Data Resource Profile: Australia's Person Level Integrated Data Asset (PLIDA)

Key Features Australia’s Person Level Integrated Data Asset (PLIDA) was established in 2015 by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) to realize the research and policy value of Australian government data. PLIDA contains linked national administrative and survey datasets relating to health, disability, education, social services, income, taxation, employment, migration, and demographics. This breadth of national Australian data is a unique feature of PLIDA. Datasets are added to PLIDA by linkage to a spine, designed to contain a record for each person resident in Australia at any point from 2006 onwards. The spine is constructed through linkage of three administrative datasets associated with universal health insurance, social security, and taxation, resulting in near-complete longitudinal coverage of this population. The spine included around 40 million records as of June 2025. Datasets are updated on a rolling basis with a mix of sub-annual, annual, and less frequent updates. New datasets are added in response to identified research and policy needs. PLIDA data are available to Australian and international researchers from academic, government, and public policy institutions. Access is by application to the ABS and subject to approval by data custodians. Approved researchers access data through the ABS DataLab, a secure cloud environment.