Data is a powerful tool to improve services and should be shared to make informed decisions that deliver better outcomes for the community and support innovative research. The WA Government promotes responsible information sharing, ethical data use, and safe adoption of AI to enhance innovation and service delivery.
What this priority could mean for you in the future
As a parent with a young child starting school, you interact with health, education and family support services. Instead of each service working separately, the WA Government can safely bring together de-identified information to understand how children in your community are doing overall. This helps services identify needs earlier and provide better support, without identifying individual families.
Through trusted data assets such as PeopleWA, information from different services is brought together securely. PeopleWA supports research, earlier planning and better funding decisions, such as informing health service planning, providing targeted family support or investing in wellbeing initiatives.
As a result, when you engage with services for your child, support is more connected, reflects what is happening in your community, and is planned with better evidence, while your information remains protected through strong controls and oversight.
Objectives
3.1 Streamlined data sharing
We want to drive better decision-making and deliver improved outcomes across the WA Government.
Data is the key to delivering seamless public services, improving community outcomes, and supporting nation-leading research in WA. When government agencies share data in the public interest with other agencies, researchers or community services, it strengthens the WA Government’s capacity to evaluate, design and improve services that support our communities.
3.2 Responsible use of AI and new technologies
We want to safely adopt new technologies that deliver real value for the community.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies can transform the quality and capacity of government services for the benefit of the community. The WA Government is proactively harnessing these innovations to boost productivity, ensuring they are used safely, responsibly, and with clear purpose. This involves identifying high-value, scalable AI use cases to improve services and accelerate innovation.
3.3 Building data-sharing and governance capabilities
We want to maintain public trust by having mechanisms to handle data with care, clarity and accountability.
The WA Government is implementing clear and consistent policies, standards, and procedures for collection, use, sharing, and integration of data. These frameworks ensure secure and consistent data management, facilitate responsible data sharing and interoperability across agencies, and enable informed decision-making to enhance service delivery and public outcomes.
How we are delivering on these objectives
Streamlined data sharing
The WA Government is building a digital Central Information Point to support shared access to sensitive information across key agencies that support family and domestic violence services and response. The initiative breaks down data silos, enables more coordinated and timely service responses, and embeds consistent rules and formal governance for information sharing in the public interest.
WA Government is also working to expand the PeopleWA data sharing platform to further enable the streamlined access to and use of de-identified government data for the benefit of society. PeopleWA supports government agencies, researchers, the community sector and Aboriginal Community Controlled Organisations to address the most complex social, health, environmental and economic issues in WA.
Responsible use of AI and new technologies
The WA Government is establishing a $10 million AI Investment Fund and an AI Uplift Team to help government agencies safely adopt AI where it delivers real value. These investments will focus on practical, high‑impact uses of AI that can be scaled across government, supporting better services, improved decision‑making and more efficient operations for the benefit of the community. By building central capability and clear governance, the WA Government will ensure AI is used responsibly, ethically and with strong safeguards, while enabling agencies to share solutions, reuse proven approaches and learn from each other.
Building data sharing and governance capabilities
The WA Government, through the Office of Digital Government’s Data Unit, will continue to unlock the value of data to support progress on key state priorities such as health care, housing, and safe and inclusive communities.
With the Privacy and Responsible Information Sharing (PRIS) Act 2024 coming into effect on 1 July, and following several years of preparation across government, the focus is shifting from establishing governance settings to actively enabling data sharing. The Office of Digital Government will work directly with agencies to put data sharing into practice to support timely, lawful and purposeful information sharing that improves services and outcomes for the community.
Print this page
