Principles for working with community-level data

Three key principles

There are 3 principles for working well with community-level data:

• Capability
• Access
• Data sovereignty 

Build local capability and confidence 

Community leaders have different experiences working with data to tell meaningful stories. To help communities work with data, governments and relevant stakeholders should:

• help communities lead conversations about data and understand what their data needs are
• find opportunities for communities to practice understanding, measuring, evaluation and learning (UMEL) 
• find opportunities to make shared decisions
• recognise the value of data held by community
• use quantitative and qualitative data to share the stories communities want to tell
• build helpful data capability resources with local people
• recognise the different ways communities use data.

Improve access to data 

The Data and Digital Government Strategy(Opens in a new tab/window) sets the future vision for the Australian Government’s use of data. It aims to make data accessible, reliable and relevant by 2030. To help improve access to community-relevant data, Government and relevant stakeholders can:

• provide clear information and advice about requesting data
• understand the data needs of place-based and community-led initiatives
• help build trusted relationships between community and relevant data custodians
• promote policies and processes that that make sharing data simple.

Championing Indigenous Data Sovereignty 

Indigenous Data Sovereignty is about the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to own their data. This includes rights to collect, analyse, manage and share Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander data. 

A definition of Indigenous Data Sovereignty, according to the Maiam Nayri Wingara(Opens in a new tab/window) Indigenous Data Sovereignty Collective, can be found in the glossary.

Government agencies and other stakeholders can support Indigenous Data Sovereignty through the following actions:

• Engage with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leaders and communities to understand their data needs
• Work with National Indigenous Australians Agency (NIAA) and other agencies to support a Whole of Government approach.
• Support efforts to deliver on the Framework for Governance of Indigenous Data(Opens in a new tab/window).
• Build capacity to implement Priority Reform 4 under the National Agreement for Closing the Gap(Opens in a new tab/window). This priority reform is about sharing access to data and information at a regional level.
• Build understanding and a common language about data sovereignty and governance. 
• Share lessons learned with communities.