The National Disability Data Asset (NDDA): A case study for ANZSOG’s project on co-governance and trust in government

This is one of three case studies that form a larger project to identify methods to operationalise and implement co-governance arrangements. This project is being undertaken by the Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC), UNSW Sydney, funded by the Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG) and the NSW Government.

This case study documents the process of designing and proposing to establish a co-governance arrangement for the enduring National Disability Data Asset (NDDA) by the NDDA Pilot Disability Advisory Council (Pilot DAC). The National Disability Data Asset Pilot project that led to the implementation of the NDDA ran from 2019–2021 (see Box 1 for a description of the NDDA). The pilot involved six participating jurisdictions and was delivered by a National Project Team (hosted by the NSW Department of Premier & Cabinet) and a Technical Project Team (hosted by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare). The Pilot DAC was established in 2020 to advise on the acceptability of the proposed NDDA; however, its scope and the mechanism to deliver this scope, over time grew into a process that had some of the practices that we may expect to see in co-governance arrangements – the key difference being the membership of the group did not include government representatives and it had been established by Ministers as an advisory council, hence this is not co-governance as defined by this project. The Pilot DAC was tasked to deliver recommendations to government on how the asset should be used and any governance or safeguard arrangements that should be in place to build and maintain public trust in the asset. Much of the work of the Pilot DAC occurred during the second half of 2021; Pilot DAC made its final recommendations to government at the completion of the pilot at the end of 2021.

A summary of ANZSOG’s project on co-governance and links to its other outputs can be found here.