Just before the end of 2020, the Australian Government introduced the hotly anticipated Data Availability and Transparency Bill 2020 to regulate controlled access to Australian Government data.
Previously, personal data flow was covered by a myriad of privacy and data retention laws, which made it difficult for government departments and agencies to share personal data on Australia citizens. Instead, this Bill is designed to control the flow of data by the National Data Commissioner, to create a scheme where data may be easily shared across the public sector and between governmental agencies. Thus, for example, the Australian Taxation Office could seamlessly provide personal data to Centrelink and vice versa.
However, this closed model would result in personal data no longer being publicly accessible. As such, access to this data will be limited to accredited users and data service providers, who will only be able to access personal data for the purposes of: (1) service delivery, (2) informing policy and program, or (3) research and development. The Bill explicitly excludes sharing data for the purposes of law enforcement, intellectual property, international arrangements, national security, compliance, or targeted commercial marketing.
Regardless of these constraints, this proposed legislation poses potential privacy concerns. As this Bill will override any Commonwealth, State or Territory legislation which previously prevented data sharing, digital safeguards must be implemented to protect national privacy. Additionally, this law does not address whether consent is necessary for data collection nor whether Australian citizens may request data from the Australian Government.
It will be interesting to see how the Australian Government will address these concerns and weigh them against the benefit of this data-sharing regime going into a digitised future.
For a full reading of the Bill see here.