Never before has more data been held about us by government or companies that we interact with and never before has this data been so used, or so useful for analytical purposes. 
In order to maintain a social licence for this data to be used for research and policy purposes, it is important to monitor the changing views of the public towards how data is used, stored and shared.

In this survey, the 27th in the ANUPoll series, we asked a representative sample of Australian residents a range of questions about their views and attitudes towards data governance in Australia.

Although there is generally a high level of support for government to use and share data, there is much less confidence that the current government has the right safeguards in place or can be trusted with people’s data.

If government, researchers and private companies want to make use of the richness of new types and sources of data, there is an urgent and continuing need to build up trust across the population and to put policies in place that reassure consumers and users of government services that data can be stored and managed with appropriate security and access safeguards in place.

About the poll

ANUpoll is conducted for The Australian National University (ANU) by the Social Research Centre, an ANU Enterprise business. The poll surveys a national random sample of the adult population (using the ‘Life in Australia’ panel), and is conducted via the Internet (88 per cent of respondents) and phone (12 per cent of respondents). The use of this mixed-mode frame is to ensure coverage of households without Internet access.

In this poll, 2,150 people were interviewed between the 19th of November and the 3rd of December, 2018. Among individuals who received the survey (ie members of the ‘Life in Australia’ panel), a completion rate of 77 per cent was achieved. Taking into account the recruitment rate to the panel, the cumulative response rate is calculated as nine per cent. The results have been weighted to represent the national population. The poll’s margin of error is ± 2.5 per cent.

Suggested citation: N Biddle, B Edwards, M Gray, and S McEachern ANU Poll 27 Public attitudes towards data governance in Australia, [Computer file]. Canberra: Australian Data Archive, The Australian National University, 2019.

ANUPoll data is available from the Australian Data Archive.

http://dx.doi.org/10.26193/XHORAI