The Australian Library and Information Association strongly applauds the move by the Government to provide access to its many data sets, while understanding and respecting data security and privacy issues.
The data held by Commonwealth Government agencies is enormously important to Australians and access will provide significant benefits to citizen engagement and responsiveness. Greater use of data can contribute to national productivity, development of innovative services, education, research and other social benefits. In many ways the government is custodian of data that belongs to Australians, and should consider data management policy in this light.
Maximum benefit from increased availability of data can only be achieved if the data (government and other, such as that held by universities) is aggregated and made available with significant computer resources for data manipulation and analysis. We encourage you to consider architectures and access in light of the need for interoperability and aggregation.
