Stuart Robert considers ‘sovereign cloud’ to hold Australians’ data from COVIDSafe app, Census

The Morrison government may establish a ‘sovereign cloud’ to hold Australians’ data, including from the COVIDSafe app.

The Morrison government may establish a “sovereign cloud” to hold the data of Australians in a bid to protect personal information from overseas governments and companies.

Government Services Minister Stuart Robert will also flag a new platform to be run by the Digital Transformation Agency that could potentially be used for visa processing.

In excerpts previewing his address to the National Press Club on Tuesday, Mr Robert says Australians made it clear they expected government to “respect their privacy and have their data stored, secured and protected here, in Australia”.

The American-based Amazon Web Services was controversially awarded the contract to host data from the government’s COVIDSafe app, sparking fears the US government may be able to access Australians’ sensitive information.

“I can announce we are examining the sovereignty requirements that should apply to certain data sets held by government,” Mr Robert will say.

“This will include considering whether certain data sets of concern to the public should be declared sovereign data sets and should only be hosted in Australia, in an accredited Australian data centre, across Australian networks and only accessed by the Australian government and our Australian service providers.

“We need to ensure that Australians can trust that government will appropriately manage the information that they provide to us, whether it is for a tracing app or for the census.”

Mr Robert will confirm there have been seven updates to the COVIDSafe app addressing more than 30 potential bugs and “areas for improvement raised by the tech industry”.

There will also be a new platform for Australians to use in order to apply for government documents, such as a visa.

Labor claims the government wants to privatise Australia’s visa processing system and up to 2000 jobs could be sent offshore.

This has been rejected by the Department of Home Affairs.

“Government is also developing a new whole-of-government permissions and permits platform which will leverage previous work in this key area and which will deliver a modern visas and permits processing capability as a priority,” Mr Robert will say.

“This project, run by the DTA and reporting to me, is a government priority.”

It is not clear what company will create the new platform.