BY NATHANIEL MASON
JULY 2022

It's been over 15 years since Clive Humby was cited as proclaiming the idea that "Data is the new oil", suggesting that data would be a resource of high value when gathered and refined to derive insight. Since that time, many organisations have realised the value proposition made by Humby, tech giants have harvested our time, attention and petabytes of information to drive a platform economy based on the value of data. Just like with 'Big Oil', the modern history of Big Data seems to repeat a similar pattern where a small number of tycoons have leveraged the resources they mine to streak ahead of the pack. How do Australian governments compare?  

Analysts and research institutions herald the ubiquity of artificial intelligence, machine learning and cognitive services that are leveraging rich datasets and generating predictive analytics. My phone does a pretty good job of recognising that there was a dog in a photo when I ask it to, but maturity and utilisation of enterprise data, maturity and capabilities are much more varied - government agencies included.  Privacy & Data Protection Deputy Commissioner for the Office of the Victorian Information Commissioner, Rachel Dixon recently noted that everyday Australians have been actively looking for data in the COVID era, more than any time before. People want to be able to see a dashboard, to access information that can inform them and make their own choices about their wellbeing, family and community day to day. As government practitioners and advocates striving to use data for good, we've looked at what the federal government data landscape looks like, resources from the states and measures within our communities toward growing data maturity.  

State of the Nation   

The Office for National Data Commissioner was established in 2018 and has seen the Data Availability and Transparency Act 2022 into fruition (yes, if you love a good acronym it is literally the 'DATA Scheme'). The 'DATA Scheme' sets out to provide best practices, safeguards and processes to expedite sharing data between agencies in a trust-based model.  It is yet to be seen what the Act will make possible, the aspirations are good but having looked at the requirements to achieve accreditation it brings the question to mind how many agencies are really ready to play. Though, the scheme is new and many look forward to participating in its establishment.   

The Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) have published the Australian Data Strategy which sets out a vision 'to create a national ecosystem of data that is accessible, reliable and relevant and easily used to power our national endeavour and become a modern data driven society by 2030'.  The data strategy underpins the Digital Economy Strategy, sitting alongside that DATA Scheme, cyber strategy and consumer data right.   

The aspirations of the DATA scheme and federal strategy are sound. Though the pundits say that data ubiquity is here, where as the federal strategy suggests we might be ready for it in about a decade. There are some good steps on the action plan and we know these things can take time but it's a long outlook to get started on AI action in 2030.   

State of the States  

Data strategies are prolific across government agencies and state governments have done a reasonably good job of publishing supporting information generally around data that can be adapted and re-used, beyond the strategy. The NSW data policy library is a recommended read, QLD CIO website is a gem of reference material for anyone developing data or privacy content and SA have done a great job of assembling a suite of published toolkits.    

As a practitioner working on the implementation of data governance in a government organisation, a frustration has arisen that there are few repeatable public resources available to support re-use and delivery of data governance. It seems likely that there are countless crews working backstage to make the magic happen and establish data governance but the critical pieces of the machine aren't quite reaching circulation.  

The management of COVID-19 was handled state-by-state and an emerging silver lining may be an increase in interstate sharing of resources, skills and tools. Certainly, each have stretched over the last two years to support citizen wellbeing and it would be a great outcome to see that drive to share permeate the general ethos of state governments as the focus turns back to planned projects and activities.   

State of the Community   

Just this month, the Australian Computer Society (ACS) published the Australian Digital Pulse report and it is significant to note their observation that 'Less than half of all professional workers feel competent with handing digital information and content (43%), problem-solving using data analysis software (28%) and being safe and legal online (29%)'. Throw that in the pot with a growing digital divide where 1 in 4 Australians are digitally excluded and we certainly have a ways to go.   

'Data on its own is no better than piling documents into a box as we have done in the past if you don't have the capability and skills to do anything with it', noted OVIC’s Ms Dixon in a recent conference session. As promising as the strategies are and new data legislation takes place, digital skills need to grow for both the data managers and communities.   

At a Local Government level, many libraries are providing programs and education for community members to navigate data, fill in census forms and adapt to new digital and data led interactions. Living labs are emerging as promising model of purpose driven interaction with people, place and data. If 60-70% of our staff and communities don't feel confident dealing with digital and data, it will be critical to sustain these pathways.  

Cohesion and Acceleration   

A focus and acceleration are needed to develop targets and outcomes that align with the pace of data and emerging technology between industry, Federal, State and Local Government bodies. Our desire to leverage AI and ML technologies won't go far without the data to fuel it, or people who know what to do with it.   

A federal led data playbook and resource library would support a develop-once-use-many framework to jumpstart agencies at all tiers. There are plenty of general recommendations for good data governance, but they're short on detail about what to do once you've hired a CDO, established a data governance committee and put data custodianship into someone's position description.  

More collaboration across the states can support the top tier with alignment of standards. The DATA scheme has set some guardrails for how to make it happen and bringing those gems together that exist in each state could provide an invaluable collective resource for every agency to be ready to collect, store, manage and share an incredibly rich data fabric.  

Data education available to all can equip agencies and organisations to publish it, empower communities to use it. Knowledge sharing and skills tend to exchange on a small scale between networks. How much effort could we save and efficiency could we gain from a coordinated effort to publish resources and training materials that could be created once and used many times by both public servants and our customers?  

Summation of the landscape is varied, but we feel there is a path forward. There are rich deposits beneath the surface and the lucky few have been able to extract what they need to succeed. Government doesn't need to achieve tycoon status, but with a coordinated effort, growth in digital skills and an approach that can iterate along the way we might just found ourselves at the front end of the pack.