{"id":43993,"date":"2018-11-30T11:16:50","date_gmt":"2018-11-30T00:16:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=43993"},"modified":"2018-11-30T11:16:50","modified_gmt":"2018-11-30T00:16:50","slug":"introducing-integrated-e-government-in-australia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/introducing-integrated-e-government-in-australia\/","title":{"rendered":"Introducing integrated e-government in Australia"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

During the initial wave of digital-transformation efforts, Australia developed an international reputation as an early leader. That peaked in around 1999.<\/p>\n

While the different tiers of government (local, state and federal) and individual agencies have developed some impressive e-government platforms, a joined-up approach to e-government has so far remained elusive.<\/p>\n

In a policy brief<\/a> released today by ASPI\u2019s International Cyber Policy Centre co-written with Estonia\u2019s eGovernance Academy\u2014the world leader in this field\u2014we argue that it\u2019s time for Australia to develop an integrated approach to e-government that joins up all services from all three levels of government. In Estonia, where e-government is something of a national passion, officials estimate<\/a> that efficiencies derived from e-government reforms lift annual GDP by 2%.<\/p>\n

The efficiency gains also make life easier for people and businesses. We\u2019re all familiar with examples of government services that have been made things easier for us\u2014whether it\u2019s not having to go to a physical office to renew a driver\u2019s licence or the ease of having your tax return populated automatically by the Tax Office. But there\u2019s still plenty of clunkiness around. If you move from one state to another, you hit a bureaucratic brick wall. If you update your address details with your local council, the federal government agencies you deal with have no idea. Myriad other small efficiencies that would cumulatively save a huge amount of time are there to be made.<\/p>\n

Some of the infrastructure needed for integrated e-government is already in place.<\/p>\n

Two key enablers are mechanisms for digital identification and digital signatures.<\/p>\n

Australia Post has already built an operational digital identity scheme known as Digital iD, and the government is trialling a second scheme known as Govpass. A separate ICPC policy brief<\/a> has identified issues that need addressing in both these schemes, but the challenges are not insurmountable and digital identity remains essential for a 21st-century economy and integrated e-government.<\/p>\n

Digital signatures are a little further off. The Electronic Transactions Act 1999<\/em> went some way towards introducing digital signatures in Australia, but we still lack a unique and hard-to-forge identifier that can be checked by the recipient. This is certainly on the radar of officials in Canberra but remains a work in progress.<\/p>\n

The establishment of the Australian Digital Council, which met for the first time in September, is another useful piece of architecture. It is working to drive better federal and state government coordination on digital initiatives and could be a platform to begin discussions on full integration across all three levels of government.<\/p>\n

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to integrated e-government, but there are some good principles that can be drawn from experiences abroad. One is the value of a decentralised approach, which was the route taken in Estonia. Facilitating secure data exchanges and interoperability between different government agencies doesn\u2019t require the creation of a single database (a so-called superdatabase) that consolidates all the data from multiple databases. In fact, doing that poses serious security risks. A decentralised approach enables different databases and IT solutions in the different levels of government to \u2018talk\u2019 to each other securely and solves the problem of how to integrate the myriad government databases and systems that already exist.<\/p>\n

Ensuring public trust<\/a> is another, and here there\u2019s obviously a bit of work to be done. When scheme after scheme falls over or the ground rules change (for example, opt in becomes opt out) people get frustrated. There\u2019s also a deeper issue. Digital transformation is being developed from an agency- rather than people-centric viewpoint. The mission at present is to help a government agency do something more easily or to get more information. User experience is then designed through this narrow lens. The long-term effect of this approach is to gradually disempower people as more of their lives move beyond their control and they are effectively forced to participate in these disempowering schemes as other alternatives become too inconvenient.<\/p>\n

A different approach would be to design digital transformation initiatives from the citizens\u2019 perspective. What does that look like? It would mean providing people with easy and meaningful control over their data. It would mean giving citizens an online log every time their personal information is accessed by any arm of government or the private sector, with a one-click process for contesting any access they believe may be unauthorised. It would allow them to decide who can access different components of their data (such as individual records) and provide strong default settings to protect those who don\u2019t bother to adjust their settings. It would mean amending the Privacy Act<\/em><\/a> so that personal information can be reasonably protected in a 21st-century world. In short, it\u2019s about getting in the corner of everyday citizens and empowering them, not the departments who serve them.<\/p>\n

