Regulator insists new data-sharing scheme won’t be a robo-debt repeat
A data-sharing scheme that allows government departments to share information about Australians with other departments and with universities will not lead to a repeat of the robo-debt disaster, the commissioner overseeing the new scheme has said.
Australia’s National Data Commissioner, Gayle Milnes, said the robo-debt automated welfare-overpayment recovery scheme, that involved the Australian Taxation Office sharing data with Centrelink, had raised so much public concern that it led to numerous safeguards in the new data sharing scheme, including that all shared data must remain anonymised and “can never be used for compliance purposes”.
Gayle Milnes, Australia’s National Data Commissioner, says the new government data-sharing system is about to bear fruit. Olive + Maeve
“It’s all about increasing the use and availability of Australian government data, but doing that in a safe and controlled way,” Ms Milnes said.
The Office of the National Data Commissioner was set up following a 2017 Productivity Commission inquiry into public- and private-sector data sharing, which found that Australia was falling behind countries such as the US, the UK and New Zealand in extracting economic value from the vast amounts of data collected by federal and state governments.
“Comprehensive reform of Australia’s data infrastructure is needed to signal that permission is granted for active data sharing and release and that data infrastructure and assets are a priority,” the Productivity Commission found.
But enabling legislation known as the Data Availability and Transparency Act (DATA) stalled after the then Labor opposition refused to back the scheme, claiming its data sharing arrangement opened the door to another “robo-debt-like attack” on the public.
The NSW Council for Civil Liberties also weighed in, arguing the DATA bill was “fundamentally flawed and violates community expectations”.
But the DATA bill ended up being “a strong piece of legislation”, especially once it was amended to prevent government agencies from sharing data with the private sector, Ms Milnes told The Australian Financial Review.
Robo-debt “explains many of the safeguards that are now in the (DATA) scheme,” she said.
Although a repeat of the robo-debt mess could not happen under the new scheme, it could still occur through some other means.
The data sharing arrangements available under DATA were “only one pathway” for government agencies to share data, and agencies were still able to use other pathways, she said.
Ms Milnes said the Office of the National Data Commissioner was also “looking to build up a broader picture of what data was being shared” through other pathways, so at least there would be greater transparency of government data sharing, even if all of it was not strictly regulated by the commissioner.
Rod Sims, the former ACCC chairman who last month was appointed to chair the National Data Advisory Council which advises the commissioner on how to implement the DATA scheme, said there was enormous economic value stored in government data, that was just waiting to be unlocked.
“I’ve long had the view that we could use data really well in Australia, and that using data well would offer many benefits to the economy,” he said.
“But there are also very large risks.
“What attracted me to working on the National Data Advisory Council was that [the DATA scheme] has the ability to make good use of data with minimal or no downside if we get it right.”
To share data under the DATA scheme, government agencies have to apply to the National Data Commissioner for registration as an Accredited Data Service Provider, which requires the agencies to be capable of complex data integration, de-identification and providing secure data access services.
Six federal and state government agencies, including the Department of Social Services and the Australian Bureau of Statistics, had been approved to supply data, Ms Milnes said.
No government agencies or universities were yet approved to receive anonymised data from approved suppliers, but the first user should be announced in the coming months.
“I am hopeful we’ll start to see data being shared” in 2023, she said.
