Business must tone down its lust for big data Posted on : Jan 15 - 2018

Privacy is a human right, and businesses need to remember that. So do governments.

It should come as no surprise that when key industry bodies write submissions to government consultations they're self-serving. That's what such lobby groups are for, right?

But in its submission to the current consultation on developing a national Digital Economy Strategy, the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) has gone beyond the usual bleatings about tax breaks, more "flexible" employment conditions, and a call for the the government to pay for the vocational training that businesses have long since stopped doing for themselves.

The ACCI wants more access to government data.

"Other governments, such as the United Kingdom and Canada, are ahead of the Australian government in terms of open data," the ACCI writes in its submission [PDF].

"It is vital for businesses to have access to cohesive and complete public datasets. Datasets provided by the government that are more complete can, in turn, produce more accurate analytics, drive efficiencies and productivity in both the public and private sectors. If the range and breadth of raw government data increased, it would encourage digital integration between the public and private sector in Australia."

Leaving aside the question of whether such access really is "vital" rather than merely "useful", we should remember that it has been collected at taxpayers' expense. Nowhere does the ACCI suggest that businesses might pay for it, however. Nor do they suggest a modest increase in the corporate tax rate. Of course.

The ACCI also calls for more system integration and interoperability between government agencies, so that "data would be requested from businesses only once ... This could also be expanded to include data exchange capabilities between different international jurisdictions".

There are barriers to overcome, of course. The ACCI identifies, for example, "legislative restrictions; a culture of risk aversion; lack of national leadership for data sharing and release; and, [that] the extent of productive linking and integration of datasets varies substantially across jurisdictions." View More