One of the unique features of the Ask Grandma Kylie chatbot is that it uses open data from data.sa.gov.au.

So what is open data?

Open data is information made freely available by governments and organisations for anyone to use, reuse, and share. In South Australia, data.sa.gov.au is the central website where this information is published. It includes datasets on history, geography, government records, the environment, and more.

For family history, this is especially exciting. The chatbot uses selected datasets from data.sa.gov.au — things like school records, teachers’ rolls, heritage listings, and oral history transcripts. These are often tucked away in large spreadsheets or PDF files that can be hard to search through.

By preparing and reformatting these open datasets, Ask Grandma Kylie allows you to ask questions in plain English. For example:

“Who was the head teacher at Echunga Primary School in 1870?”

“Which buildings in Norwood are heritage listed?”

Instead of scrolling through pages of raw data, the chatbot brings the answer straight to you — while still being based on official public records.

This matters because while open data is free, it’s not always user-friendly. Technical formats like CSV (Comma Separated Values – a plain text spreadsheet format) or JSON (JavaScript Object Notation – a structured data format) can be difficult to use without the right tools. Ask Grandma Kylie does the behind-the-scenes work of converting those files into something you can interact with through conversation.

In short: Ask Grandma Kylie takes South Australia’s open data and turns it into an approachable resource for family and local history research.