E-health pros, and privacy concerns

This article in the Sydney Morning Herald today has a close look at the Government's e-health plans, with $466 million on the table and enthusiastic support from some medical circles as well as privacy advocates' fear of "a stalking horse for another run at a national identity card. They also fear e-health records will mean Big Brother peeking through the keyhole of a very private place: the consulting room."(Update: Health Minister says safeguards are in place.)

ID card back on Opposition's agenda

So reports The Age, but just what's involved and how this fits with a decision to shelve e-health record plans until good economic times, who knows?

Smartcard not an ID card

Cartoon by Ron Tanberg for The Age

Terrific that the Australian Financial Review is at last providing access to some free content.

As a result we can tell you that the Federal Government is on the job looking at ways to tackle welfare fraud, and has left room for smartcard technology. But Human Services Minister Joe Ludwig has made it clear that the former government's access/ID card is off the agenda: "We are not considering reviving the Liberal's billion dollar access card".

Julian Bajkowski provides a good summary of the state of play.

National Access Card binned

Due to other distractions, I missed this article in The Australian that says the Government has moved quickly to scrap the National Access Card project. After all the fuss over the last year, its demise was a strangely silent process. Can I hear in the distance the sound of lawyers arguing over cancelled contracts?

Much deserved self congratulation over at the Australian Privacy Foundation.

National Access Card on the chopping block?

According to this report in Australian IT, the ALP will scrap the National Access Card project entirely if elected on 24 November. No doubt some anxiety for those with large contract bids still swinging in the wind almost 12 months after tenders were called.

All quiet on this issue on the Government's part so far.

Smartcard an answer still looking for the problem?

We've heard from all sides of politics already on just every issue you could imagine and the election campaign hasn't even started yet. One issue that is probably not going to be up in lights if the Government can help it is the National Access Card proposal. It deferred the next round of legislation and the election will determine whether it gets the chance to take this step.

The Auditor General this week released a report - Proof of Identity for Accessing Centrelink Payments

It's all pretty dry stuff but according to an article in yesterday's Australian Financial Review "Finding weakens smartcard case" (no link available) buried away in the report is a finding that there is no evidence of identity fraud among Centrelink's customers or internal fraud by staff. These were important elements of the case for the National Access Card project. The KPMG report that identified the problems and produced the cost benefit for the proposal has never been released.

The Auditor General identified plenty of problems with proof of identity in Centrelink but the AFR article suggests the smartcard in some respects is still an answer looking for a problem.

Privacy expert says access card dead in the water

Australian privacy expert and Chair of the Australian Privacy Foundation, Roger Clarke, made it pretty clear in a recent address to the AFR GovTech Conference in Canberra, that the National Access Card has all the hallmarks of a monumental failure and is going nowhere.

He says that the people around the Minister responsible realise it's an unmitigated disaster and have shunted it into a siding:

"The big Booz Allen Hamilton contract will be paid out. But the tenderers for the big contracts can pack up and go home now and the public servants can go hunting for their next jobs. That will save us as taxpayers, a cool billion dollars that would have been sadly wasted if the project had proceeded".

At least we can be confident we won't hear much about it (from the Government at least) with a Federal election only months away.

Audit scrutiny for National Access Card

According to AustralianIT the Federal Auditor General is planning to audit the administrative processes undertaken in the Natioanl Access Card project. As Senator Stott-Despoja says, this could prove to be interesting particularly in the light of the expenditure of large amounts of public money before major details have been settled, and long before the legislative package has been presented to Parliament.

No special body to manage Access Card

There will be no separate government agency to administer the Access Card program. The Federal Government has rejected recommendations that an independent authority be responsible.

The draft legislation released for comment proposes the establishment of an Access Card Ombudsman, for complaints, and independent review by the Administrative Appeals Tribunal.

Draft Access Card Bill hits the deck

On the last day of this session of Federal Parliament the Government quietly released to the media the draft Access Card Bill. It says it has beefed up privacy provisions, but the police and intelligence services will have access to the database without the need for a warrant.

Other concerns are sure to emerge during the the two month consultation period.

It's probably going to be quiet time on this initiative through the election period.

Access card - "gentle death" on the cards?

The sub editor at The Australian who came up with the "Access card on the backburner" headline yesterday (see item below) may have known something, or was more prescient than most (at least me).

Today's reports, including "Access card bill stalled" in AustralianIT are that Cabinet yesterday decided not to proceed with much talked about plans to introduce legislation this month, but instead will release an exposure draft for extended consultation.

