Future smart services for homes, factories, cities, and governments rely on sharing of large volumes of often personal data between individuals and organisations, or between individuals and governments. The benefit is the ability to create locally optimised or individually personalised services based on personal preference, as well as an understanding of the wider network of users and providers.
Data sharing comes with a wide range of challenges broadly categorised as: data format and meaning; legal obligations; privacy; data security; and concerns about unintended consequences of data sharing. This creates the need to develop sharing frameworks which address technical challenges, embed regulatory frameworks, and anticipate and address concerns as to fairness and equity of outcomes in order to maintain trust of consumers and citizens.
A Data Taskforce has been created to address the overarching challenge of developing ethical and 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 protection, and practical data sharing which facilitates smart service creation and cross jurisdictional data sharing between governments. The approach is to identify best practice where it is known to exist; consider existing models in an Australian privacy and cultural context; or identify ‘whitespace’ opportunities to develop frameworks for Australia.