Open AccessCollecting, Sharing and Utilising Data to Inform Decision-making and Improve Equality
Author(s) -
Dominique Allen
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
law in context
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1839-4183
pISSN - 0811-5796
DOI - 10.26826/law-in-context.v37i2.152
Subject(s) - obligation , government (linguistics) , project commissioning , publishing , incentive , enforcement , information sharing , private information retrieval , business , public relations , internet privacy , inequality , law and economics , public administration , law , political science , economics , computer science , computer security , philosophy , linguistics , microeconomics , mathematical analysis , mathematics
Although we live in an era in which government and private organisations collect large amounts of data, this has not filtered through to anti-discrimination and equality law in Australia. Government and its agencies have little incentive to collect information, nor does business. Neither group bears any obligation to tackle discrimination if they detect it. Yet the self-regulating enforcement model used in equality law is premised on the idea that information will be available to aid voluntary compliance. This article examines the nature of the data organisations that are currently required to collect and identify significant information gaps. It argues that it is not enough to simply fill those gaps with information; increased data collection needs to be accompanied by the obligation to address inequality if that is what the data reveals.