NSW Government COVID-19 Data Program

The COVID-19 Data Program (led by the Data Analytics Centre (DAC)) is providing information to improve coordination of the NSW Government’s COVID-19 response. This includes drawing on data from across NSW, the Commonwealth and the private sector and providing insights to the State Emergency Operations Centre, Ministers, Secretaries and Deputy Secretaries and Senior agency staff through: 

• centralised agency and whole of government dashboards and visualisations in order to understand the impact of COVID-19 and inform agency responses and to provide deeper understanding on key initiatives and their impact. 
• supporting enhanced modelling of the health, social and economic impacts of COVID-19, and the effect of government initiatives in response to this; and 
• facilitating data sharing and open data release as well as providing appropriate data governance and management across the Program. 

Publicly accessible data

The NSW Government has made COVID-19 data available to the public where is it is safe to do so. This includes: 

• NSW COVID-19 Heatmap, an interactive map showing COVID-19 cases and numbers of people tested for COVID-19 by postcode to provide the community with an indication of the level of risk in their local area and encourage more people with symptoms to be tested to help stop the spread of the virus. 
• Visualisations of COVID-19 data showing cumulative cases by notification date, number of new cases by notification date and cases and deaths by age group and gender. 
• Open data release of confirmed cases and people tested for COVID-19 to promote government transparency and accountability and community innovation. 

Data protection

A Public Health Order has been made authorising agencies to collect information (including personal and health information) from or use or disclose information to a related agency where necessary for the purposes of protecting the health or welfare of members of the public during the COVID-19 pandemic. This covers NSW government data and the provision of information to the Commonwealth and to the States and Territories. Other Privacy and Personal Information Protection Act 1998 and Health Records and Information Privacy Act 2002 obligations apply. These include securing personal and health information. 

The DAC has strong data governance and security practices. The datasets collected for the COVID-19 Data project contain de-identified and aggregated data only. They do not contain personal or health information. However, before making data publicly available, the DAC has undertaken assessments to measure the risk of re-identifying an individual and the information gained for an individual known to be in the dataset. The data has been treated to mitigate these risks, including suppressing and aggregating data. 

For any enquiries or further information about the COVID-19 Data Program, please contact us on datansw@customerservice.nsw.gov.au