On 26 September Alan Bennett presented these ideas at the GAP Congress on Regulatory Affairs: "Opportunities for Business", held in Parliament House of Victoria.
Australia stands ready to seize the full opportunities of ICT. For business this is to open up productivity and customer service improvements, efficiency gains and innovation that technology can offer.
For Government - ICT is a key tool in reducing red tape and improving the relationship with its citizens.
As this forum is about Australia being a regulatory pace-setter - I believe in the pursuit of services delivered with the end user in mind or ‘citizen-centric service delivery', we have to move past the current boundaries and structures of government.
We need to actively investigate the real and perceived regulatory issues that stand in the way of us reaching this goal.
I'd like to touch on one potential regulatory impediment - privacy.
Now, in my experience, while privacy is a legitimate concern, it is often a concern that takes on a life of its own - leading to a debate that rapidly loses touch with reality.
When technology is involved in the debate, I'm often amazed at some of the doomsday scenarios regarding potential invasions of privacy.
Current Privacy Reform
The Australian Law Reform Commission released a report on reforms to the Privacy Act last month that included a number of recommendations aimed at making the legal framework more responsive to technological change.
Technology is the law's worst enemy - the legislative process moves at a much slower pace than technological change; and new technology often raises issues or unintended consequences never foreseen by legislators.
The Commission should be applauded for its approach to making the Privacy Act for businesses more adaptable in the face of new technology.
However, the concern is that technology can too easily become the whipping boy for privacy advocates.
It must always be recognised that while technology may enable new ways to collect and share information - technology in and of itself does not create privacy concerns.
There may also be a need for how Government itself applies privacy, because privacy or perceived privacy issues have the potential to impede a range of potential citizen-centric service delivery reforms.
Citizen-Centric Service Delivery
Government's use of ICT is enabling new opportunities to streamline service delivery and improve citizens' understanding and experience of Government through citizen-centric service delivery.
We have a Federal Government which has launched a number of processes aimed at reforming service delivery, policy and government's use of ICT - including the formal Gershon Review, National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission and the Tax Review: Australia's Future Tax System.
Other reviews processes are also underway around service delivery in the Human Services agencies, child protection and employment services.
EDS is fortunate to be involved in one of the more innovative whole of government service delivery reform projects - the Australian Government Online Service Point (AGOSP) project within the Australian Government Information Management Office in the Department of Finance and Deregulation.
Once completed in 2010 - australia.gov.au will include a single sign-on service, allowing people to visit multiple government websites without logging in multiple times; an advanced online forms capability; a multi-agency change of address notification service; and a National Government Services Directory, providing a comprehensive list of all government services.
Key to the successful delivery of this project will be the careful management of any privacy concerns. I'm pleased to say to the credit of the Minister and the staff of AGIMO this has always been top of mind and managed well.
Privacy Debate
As we have seen in the past - the privacy debate can often elicit knee jerk reactions that can undermine proposed reforms - particularly whole of government reforms that involve agencies sharing data amongst one another.
The end result is that many worthwhile reforms or initiatives don't even get off the ground.
Reform is needed in welfare, health care and taxation - but for these reforms to be successful, privacy issues need to be identified early, addressed and managed appropriately.
My contention is that privacy is often a red herring, used by certain interest groups to promote a ‘do-nothing' approach. Certainly the hysteria that privacy can generate in the media doesn't seem to be matched by public opinion.
Community Attitudes to Privacy
A recent study into Community Attitudes to Privacy undertaken by the Office for the Privacy Commissioner in 2007 suggests the Australian population is increasingly supportive of these sort of reforms.
In this survey, compared with a similar survey undertaken in 2004 - support for Government departments being able to cross reference or share information increased from 71% to 80%.
And despite concerns of ‘Big Brother' - this research also shows Government agencies are increasingly Australia's most trustworthy organisations.
The same Community Attitude survey revealed that 73% of Australians considered government departments to be trustworthy in 2007, an increase from 64% in 2004 and 58% in 2001.
I am not suggesting that Privacy is not a legitimate concern - it is - the risks of identity theft and inappropriate disclosure of information are real.
But if the privacy issues are managed effectively and the appropriate controls and security are placed around that information - then the benefits of connected service delivery clearly outweigh the negatives.
If a GP was to ask a patient: "are you happy for your health records to be quickly accessible online by the hospital system if you're ever in an accident?"
I can't imagine too many people saying no.
The Community Attitudes to Privacy survey from 2007 confirms this, with Australians becoming better informed and comfortable with disclosing health information - if there is a demonstrable benefit.
Only 6% of Australians were reluctant to disclose health information in 2007, compared with 21% in 2004.
Similarly, I am sure that the majority of people would be supportive of the sharing of information between welfare and child protection agencies across federal and state boundaries if children were better protected.
Unfortunately, while there are real legislative impediments to some reforms, often just the spectre of privacy is enough to create enough political uncertainty to derail legitimate and necessary reform activities.
Privacy Commissioner, Karen Curtis, in a speech earlier this year alluded to this trend of privacy legislation being seen as an inhibitor, where organisations use privacy legislation as an excuse for not sharing information:
In my Office we call these ‘BOTPAs' which stands for the erroneous use of the excuse ‘Because Of The Privacy Act'!
