Data.NSW supports Right to Know Week NSW (RTK) from 27 September to 3 October this year.
Right to Know Week aims to encourage both NSW public sector agencies and citizens to improve applied knowledge of the Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009 (GIPA Act), and to raise awareness of a person’s right to access government held information in NSW.
The 2021 theme is ‘Open by Design: integrity through greater transparency and accountability in government’. Citizens expect government decision-making to be open, transparent and accountable. Open by Design requires agencies to actively address access to all forms of information from the inception of any initiative. Embedding access, transparency and accountability from the outset means better information governance and a more open government.
Ten years of GIPA Act data
This week the Information Commissioner has released a report with key findings and analysis from 10 years’ of GIPA data since inception of the Act. The report offers key insights and recommendations to ensure that the Right to Know is preserved in NSW.
The GIPA Act requires agencies to identify and report on the kinds of information held by the agency and to describe the ways in which decision-making functions affect members of the public.
Read more: https://www.ipc.nsw.gov.au/RTK2021
Open by Design & Open Data: COVID-19 Health Statistics
Open Data is an important aspect of Open Government that provides the public with access to information in a variety of formats. Better decisions, better services and better customer experiences are being achieved by responsibly sharing data.
Greater availability of data held by government increases transparency and openness.
Data.NSW as part of the Data Analytics Centre has been working with NSW Health to make the latest case numbers, vaccination totals and statistics on COVID-19 in NSW publicly available and regularly updated online.
Information available includes the numbers of new cases, heatmaps of cases, tests and vaccinations by postcode and LGA in NSW, case and vaccination breakdowns, and totals to date. There are publicly available datasets including COVID-19 case datasets, COVID-19 test datasets, clinics and case locations, public transport routes, flights and more.
See the COVID-19 open data on the NSW Government website: https://www.nsw.gov.au/covid-19/find-the-facts-about-covid-19