Using statistical geography

The Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS) digital boundaries can be downloaded from the Digital boundary files section of the ASGS Edition 4 publication. As more boundaries for Edition 4 become available, they will be added to this section.

ASGS digital boundaries are available in either the OGC GeoPackage or ESRI shapefile formats. Digital boundaries can be viewed and compared using our online mapping tool ABS Maps.

ASGS geospatial web services enables access to the most up to date ASGS digital boundaries and data without needing to store them. Geospatial web services are available for all ASGS boundaries as they are published. Some common uses for data services are mobile apps, custom geospatial web applications and infrastructure, online mapping applications (for example ArcGIS Online), and desktop mapping applications.

To access the available ASGS geospatial data services and find more information about these products, please refer to the geospatial web services section of the ASGS Edition 4 publication. 

To find digital boundaries from past editions of the ASGS, refer to the downloads tab of the relevant publications, available from ABS geography products.

Historical ASGS and Australian Standard Geographical Classification (ASGC) boundaries are available on the ABS Geospatial Solutions page through data.gov.au.

ASGS Edition 4 (2026) digital boundaries have been published using the Geocentric Datum of Australia 2020 (GDA2020).

GDA2020 was adopted as the new official national datum in 2017. For more information about GDA2020, please refer to Geoscience Australia.

ASGS Edition 3 (2021) digital boundaries are available in both GDA2020 and the Geocentric Datum of Australia 1994 (GDA94). 

ASGS 2016 and 2011 digital boundaries were published using GDA94 only.

The ASGS allows users to analyse and visualise statistics based on location. Most ABS data and statistics below the state and territory level are published with an ASGS code. 

ASGS codes make it easy to find where ABS data is related to. If you know the name or the ASGS code for the location you are interested in, you can access ABS data in several ways including through publications, tables, maps, and geospatial web services. To view the different ASGS boundary types, visit ABS Maps.

You may also be interested in bringing in data from other sources to view alongside ABS data, or in using ABS data in your analysis of other geographic boundaries. For information on converting data to the ASGS, please refer to Using the ASGS section of the ASGS Edition 4 publication.

The ABS makes available an extensive range of correspondence files, including in machine readable format, to help users to mathematically convert statistical data to and from geographic regions. As most ABS data relates to population, standard correspondences have a weighting calculated on the location of the population and uses population data modelled to residential address locations. For more information, refer to the Correspondence section of the ASGS Edition 4 publication.