The value of using and sharing data and insights to achieve better outcomes for the community has been confirmed by the success of the NSW Government’s response to COVID-19. The pandemic required a rapid and data-driven response by NSW Government to the significant health, social and economic impacts. Key success factors included:
- Regular cross-sector engagement and collaboration by senior data and analytics representatives from cluster agencies, united in their response to COVID-19 by regularly sharing information on key data initiatives and collaborating on initiatives that required a cross-sector approach.
- Whole of government coordination and sharing of data and insights across government at unprecedented levels, enabling more rapid access to data and insights to inform health modelling and analysis of the social and economic impacts of COVID-19 and reduced duplication of effort and costs associated with acquiring and procuring data.
- Integration of data and insights from agencies and the private sector into a single secure portal to form a whole of government view of the impact of COVID-19 and provide shared insights to decision-makers across government and to cabinet.
- High responsiveness and transparency through daily public reporting of cases, tests and other insights to provide the information needed by the public to understand the ever-changing situation in their local community, encouraging positive behaviour changes to reduce the spread of the virus.
- Enabling legislation through a public health order authorising the exchange of information between government sector agencies or Ministers, including from the Australian Government or another State or Territory for the purposes of protecting the health or welfare of members of the public during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Strong data governance practices, including secure transmission and storage of data, data sharing agreements and cataloguing of shared data and insights, management and monitoring of user access, and use of privacy enhancing technology to assess privacy risks before releasing open data.
Last updated 07 Jun 2021