Our Vision

Our vision is for NSW Government to deliver better outcomes for the community by putting data at the heart of decision-making through a collaborative, coordinated, consistent and safe approach to using and sharing data.   

This will allow us to: 

Accelerate actionable insights that are available to decision makers when they need them. The insights will inform government services, policies and programs and support government decision-making, including in emergency situations, such as natural disasters and public health crises, to deliver better customer experiences and outcomes. We will do this by establishing ways of working that accelerate our ability to safely bring together the right data from trusted sources, generate richer insights more quickly and make them available to decision-makers through self-service and user-friendly data products.    

Treat data as an asset, ensuring we understand the data we have and its value, we manage and protect it effectively and that our investment in data across the sector is strategic and coordinated. We will do this by recognising data as a significant state asset in its own right; aligning on standards and practices to promote consistency and increase the visibility, usability and value of data; making better use of data by developing deidentified enduring data assets that bring together data from across government to enable collective problem-solving; and developing a spend category for government procurement of data and data services to ensure expenditure on data is transparent.   

Strengthen transparency and trust, ensuring we collect, manage, use and share data in accordance with the highest, privacy, security and ethical standards and we release open data, with appropriate safeguards, to promote transparency of government and provide a platform for innovation. We will do this by protecting our customer’s rights, taking a ‘by design’ approach to data projects by assessing privacy, security, and ethical impacts, and aligning with community expectations and the individual and collective interests of Indigenous peoples. We will also consolidate whole of government data policies to accelerate safe use and sharing of data across government, including engaging with the Aboriginal Community to implement Indigenous Data Sovereignty and Indigenous Data Governance principles.  

Foster culture, leadership and capability, ensuring our people understand the importance of using data to inform decisions that impact our community, that they have the skills to use data effectively and safely in their roles, and that we leverage the skills and capabilities of people in specialist data roles effectively. We will do this by fostering strong data leadership through our Chief Data Officers (CDOs) and the NSW Data Leadership Group (NDLG). This will include CDOs leading development of Data Roadmaps for their departments and the NDLG conducting a maturity assessment across the sector to determine baseline data literacy and capability and inform capability building priorities.