Opening Access to Indigenous Data in Australia

The Australian Social Science Data Archive has decentralised its national role and developed a distributed model, with archive nodes established across our country. This distributed model allows nodes to specialise in data where access may be blocked, but there exists a critical mass of researchers who are able to open data, add value and ensure sustainability. One such data type is that of Indigenous data. The Indigenous population in Australia is small and highly disadvantaged. Data collected by government are treated with the utmost sensitivity to protect both the population and the government from criticism. But even within those groups working to improve the conditions of Australia's Indigenous population, there is a level of protectiveness and restrictiveness which sees data blocked to those outside the immediate network. This paper will investigate methods used in ASSDA's pilot project to get stakeholder buy-in and establish an open source of Indigenous data