The rapid development of data and digital technologies creates significant opportunities to improve APS processes and make smart and sustainable investments.
The Australian Government has committed to developing a whole-of-government Data Governance Framework to define common rules, processes, and accountabilities for adoption across the APS to ensure privacy and compliance of government data is maintained.
It will be a key initiative providing APS agencies with direction on how to ensure the quality, integrity, security, discoverability, accessibility, and useability of data assets.
The Framework will be released in 2025-26 centred on four foundational pillars of data governance: data quality; data privacy; data authority; and data innovation.
Prior to the release of the framework, we need to absorb and address the latest report between the Governance Institute of Australia and Macquarie University’s DataX Research Centre found a majority of 345 CEOs/C-suite executives, non-executive directors, and senior governance and risk professionals surveyed were not positive about how their organisation manages and protects important data, with 57% describing it as ‘average’ and 4% as ‘poor’.
- Almost 60% say the board does not have an understanding of the organisation’s current data governance challenges.
- The standout risk around data governance is cyber-attacks, followed by emergent technologies and AI.
- Siloed data holdings, underestimating the value of data and not having proper data governance frameworks are key issues for organisations
- A third of organisations don’t have data governance on the risk register
- Just under a third of organisations regularly purge data, mostly on an annual basis.
The report serves as a wake-up call, revealing a concerning lack of board understanding and substantial gaps in data governance frameworks, and a need to connect the dots between Ai and tech investment > implementation and impact.
Data: Governance, Integrity, Literacy, Protection, Ethics and Artificial intelligence
