Helen Owens | 07 Dec 2015
As part of the National Innovation and Science Agenda, the Australian Government has today released its Public Data Policy Statement. This formalises the Government’s commitment to open data and data-driven innovation.
Access to and use of the data that is collected by Commonwealth Government entities, referred to as ‘public data’, has the potential to stimulate innovation and help grow the economy, improve service delivery and decision making for planning and policy development.
Our capacity to remain competitive in the global digital economy depends on how well we can harness the value of public data.
The Public Data Policy Statement indicates the Government has prioritised effective data management as one if its core priorities and the Policy Statement provides a clear mandate for Commonwealth Government entities to optimise the use and reuse of public data.
The Public Data Policy Statement commits Australian Government entities to:
make non-sensitive data open by default to contribute to greater innovation and productivity improvements across all sectors of the Australian economy;
where possible, make data available with free, easy to use, high quality and reliable Application Programming Interfaces (APIs);
make high-value data available for use by the public, industry and academia, in a manner that is enduring and frequently updated using high quality standards;
where possible, ensure non-sensitive publicly funded research data is made open for use and reuse;
only charge for specialised data services and, where possible, publish the resulting data open by default;
build partnerships with the public, private and research sectors to build collective expertise and to find new ways to leverage public data for social and economic benefit;
securely share data between Australian Government entities to improve efficiencies, and inform policy development and decision-making;
engage openly with the States and Territories to share and integrate data to inform matters of importance to each jurisdiction and at the national level;
uphold the highest standards of security and privacy for the individual, national security and commercial confidentiality; and
ensure all new systems support discoverability, interoperability, data and information accessibility and cost-effective access to facilitate access to data.
The Public Data Policy Statement brings Australia in line with our international and jurisdictional counterparts.
The Public Data Policy Statement is available at http://www.dpmc.gov.au/resource-centre/data/australian-government-public-data-policy-statement