In many areas of Government fundamental reforms haven't got past first base "Because of Privacy" (BOP) or to use a variation of the Commissioner's acronym - it's fair to say that they have been ‘BOPped' on the head.
Government vs Private Sector Privacy
In many respects, Government should actually be in a better position to manage privacy concerns than the private sector. Positive community attitudes to Government is in stark contrast to rising community concerns about the private sector's use of information.
I think the general population place very different values on the personal information they provide to Government agencies as opposed to the information they provide to a business.
It's down to risk. If data provided in a financial transaction is released there is the real possibility that the individual will have their bank account details stolen and a massive debt racked up on their credit card.
This has not been helped by recent high profile cases in the US and the UK where millions of credit card details were accidentally made public.
And these concerns were reflected in the Privacy Commissioner's research -36% of Australians in 2007 said they would not deal with a company or charity because of concerns over its protection or use of their personal information.
Future Reforms
We are approaching a critical time for decision on the future direction of ICT-enabled Government.
The Minister for Finance and Deregulation, Lindsay Tanner recently received a report from Sir Peter Gershon on the Australian Government's use of ICT.
EDS was fortunate enough to have been consulted during this process and in our submission to Sir Peter we argued that Government could find significant efficiencies and improvements through taking a citizen-centric approach to service delivery.
Putting the citizen at the heart of service delivery naturally pushes Government to reduce, streamline and simplify the channels through which it provides services.
There are also significant potential cost savings in this sort of approach for Government - particularly if a citizen-centric approach to service delivery reform extended across Federal-State boundaries.
A report by Access Economics for the Business Council of Australia in 2006, estimated that overlap, duplication and inefficiency in service delivery between Federal and State jurisdictions cost governments $5.1 billion in 2004-05.
As Government actively considers the recommendation in Sir Peter's report - it is critical that this - and other reforms emerging out of the Health and Hospitals Reform Commission and the Tax Review - are accompanied by processes to identify and manage both real and perceived impediments to change.
In addition to the Privacy Act, there are innumerous pieces of individual portfolio and agency-specific legislation that restrict data and information sharing between agencies that stand in the way of reform.
These should be closely reviewed, with a simple set of questions used as the benchmark for how privacy should be managed effectively.
These four simple questions for managing privacy in service delivery are:
- Is the person aware of the information being collected?
- Have they consented to its collection and the uses of that information?
- Can they access, change and revoke their consent for the use of that information?
- And, is that information protected so that it is only accessible to those that need to access that information?
If the answer to each question is yes, then I would suggest that there is a fair degree of protection of a person's private information.
The Future of eHealth
In closing, I've touched on reform processes, but let me outline what's possible.
Outside a patient's room, an attending physician gathers the attending residents around a wireless laptop propped on a mobile cart.
The physician gathers the patient's entire medical history on the laptop --a stack of paper in most hospitals - and instead of trekking to the radiology lab to view the latest X-ray, MRI or CAT Scan, up it comes on the same screen.
While the physician is visiting the patient, a resident types in a request for pain medication, then punches the ‘send' button. The scanning of a barcode on the patient's wristband checks to make sure the patient is not being over-medicated or given the wrong medication.
Seconds later, the printer in the hospital pharmacy spits out the order - the pharmacist stuffs a vial of pills into what looks like a tiny space capsule, then shoots it up to the ward in a vacuum tube. By the time the physician wheels away the laptop, a nurse walks up with the medication.
Sounds pretty impressive.
The truth is that this scenario is real and occurring in the Veterans Affairs hospital system across the United States - one of our major clients in the US.
Veterans Affairs runs the largest integrated health-care system in the US, with more than 1,400 hospitals, clinics and nursing homes employing 14,800 doctors and 61,000 nurses. The system I have described is known as VistA.
What's more impressive are the clinical outcomes. Errors in administering medication in these hospitals have dropped by around 90% and males aged 65 years and older receiving care in a Veterans Affairs hospital had about a 40% lower risk of death than those in other publicly funded care in 2006 - according to a study published in the American Medical Care magazine.
It is also supported by a robust privacy framework and information controls - including a rigorous informed consent process both to the use of information but also to ensure that patients are knowledgeable participants in the health care process.
The technology is not the problem - it is there and readily available to any Australian health system.
The challenge is getting all stakeholders - including health groups, Federal and State Governments to agree on a way forward, identifying impediments and establishing a clear roadmap to manage each impediment - including privacy.
As I have said, the benefits from this ICT-enabled, citizen-centric service delivery clearly outweighs any potential privacy concerns.
Thank you.
Alan Bennett is the Industry Leader for the Government and Defence Industry Group for EDS Australia and New Zealand. In this role, he is responsible for leading EDS' growth and setting strategy to optimise new opportunities for the company within the Government and Defence Industry Group across the region. Over his years at EDS, Alan has led the sales organisation across Asia Pacific and the UK and was acting president of EDS Japan in 2001/2. He started his career in the Federal Government in Canberra with the Australian Bureau of Statistics and Attorney General's Department.
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Alan Bennett was a keynote speaker at the GAP Congress on Regulatory Affairs, held in Parliament House of Victoria on 26 September 2008 in Melbourne.
To read keynote presentations by other speakers, go to our 'Regulation as a Business Opportunity' discussion forum.
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