The Data Availability and Transparency Act 2022 (Cth) (DAT Act) is an Act of the Australian Parliament that authorises and regulates access to data held by the Australian Government.
The Australian Parliament passed the Act into law in March 2022. The Act came into effect on 1 April 2022.Keelara, R. and P. Haywood (2023), "Building the data and digital foundations of health systems", in Ready for the Next Crisis? Investing in Health System Resilience, OECD Publishing, Paris, . page 386
The Act creates a public-sector data sharing scheme that permits Australian Government (Commonwealth) bodies to share their data with other Commonwealth bodies, Australian state or territory government bodies, or Australian universities; these entities must be accredited, before they can obtain and use the data.Katie Logos, Russell Brewer, Colette Langos, Bryce Westlake, Establishing a framework for the ethical and legal use of web scrapers by cybercrime and cybersecurity researchers: learnings from a systematic review of Australian research, International Journal of Law and Information Technology, Volume 31, Issue 3, Autumn 2023, Pages 186–212, https://doi.org/10.1093/ijlit/eaad023
The Act requires that any sharing of data under the scheme must:
be for one or more of the permitted data sharing purposes; be consistent with data sharing principles; and within a data sharing agreement. The Act specifically precludes sharing of data under the scheme for law enforcement-related purposes or national security purposes. If the shared data includes personal information, privacy protections also apply.
The Act permits sharing of data under the scheme for three purposes only:
delivery of government services; informing government policy and programs; and research and development.
The Act establishes a National Data Commissioner to be the regulator of this data sharing scheme.
External links
Office of the National Data Commissioner
References