NSW Data Sharing Taskforce

Lead agencies

Australian Computer Society (ACS) and the NSW Data Analytics Centre (DAC)

Enduring question 6.1

What infrastructure data and information is currently publicly available and what datasets and information can be made available?

Gap addressed

Data sharing guidance, methods and standards

Background

Despite the potential benefits of increased data sharing and the establishment of state-level legislative reform around public data sharing1, data sharing within government remains a challenge for several reasons.

Many data custodians remain hesitant to share data due to concerns around appropriate use and interpretation of data, concerns about unintended consequences of sharing data, concerns about accidental release of sensitive data and concerns about adherence to privacy legislation.

Aggregation of individual data is a standard approach to reduce the risk that personal information is included in a shared dataset. Part of data sharing challenge is that there is no way to unambiguously determine if there is personal information in aggregated data.

Objective

Facilitate data sharing by:

  • providing advice on existing relevant legal frameworks
  • developing methods and standards for anonymising personal information
  • developing methods for testing the existence of personally identifiable data in datasets.

Project update

A Data Taskforce led by the ACS, and the DAC has been created to address the overarching challenge of developing privacy preserving frameworks which support automated data sharing to facilitate smart services creation and deployment. This framework will seek to address technical, regulatory, and authorising frameworks. The intention is to identify, adopt, adapt, or develop frameworks for data governance, privacy preservation, and practical data sharing which facilitates smart service creation and cross jurisdictional data sharing between governments.

The Taskforce includes representatives from ACS, the NSW DAC, Standards Australia, the Australian Government's Digital Transformation Agency (DTA), CSIRO, Data61, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, other Australian Government and state agencies/departments, Gilbert and Tobin, the Communications Alliance, Telstra, IBM, Mastercard, and Microsoft.

Related publication

1 For example, the NSW Data Sharing (Government Sector) Act 2015.