8d0d-a7c43d712108	2,894
Decisions	a61abca4-a4b7-4f17-a975-0bba20c2c73f	5,982

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Pagination

Offset-based. 100 records per page is the recommended page size.

GET /datastore_search?resource_id={ID}&limit=100&offset=0
GET /datastore_search?resource_id={ID}&limit=100&offset=100
...

Stop condition: result.records.length < 100 (last page).

Important: data.gov.au is slow. Response times of 10–25 seconds per page are observed under normal conditions. Always set a fetch timeout of 25 seconds minimum. Without a timeout, the Worker will hang and be killed by the CF CPU limit with no error row written. See ops/source-of-truth-connectivity.md for the full cross-endpoint gotcha matrix.

fetch(url, { signal: AbortSignal.timeout(25000) })

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Response Shape

{
  "result": {
    "records": [ ... ],
    "total": 269,
    "offset": 0,
    "limit": 100
  },
  "success": true
}

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Field Reference

Providers (teqsa_providers)

API Field	DB Column	Notes
ProviderID	provider_id	PK. Format: PRV12002
ProviderName	provider_name
ProviderTradingName	provider_trading_name	nullable
ABN	abn	nullable
Category	category	Australian University, NZ University,
		Self-Accrediting HE, etc.
Address	address	nullable
Website	website	nullable
RegistrationStatus	registration_status	Active / Inactive
RegistrationDescription	registration_description	nullable
RegistrationRenewalDate	registration_renewal_date	nullable, date string DD/MM/YYYY
Years	registration_years	e.g. "7 years - maximum allowable period"
SelfAccreditation	self_accreditation	Yes / No
CRICOS Registration	cricos_code	nullable, CRICOS provider code
CRICOS Web	cricos_url	nullable
ASQALink	asqa_url	nullable — present on dual-regulated only
(derived)	asqa_rto_code	extracted from ASQALink URL
QILT	qilt_url	nullable
(derived)	is_dual_regulated	1 if ASQALink present, else 0

Note on self-accrediting universities: Providers with SelfAccreditation = Yes (e.g. Group of Eight universities — ANU, UNSW, Melbourne, etc.) accredit their own courses internally. Their courses do NOT appear in the courses resource. Only non-self-accrediting providers have course records in the API.

Dual-regulated providers: ~71 providers have both a TEQSA registration and an ASQA RTO number (asqa_rto_code). These are primarily TAFEs and some private providers. The is_dual_regulated flag enables cross-registry joins.

Courses (teqsa_courses)

API Field	DB Column	Notes
CourseID	course_id	PK. Format: CRS1200011
ProviderID	provider_id	FK → teqsa_providers.provider_id
CourseName	course_name	Full course title
Accreditation	accreditation	Active / Inactive
AccreditationDate	accreditation_date	Date string DD/MM/YYYY
AccreditationStatusDate	accreditation_status_date	Date string DD/MM/YYYY
AccreditationStatus	accreditation_status	Active / Expired / Withdrawn
Years	years	Accreditation period or "Not Applicable"
LOTE	lote	Language Other Than English — Yes / No

Decisions (teqsa_decisions)

API Field	DB Column	Notes
ID	id	PK. Format: ID0001
ProviderID	provider_id	FK → teqsa_providers.provider_id
CourseID	course_id	nullable — FK → teqsa_courses.course_id
DecisionType	decision_type	Accreditation / Registration / etc.
DecisionDate	decision_date	nullable, date string
Title	title	Human-readable decision description

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Worker Architecture

The teqsa-sync worker uses a chained step architecture. Each step gets its own 30-second CF Worker CPU budget. Steps chain via direct HTTP POST (not ctx.waitUntil).

/trigger or scheduled()
  → POST /run {step: "providers"}
    → fetchAll(providers) + db.batch() upsert
    → POST /run {step: "courses"}
      → fetchAll(courses) + db.batch() upsert
      → POST /run {step: "decisions"}
        → fetchAll(decisions) + db.batch() upsert
        → POST /run {step: "finalize"}
          → write sync log + snapshot to OPS_DB

D1 writes use db.batch() in chunks of 100 to avoid per-row await overhead.

Standing rule (OBS-INTEGRITY-02): Never use ctx.waitUntil(fetch(...)) for chaining in /run handlers. The fetch must be awaited before the response is returned, or use ctx.waitUntil(chainNext(...)) only in scheduled() handlers where no response is expected.

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DB Location

All TEQSA data stored in rto-licensing-db (LICENSING_DB). DB ID: 400fd979-b5f9-460e-b4e2-3af074ecec31

Tables: teqsa_providers, teqsa_courses, teqsa_decisions

Sync steps logged in rto-ops-db (OPS_DB) → tga_sync_steps with sync_type = 'teqsa_sync'.

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Verified Record Counts (2026-04-10)

Table	Count
teqsa_providers	269
teqsa_courses	2,894
teqsa_decisions	5,982