Recap: Right to Know Week NSW 2022

Right to Know Week (RTK) NSW 2022 aims to raise awareness of a person’s right to access government held information in NSW and public sector agencies’ information access obligations under the Government Information (Public Acess) Act 2009 (GIPA Act).

This year’s RTK (26 Sep – 2 Oct 2022) focused on Artificial Intelligence, e-Governance & Access to Information: Next steps in NSW digital government.

Right to Know Week 2022 activities 

Community Attitudes Survey into information access, agency assistance and data sharing

On 29 September, the Information Commissioner published the results of the Information and Privacy Commission’s (IPC) latest survey of NSW community attitudes towards information access, agency assistance and data sharing.

The survey has been undertaken biannually since 2014 and the results provide a broad and indicative sense of citizen’s attitudes to accessing government information, attempts to obtain information by any means across 5 government sectors (including formal access applications), and provides data regarding citizens experience of obtaining information and interacting with government agencies.

Overall, the majority of respondents (89%) agreed that having the right to access government information was important. This is the highest level since 2016.

See the full list of findings in the IPC’s media release on the results.

RTK 2022 Resources

The IPC released and highlighted various resources this Right to Know Week:

Citizens

• New IPC animation – e-Governance and Digital Government
• New IPC animation – Artificial Intelligence, e-Governance and Access to Information

Agencies

• Information Governance Agency Self-assessment Tools
• Fact Sheet on Automated decision-making and preserving information access rights – for agencies
• Fact Sheet on Automated decision-making and preserving information access rights – for citizens
• Fact Sheet on Digital records and the GIPA Act
• Fact Sheet on Timeframes and extensions for deciding access applications under the GIPA Act
• Fact Sheet on Creating new records under the GIPA Act
• Fact Sheet on Open access information for agencies
• Fact Sheet on What is an agency?
• Fact Sheet on What is the public interest test?
• Digital Restart Fund: assessing information access and privacy impacts

RTK 2022 Champion Program

This year a total of 54 agencies joined the RTK Champion Program to support Right to Know Week. The IPC would like to thank Champions for helping raise awareness of a person’s right to government held information and encouraging citizens to take an active interest in their right to access information.

Although Right to Know Week NSW 2022 has ended, the importance of promoting information access rights continues all year round.

As governments continue to provide digital solutions to citizens including the use of Artificial Intelligence in decision-making, there is a requirement to preserve and promote the public interest, accountability, transparency and citizens’ right to information.

The IPC can assist NSW citizens in accessing government held information. Learn more in our information access resources for citizens.