ABS moves on census privacy

Names and addresses collected for the national census may no longer be kept for four years.

ABS head David Kalisch. Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar has confirmed he won’t have his five-year term extended in December. Picture: Kym Smith

The names and addresses of Australians, collected for the national census, may no longer be stored for four years, after the Australian Bureau of Statistics appointed cyber security experts Galexia to manage privacy concerns ahead of the next national survey in 2021.

The appointment of Sydney-based Galexia, which has done work for dozens of government agencies and departments, follows a significant degree of privacy concerns aired before the botched census three years ago.

Ahead of the 2016 census, the ABS decided to retain all the names and addresses it had collected for four years, rather than 18 months, to help government planners do more thorough studies of trends in society.

Consultancy PwC has already been named to deliver the online platform for the 2021 census after the implosion of the online system during the 2016 survey, which was taken offline after a series of cyber-attacks, known as distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks.

The DDOS attacks meant millions of Australians were unable to fill out the online forms for the census. Later, reviews by the Australian Cyber Security Centre and a senate committee found contractor IBM had failed to test a recovery process for the cloud-based infrastructure.

Following the cyber-attacks, there were fears that Australians would give false information to the census to protect their privacy.

Galexia will now publish a privacy impact assessment in late 2020, which will identify potential privacy impacts of the census and recommend ways to manage these risks. The assessment will also inform how long the ABS will retain names and addresses from the 2021 Census.

“We are taking a ‘privacy by design’ approach to planning and conducting the Census,” said ABS General Manager of the Census Division, Chris Libreri. “This ensures the privacy of individuals is considered at every step, right across the program.”

“An important part of the assessment process, for Galexia, will be wide-ranging external stakeholder consultation. This will help identify privacy risks and concerns, and ensure appropriate mitigation strategies are in place,” Mr Libreri said.

This week, Assistant Treasurer Michael Sukkar confirmed the head of the ABS David Kalisch would not have his five-year term extended in December. Mr Kalisch had served as the Australian Statistician since December 2014.