Abstract

Never before have more data been held about us by government or companies that we interact with, and never before have those data been so used, or so useful for analytical purposes. The development of legislation, and the regulatory and oversight framework governing the use of these personal data is a challenge, as is the development of the data infrastructure, policies and practices within any framework that is set. An important consideration with regard to data governance is community attitudes, and ensuring that government and commercial entities do not get too far ahead of (or lag) community attitudes. In this survey, the 27th in the ANUPoll series, we asked a representative sample of Australian residents a range of questions about their views and attitudes towards data governance in Australia. Although there is generally a high level of support for government to use and share data, there is much less confidence that the Australian Government has the right safeguards in place or can be trusted with people’s data. If government, researchers and private companies want to make use of the richness of new types and sources of data, there is an urgent and continuing need to build up trust across the population, and to put policies in place that reassure consumers and users of government services that data can be stored and managed with appropriate security and access safeguards in place.

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