Australian Democrats Senator Stott Despoja may be on the money with this comment: "While not shutting the door on it, this may mean a gentle death for the proposal before the election".

As pointed out in today's Australian Financial Review, how would you like to be one of those organisations who have either tendered or planned to tender for the project: they have had to prove they could carry "hundreds of millions of dollars in liability to tender for work, only to be told all bets were off"?

Further delay for Access card

The Federal Access Card project may not be "on the backburner", as suggested in this headline in The AustralianIT but it's another significant delay as registration plans to sign up all 16 million of us have been put back to late next year.

More troubles with 'that' card

The Minister for Human Services now responsible for the National Access Card, Senator Ellison, says that a photograph, signature and personal number, will be retained as key elements of the proposed Access Card, according to this report in The Australian. This won't be any solace to those who see the potential for the card to become a national identity card.

And what to make of comments by Greg Taylor of Electronic Frontiers Australia who says "Biometric errors too high", raising questions about the efficiency gains from the project if there is a high error rate in biometric photographs.

National access card iPod in disguise

If you didn't know the Federal Government plans to give you an iPod, this opinion piece in the Age says it's because it comes under another name (National Access Card) and with some significant strings attached (in terms of your privacy).

Registration details for national access card, failed to register

Oops.

The Sydney and Brisbane consultations referred to in the item posted below on Sunday, were cancelled due to a "lack of interest", according to this report in the Australian.

Lack of interest or lack of adequate notice? The Australian Privacy Foundation says there was limited advance information about the dates (we only became aware of all this last Friday and we spend a fair bit of time trying to keep up with developments) but the Task Force counters by saying over 160 interested organisations or individuals were contacted (not us).

The new Minister for Human Services, Senator Ellison, has said that the legislation to introduce the card will be tabled in Parliament on 12 June and that two months will be allowed for debate before final consideration by the Senate.

National Access Card discussion on registration process

The National Access Card Consumer and Privacy Task Force, has issued a discussion paper on the registration process, seeks public submissions and plans a round of consultation meetings.

The process of registering over 16 million Australians, verifying their identity, taking a biometric photograph, and taking the details required for the register (and this is a shifting set of requirements), is daunting just to read about, let alone to contemplate what would be involved in the management and implementation of such a project between 2008 and 2010. As the paper indicates, once we're all clear on what the Government plans to do, the project will require the issue of 30,000 cards every workday over this 2 year period.

Then as the Task Force points out, there are lots of questions still to be answered and problems to be solved - who will pay for all the identity documents required to be produced to the government for registration purposes, how will the homeless and other disadvantaged groups respond, will prisoners have their photographs taken in jail, how will we deal with those who live in remote locations, or overseas, or for religious or cultural reasons have a problem with full facial photos? That's for starters.

The Director of a similar project in Austria was in Australia recently and was reported to have said that they had dispensed with the idea of including a photograph on the card there because it would have added 5 years to the time frame.

Submissions are invited by 16 April.

Any parties interested in attending any of the following public consultations on the Registration Process are asked to register via email to a.fels@humanservices.gov.au at least three working days prior.

Locations will be advised to registered participants nearer to the date.

Sydney 10.00am – 4.00pm Monday 2 April 2007
Brisbane 10.00am – 4.00pm Tuesday 3 April 2007
Hobart 11.30am – 2.30pm Tuesday 10 April 2007
Melbourne 9.00am – 3.00pm Wednesday 11 April 2007
Canberra 10.00am – 3.00pm Friday 13 April 2007
Adelaide 2.00pm – 4.30m Monday 16 April 2007
Perth 2.00pm – 4.30pm Tuesday 17April 2007
Darwin 2.30pm – 5.00pm Wednesday 18 April 2007

Senate Committee forces backdown on National Access Card

A red flag from the Senate Finance and Public Administration Committee saw the Government raise - at least temporarily - a white flag on the National Access Card project.

As suggested in a recent item here, Senator Mason and his colleagues in their report on the Human Services (Enhanced Serivce Delivery) Bill, said there were so many problems with the timing and limited detail provided that it all came down to one single recommendation - go back to the drawing board, and bring forward at a later time a comprehensive piece of legislation that would enable proper consideration by the Parliament.

The new Minister for Human Services, Senator Ellison, responded to the report within hours. His predecessors having emphasised the need for urgency to get the first bill passed, the Minister now says it's reasonable that both tranches of legislation be brought together to allow all interested parties to see the full detail of the proposal. He added, hopefully, that this would "help dispel some misconceptions".

