The ACT's opposition will formally call on the territory government to undertake an external review into the release of a spreadsheet with sensitive health data of nearly 30,000 territory public servants.
Opposition Leader Elizabeth Lee will call on the government to establish an independent review of the breach which was revealed by The Canberra Times last week.
Ms Lee's motion will say the spreadsheet's release led to a loss of confidence in the ACT government to protect the confidentiality of workers and it has caused "significant distress" to employees caught up in the breach.
"This incident is very distressing for the public servants whose personal information was posted for public viewing on the Tenders ACT website," she said.
"We need to ensure that a data breach of this magnitude does not happen again. There is no doubt this breach has led to a loss of confidence of the ACT Labor-Greens governments ability to protect employee confidentiality."
The spreadsheet was uploaded to the ACT government's website in 2018 and it remained there until last week. It contained the details of compensation claims from 1989 to 2018.
The names and birth dates of the claimants were removed but it contained other information, including the injury data and type, location on the body and financial compensation received. Individuals birth years, gender and occupation details, including the directorate they were employed in and their job title were also included.
The ACT government has already committed to undertaking an internal review of the spreadsheet's release to determine whether a privacy breach has taken place.
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But there have been calls to investigate the matter further. The firefighters' union has called for the breach to be referred the Australian information commissioner.
Deputy Opposition Leader Giulia Jones has also written to the ACT's health services commissioner about conducting an urgent investigation into the release of the data.
Ms Lee's motion will call on the government to table the findings of the review by September next year.
"Governments hold sensitive information on many of their citizens; we need to make sure that there are whole of government processes to protect that data," she said.
"If this Labor-Greens government has nothing to hide, it should have no problem with agreeing to an independent external review."
