Infrastructure projects create large amounts of data, and governments and industry can easily capture the value of their existing and future datasets for reuse or sharing.
Each time this happens, there is a downstream productivity and efficiency benefit for other infrastructure stakeholders and end users:
• engineering designs can be reused on similar projects, saving costs
• the costs of materials and equipment can inform benchmarks that improve value for money
• asset performance data can inform future investments.
To unlock these benefits, governments should encourage delivery departments and agencies to adopt better data management practices. These practices should include the collection, use and storage of structured data sets that allow for use by others in the asset lifecycle and shared with other stakeholders, including the public.
Data management practices in the infrastructure sector should follow the good progress made by governments in open data more broadly.
The transition towards digital by default may be impeded by legal or commercial challenges, such as data sharing, privacy, ownership or security. These challenges are can be overcome with quality processes, systems and due diligence.108 For more information about the importance of due diligence, see Reform 3.2 in the 2021 Plan.