The issue has finally become a very hot political potato. It could prove to be even more expensive than anticipated given the fact that the Government has been moving to let tenders which may now need some adjustment.

Some jitters over National Access Card

Media reports of the three days of hearings on the first national access card bill by the Senate Finance and Public Administration Committee suggest that evidence of some witnesses and the response of some Committee members has added to Government concerns about the fate of the legislation in the Senate.

In "Access your areas", Mark Metherell provides a summary of some key points that emerged in the hearings in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra over the last week. He reports that the Committee Chairman, Senator Mason, whose views will carry weight because of his expertise in this area, and others including Professor Allan Fels expressed doubts about the mandatory requirement for a photo on the face of the card, and about security and privacy of the 16million photo database. There seems to have been surprise that both the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation and the Australian Federal Police both anticipate no great problems in accessing the database.

Metherell says that Senator Mason's hesitancy about aspects of the proposal "could be fuel for a public backlash like that which sank the proposed Australia Card in 1987".

The Senate Committee is to report next week and the Government hopes to have the Bill passed by the end of March.

The full transcript of the hearings is here, and the text of most of the 59 submissions received here.

Challenges continue to mount for the National Access Card

The resignation of the Minister for Human Services Senator Campbell over the Burke affair means that the new minister will be the third in three months to hold the portfolio.

He/she will need to be a quick learner.

On the one hand, the Government says the Human Services (Enhanced Service Delivery) Bill must be passed urgently. On the other, senior public servants told the Senate Committee last Friday that the Department was still seeking advice on a wide range of issues concerning related legal issues such as access by intelligence services and the police to the 16million photographs in the proposed database.

Senate Committee hearings in Melbourne yesterday saw the Labor Party make it clear that it would scrap the scheme in its present form, if elected to office later this year, and some senators call for more time before the legislation is rushed through.

In the latest issue of Privacy Aware ( 1 March 2007 ), the Victorian Privacy Commission says that the combination of the mandatory information in the Government's section of the chip, and the open invitation to include other information in the cardholder's section will pose enormous privacy risks.

National Access card update

To other things.

The first of a number of bills concerning the National Access Card, the Human Services (Enhanced Service Delivery) Bill 2007, passed the Federal House of Representatives this week. Debate extended over three days with Government speakers largely supporting the legislation and Opposition speakers pointing out major problems, particularly privacy and fraud. The Government backbencher Stephen Ciobo, who has immersed himself in the detail, helpfully informed us all that he had "no doubt that the access card will, and can, be fraudulently reproduced in future".

Those interested in the fine detail can access the Hansard record of debate here. You will find the Government's second reading speech on pages 2-5 of the Hansard for 7 February, the Opposition Shadow Minister's response and other comments on pages 57-96 of the Hansard of 26 February, and the final stages of the debate on pages 24-61 of the Hansard of 27 February.

Those who want the short summary could do no better than read what Peter Andren, the Independent Member for Calare and widely recognised for his integrity, had to say (page 46 27 February):

"When considering this government's track record on manipulating truth or dispensing with it altogether and when thinking about attempts to silence dissent on government policy, and the attacks on the freedoms to protest against unethical or unscrupulous behaviour by both government and corporations, my gut feeling is to go looking for a rat in the bill".

Andren voted against the legislation. He said that there were many concerns and issues about privacy and security, and until all the relevant details about process and security were available, and identified weaknesses in the scheme addressed, it was premature to even consider the proposal before Parliament.

Andren concluded: "How can any member be required to support such a legislative shambles".

One of Andren's points was that the House of Representatives was being asked to consider part of the scheme before the complete framework had been laid on the table, and before Parliament's only investigation via the Senate Finance and Public Administration Committee had commenced, let alone reported. The Committee has three days of hearings scheduled in the next few days and is due to report on 15 March.

Juggling the Parliamentary process isn't the only Access Card challenge. This report in the Australian IT says that successful bidders for the systems integration and card issuance projects will be be asked to lodge financial guarantees of the order of $100million against project delays, breaches and failure to meet agreed service levels. Understandably some potential bidders (tenders are about to close) are seriously considering their degree of interest.

Meanwhile the Australian Privacy Foundation has reorganised and augmented materials available on its website regarding the proposal (which it opposes) and provides some great FAQs and links to other useful sources of information.