Health Minister Meegan Fitzharris was told of ACT Health's performance reporting data problems, including the failure to use standards to guide data analysis and extraction, months before the 2016 election.
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Ms Fitzharris and her predecessor Simon Corbell were verbally briefed about the problems as early as May last year, ACT legislative assembly Questions on Notice show.
Despite years of issues with ACT Health's data systems, neither minister detailed the discovery that the directorate was not using any data reporting standards until after the poll.
The lack of standards was previously raised in the Auditor-General's 2015 report on data integrity at ACT Health, which recommended the standards be implemented and found earlier standards drafted in 2013 were still sitting in draft form in 2015.
That audit found there were "no overarching policies and procedures to standardise data collection" across the health directorate's "non-admitted patient areas", ranging from oncology to allied health.
Documents show both ministers were told in March 16 last year about two errors.
One was a "typo" from the December 2014 report but the second was a "variance" from December 2015, the latter of which "led to the discovery that standards were not used to guide consistent data extraction processes".
Mr Corbell answered a series of questions on the issue during budget estimates hearings last year, but did not detail the failure to implement data extraction standards at ACT Health two years after the last Auditor-General's report rec.
The Auditor-General, Maxine Cooper, is still considering whether to launch yet another audit into ACT Health's data systems, with a decision expected mid-2017.
ACT Health has been working since at least July last year with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) for a solution, but has not updated the public on its operational activities since the final quarter of 2015-16.
The latest problems were not related to a data-doctoring scandal dating to 2011 and it remains unclear why the ACT continues to struggle with its health data analysis and reporting systems.
In February, Ms Fitzharris announced a "system-wide review" of ACT Health data, which is due March next year and ACT Auditor-General Maxine Cooper is considering what would be the fourth audit of health data in seven years.
Ms Fitzharris was overseas this week and did not respond directly to a series of questions about the issue, but an ACT Government spokesman reiterated the system-wide review would investigate the issues to report back in March next year.
He said in a statement that improving the data quality processes at ACT Health was a priority and the government "will continue to be open with the community about progress in these matters".
"This includes quarterly reporting to the Legislative Assembly and updating the ACT Auditor-General on our progress on a regular basis," he said.
But Opposition health spokeswoman Vicki Dunne, who asked the questions in the assembly last month, said she believed the lack of information released before the election was "a matter of political expediency".
"I am sceptical that they can fix the problem - they've already spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on contractors, they came out in November saying it was revised and all correct and then by February they launched the latest review," she said.
"They have been quite shifty about who knew what when."
