Responsibility for the Australian government’s key data platforms has been moved under one roof at the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA).
The management of the http://data.gov.au/ and NationalMap platforms, which now host more than 28,000 and 10,000 datasets respectively, will move from the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet to the DTA.
NationalMap provides map-based access to spatial data from Australian government agencies, while data.gov.au provides a central catalogue to discover public data. The main purpose of data.gov.au is to encourage public access to and reuse of public data. It also provides hosting for tabular, spatial and relational data with hosted APIs and the option for agencies to link data and services hosted by other government sources.
In the past month, approximately 52,000 users have visited data.gov.au and 12,000 users have visited the NationalMap.
Assistant Minister for Cities and Digital Transformation, Angus Taylor, said Government was streamlining its approach to delivering high-value platforms.
“The DTA works on many whole-of-government solutions and it makes sense to roll over these data platforms which interact closely with work the DTA already does,” Assistant Minister Taylor said.
The Assistant Minister also said that GovPass is in Beta phase and the benefits of the technology will be shared publicly in the coming months. He said, “Through Govpass, Australians will be able to easily and safely prove who they are when using government services online. A simple task like applying for a tax file number will be reduced from about 30 days to a matter of minutes.” The 2017-18 Budget committed AU$15.2 million to continue development of the Government’s Govpass platform.
The Budget also committed AU$33.6 million to develop four additional platforms that can be shared across government, including a ‘Tell us Once’ option, to allow Australians to update their details just once and share this information with agencies and service providers of their choice.
