Former ACS President Dr Ian Oppermann will play a key role in consumer protection and competition policy, having been appointed to a five-year position as one of four commissioners at watchdog the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC).
He will take the place of commissioner Peter Crone, an experienced economist who was appointed in 2020 and chaired the organisation’s Digital ID and Consumer Data Right (CDR) Committee but opted not to renew his contract for a second term.
Valuable experience
Oppermann – who has an MBA from the University of London and a PhD in Mobile Telecommunications from the University of Sydney – was the inaugural NSW Government chief data scientist, helping establish the NSW Data Analytics Centre in 2015.
He stayed in that role for nearly eight years, during which time he also spent three years as Vice President of the ACS Technical Advisory Board, chaired the Telecommunications Board and served as ACS President from 2020 to 2021 – steering it through COVID-19’s disruption.
More recently, Oppermann was Data Standards’ chair for Digital ID and CDR, building specialised skills that will inform his work at the ACCC – whose CDR Committee manages accreditation of data recipients, compliance and enforcement, and exemption requests.
A fellow of the Institute of Engineers Australia, IEEE, Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering and Royal Society of NSW, Oppermann has co-authored over 120 papers and contributed to six books, and is president of the IEC’s JTC1 advisory committee.
His expertise and achievements, which also include work around smart cities and the NSW AI Assurance Framework and presidency of the IEC’s Australia National Committee, secured him a spot on the global 2022 Top 100 Innovators in Data and Analytics list.
The newly appointed commissioner will bring “technological and data acumen, including around the use of AI in government,” ACCC chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said in announcing Oppermann’s appointment.
Calling him “a respected thought leader in the digital economy,” she continued, “his contributions will be invaluable in helping to drive innovation at the ACCC and our data-driven approach to regulation.”
Setting the pace for the next five years
ACCC policy is led by an ACCC Commission comprising a chair, two deputy chairs, and four commissioners, with seven sub-committees overseeing enforcement, merger reviews, telecoms competition, infrastructure access, compliance and product safety, and more.
Oppermann’s appointment comes as ACCC ramps up pressure on the digital services and telecoms markets, with its five-year Digital Platform Services Inquiry recently concluding, supermarkets scrutinised and major fines levied against Telstra, Google, Qantas, and Optus.
It has cracked down on business misrepresentation and anti-consumer practices, and pursued increasingly aggressive enforcement of CDR policies, fining the NAB $751,200 in June for inaccurate CDR data and the Bank of Queensland $133,200 for breaking CDR rules.
Oppermann’s experience with CDR – and his ongoing interest in its success – will make him a key support for such enforcement efforts, as well as ongoing work to bolster wan take-up of the service by making the technical framework more flexible and responsive.
CDR is just one of many ACCC priorities outlined by Cass-Gottlieb in a wide ranging speech earlier this year, in which she spoke of “concerning conduct” by digital giants, consumers hurt by market power abuses, and a “robust pipeline of matters under investigation”.
“Our complementary mandates across competition, fair trading and consumer law compliance and enforcement,” she said, “support the community to participate with trust and confidence in commercial life and promote proper functioning of Australian markets.”
As well as welcoming Oppermann, ACCC reappointed commissioner Anna Brakey, a career economist who chairs its Infrastructure and Communications Committee and Energy Markets Board and is deputy chair of the Water and Agriculture Committee.
