Ombudsman findings reveal government data collection ‘regrettable’ but ‘not meaningful’

South Australia’s Ombudsman has found the use of the campaign tool NationBuilder by the former premier’s office was “inadvertent” and any information collected “most likely could not be used in a meaningful way”.

The use of NationBuilder was the subject of several exclusive ABC stories last year, which revealed that visitors to official government websites had been redirected through a link referencing the Liberal Party’s NationBuilder.

The campaign tool can be used to build a database of individual profiles by collecting email addresses and phone numbers, and through tracking a user’s behaviour across third-party websites.

The former premier Steven Marshall at the time denied the link redirections were collecting any data, and an inquiry by the state’s Privacy Committee later concluded it was “probable” the government did not facilitate unauthorised data collection from government website users.

The Ombudsman Wayne Lines launched his own inquiry last October, to determine whether there was “sufficient evidence” of maladministration or misconduct to warrant an investigation.  

In a statement released on Monday, Mr Lines said “employees of a range of agencies” had copied and pasted hyperlinks from media releases “without understanding the potential implications”.

He said the former premier’s office had “inadvertently” continued using its media email distribution list, managed through the SA Liberal Party’s NationBuilder, once it formed government in March 2018.

“Although it appears that clicking on the relevant hyperlinks produced some form of data which was then sent to the NationBuilder platform, the data itself was a mixture of data from separate users,” he said.

“Given this … it was highly plausible that those hyperlinks were copied and pasted by public officers who had no knowledge or understanding of the data implications.

“It would be very difficult to assess whether the data had been used.”

Mr Lines engaged cyber security expert Dr Vanessa Teague from the Australian National University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science to provide advice on the technology.

He said that “noting the expert advice” he did not believe it to be in the public interest to take further action.

But he said the use of a NationBuilder email distribution list by the former premier’s office was “regrettable”, and “created the perception of public information being used for party-political purposes”.

“The Code of Ethics for the South Australian Public Sector recognises that one of the four foundations of public service is impartiality from political influence,” he said.

“The Ministerial Code of Conduct also requires ministers to uphold the conventions of public service neutrality, respect that the public service is a public resource and refrain from asking public servants to work on party political matters.

“I have released this statement to raise awareness and as a necessary reminder to all political parties of the importance of government resources not being used, or having the appearance of being used, for party-political purposes.”