A parliamentary inquiry has recommended Australia sign up to the Cloud Act agreement, which would allow for Australian agencies to get electronic data that's hosted in the US when it related to serious offences.
The treaty would also allow for US authorities to access data from Australian organisations.
The agreement will reduce delays that to obtain evidence in relation to offences such as terrorism, child exploitation and human trafficking.
As part of the conditions of the treaty, both Australia's parliament and the US Congress needed to review it before it came into effect.
Australia was only the second country after the UK to sign an agreement with the US in order to access the data.
"For Australia, the Cloud Act Agreement would complement but significantly improve on the current mutual legal assistance treaty process for the acquisition of data held by US communications service providers," a parliamentary report into the treaty said.
"In so doing, it has the potential to substantially reduce the time frames for the acquisition of relevant data relating to the commission of a serious offence."
The report said there was a need for the agreement due to the growth of communication services that aren't based in Australia being used for serious crime.
Under previous arrangements, it could take more than a year for the data to be provided to Australian authorities from the US.
"The complexity of a matter and the nature of the assistance sought mean requests can take between three months and two years," the report said.
"The current processes for obtaining data from US communications service providers under the (current) process can be cumbersome and not necessarily suited to modern communications, data storage, and cloud computing."
Permission would be needed from the Australian government if evidence was to be used in a case that resulted in the death penalty in the US.
Greens senator Dorinda Cox, who was part of the parliamentary inquiry, said "independent authorities" should be removed from the agreement, with only courts, judges and magistrates providing oversight.
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