The vision across Australia to move government services online and create enabling infrastructure like digital identity is the right one, but we need to think bigger and go further. Launching a national effort to integrate service delivery across all three tiers of government would be a political challenge but it would deliver benefits for every Australian. We should try it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During the initial wave of digital-transformation efforts, Australia developed an international reputation as an early leader. That peaked in around 1999. While the different tiers of government (local, state and federal) and individual agencies have …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":685,"featured_media":43994,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[416,391,2175],"class_list":["post-43993","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-australian-government","tag-cyber","tag-data"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nIntroducing integrated e-government in Australia | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/introducing-integrated-e-government-in-australia\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Introducing integrated e-government in Australia | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"During the initial wave of digital-transformation efforts, Australia developed an international reputation as an early leader. That peaked in around 1999. While the different tiers of government (local, state and federal) and individual agencies have ...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/introducing-integrated-e-government-in-australia\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ASPI.org\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-11-30T00:16:50+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/3011egovt.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"612\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"382\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fergus Hanson\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@ASPI_org\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fergus Hanson\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/\",\"name\":\"The Strategist\",\"description\":\"ASPI's analysis and commentary site\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/introducing-integrated-e-government-in-australia\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/3011egovt.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/3011egovt.jpg\",\"width\":612,\"height\":382,\"caption\":\"Abstract technology background communication concept innovation vector illustration\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/introducing-integrated-e-government-in-australia\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/introducing-integrated-e-government-in-australia\/\",\"name\":\"Introducing integrated e-government in Australia | The Strategist\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/introducing-integrated-e-government-in-australia\/#primaryimage\"},\"datePublished\":\"2018-11-30T00:16:50+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2018-11-30T00:16:50+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#\/schema\/person\/7eb1098c6aa7cd08e874d9b8dc1d376f\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/introducing-integrated-e-government-in-australia\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/introducing-integrated-e-government-in-australia\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/introducing-integrated-e-government-in-australia\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Introducing integrated e-government in Australia\"}]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#\/schema\/person\/7eb1098c6aa7cd08e874d9b8dc1d376f\",\"name\":\"Fergus Hanson\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-AU\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/fbd719c7258d6f0affed7dd4223f32eb?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/fbd719c7258d6f0affed7dd4223f32eb?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Fergus Hanson\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/author\/fergus-hanson\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Introducing integrated e-government in Australia | The Strategist","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/introducing-integrated-e-government-in-australia\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Introducing integrated e-government in Australia | The Strategist","og_description":"During the initial wave of digital-transformation efforts, Australia developed an international reputation as an early leader. That peaked in around 1999. While the different tiers of government (local, state and federal) and individual agencies have ...","og_url":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/introducing-integrated-e-government-in-australia\/","og_site_name":"The Strategist","article_publisher":"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/ASPI.org","article_published_time":"2018-11-30T00:16:50+00:00","og_image":[{"width":612,"height":382,"url":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/3011egovt.jpg","type":"image\/jpeg"}],"author":"Fergus Hanson","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_creator":"@ASPI_org","twitter_site":"@ASPI_org","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Fergus Hanson","Est. reading time":"4 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/","name":"The Strategist","description":"ASPI's analysis and commentary site","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-AU"},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-AU","@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/introducing-integrated-e-government-in-australia\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/3011egovt.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/11\/3011egovt.jpg","width":612,"height":382,"caption":"Abstract technology background communication concept innovation vector illustration"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/introducing-integrated-e-government-in-australia\/","url":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/introducing-integrated-e-government-in-australia\/","name":"Introducing integrated e-government in Australia | The Strategist","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/introducing-integrated-e-government-in-australia\/#primaryimage"},"datePublished":"2018-11-30T00:16:50+00:00","dateModified":"2018-11-30T00:16:50+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#\/schema\/person\/7eb1098c6aa7cd08e874d9b8dc1d376f"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/introducing-integrated-e-government-in-australia\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-AU","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/introducing-integrated-e-government-in-australia\/"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/introducing-integrated-e-government-in-australia\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Introducing integrated e-government in Australia"}]},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#\/schema\/person\/7eb1098c6aa7cd08e874d9b8dc1d376f","name":"Fergus Hanson","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-AU","@id":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/fbd719c7258d6f0affed7dd4223f32eb?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/fbd719c7258d6f0affed7dd4223f32eb?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Fergus Hanson"},"url":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/author\/fergus-hanson\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43993"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/685"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43993"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43993\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43996,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43993\/revisions\/43996"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43994"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43993"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43993"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43993"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}