This appeared last week!
Senate committee red-flags govt data sharing bill
By Justin Hendry on Feb 5, 2021 6:55AM
Over privacy concerns.
The federal government’s proposed data sharing laws have stumbled at the first hurdle despite two years of development, with a senate committee raising a series of privacy concerns with the Data Availability and Transparency Bill.
The bill, which was introduced to parliament in December, aims to make it easier for the public sector to share data within government and across the private sector for the purposes of delivering government services and support research and development.
It intends to unlock data with a scheme that gives agencies an optional pathway to share data with accredited entities, overriding some 500 data secrecy and confidentiality provisions in 175 pieces of existing legislation.
Personal information and sensitive data collected by agencies, except sensitive data handled under other legislation (think My Health Record, COVIDSafe app, national security), is potentially sharable under the scheme.
Under the bill, agencies are required to seek consent before releasing personal information unless unreasonable or impractical – an improvement on an earlier version that only encouraged consent to be sought.
But in its first pass review of the legislation, the bipartisan senate standing committee for the scrutiny of bills last week said it was concerned by the “significant amount of flexibility in the meaning of ‘unreasonable or impracticable’”.
Lots more here:
https://www.itnews.com.au/news/senate-committee-red-flags-govt-data-sharing-bill-560668
It seems the legislation has been referred to a Senate Committee for further discussion and review and I can only say that seems pretty sensible. I have the feeling it should be rather tightened up and clarified before being dropped as law on an unsuspecting public!
Will be interesting to see what the Senate Committee comes back with!
David.
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