Submission: Data Availability and Transparency Bill

The Allens Hub has made a submission to the Office of the National Data Commissioner on the exposure draft of the Data Availability and Transparency Bill and explanatory materials, and an Accreditation Framework discussion paper. 

The submission was made following a roundtable hosted by the Hub which involved a variety of industry experts.

The Hub’s submission was not intended as a comprehensive response to all the issues raised by the Bill. We thus focused on the following propositions:

• A reference to accountability should be inserted into the Bill’s Objects. This would strengthen the functionality of existing safeguards and ensure accountability plays a central interpretive role.
• Private sector organisations seeking to use data for research should be required to prove a rigorous ethics process before being granted accreditation.
• Accreditation of foreign entities should be subject to proof that the relevant foreign country has a comparable privacy law framework.
• A tiered roll out of the data scheme should be considered to ensure the mechanics of the Bill operate effectively and as expected.
• Clause 15(4) should be removed from the Bill. In the alternative, it should be expressly distinguished from other permissible purposes in the mandatory terms of the DSA to reflect its true relationship with enforcement related activities.
• Further, the definition of “enforcement related purpose” should be clarified.
• Details of interaction with other legislation should be published, ideally within the Bill.
• Requirements on termination of a project or suspension of an accredited entity should be specified.
• Transparency and accountability should be enhanced through additional language in privacy policies and a requirement for data scheme entities to raise complaints.
• The scope of guidelines should be amended to cover data procurement and pre-processing.

A pdf copy of the submission is here

The Office of the National Data Commissioner has published the public submissions here, including the Hub's submission which is listed at number 48.