Minister Shorten doorstop interview to discuss a recent review of the myGov portal

E&OE

BILL SHORTEN, MINISTER FOR THE NDIS AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES: Good afternoon, everybody. Today, I am pleased to announce that we've received the myGov report. This is a report commissioned by the Albanese Government into myGov, and the report work has been chaired by eminent Australian Mr. David Thodey and a panel of experts. I'm going to speak briefly about key findings of the report and then invite Mr. Thodey to share the research, their findings and the process which has arrived at this important report. myGov is critical national infrastructure. That is a key finding of this report. Just before the May election last year, Prime Minister Albanese and myself said that we wanted to have a user survey, an audit of how myGov was going. The findings are pretty interesting and a central tenet of the myGov report is that it needs to be reimagined not just as an app or a government program, but rather critical national infrastructure. For example, the reason why its critical national infrastructure is that 1.4 million Australians on average use myGov every day. 1.4 million Australians use myGov every day. That's more than the number of commuters who use public transport in Australia every day. We have 25 million authenticated accounts, which makes it the largest digital account system in Australia. For many Australians, they have moved to online. So, the myGov software and the app and the program really needs to keep up with the expectations of Australians. The myGov app has the potential, this report says, to be a long-term part of how Australians deal with government. It requires a long-term vision, but the proposition that Australians could go to one app to deal with government, I think is a very exciting thing. People don't have to remember all their passwords, they don't have to deal with multiple government accounts, and the vision that is outlined in this report suggests that we should aim at ultimately having an app where you can go to all levels of government being accessible through one safe and secure confidential site. So why don't I invite David now to talk about this report and then we'll take some questions on whatever you guys want. David?

DAVID THODEY, MYGOV REVIEW CHAIR: Well, thank you, Minister. And let me just start by congratulating you. I think this has been an inspired sort of review and it has struck us, the independent panels have gone through it, we didn't realise just how pervasive myGov has become. As the Minister said, 25 million registrations on myGov, and close to 1.4 million people every day using it just took us by surprise. So, this is not an option. This has sort of become a critical part of what we Australians use every day. What's also interesting, that since we put out the myGov app, and that was only two months ago, there's already half a million people using the myGov app. So that's been a really rapid change. Another really interesting statistic is that even though the myGov app hasn't been out for that long, nearly 60% of all people access myGov services through their mobile phone. And so, you've seen this incredible change of behaviour in terms of how people want to access critical services. So, the key tenet of the report is that really myGov or delivering government services digitally has no longer become optional. It's become a critical part of how we deliver services for a modern, dynamic government going forward. And the benefits are very real. And we looked at a number of different economic analysis, both in terms of time of people using myGov and getting access to services quicker and faster and getting issues resolved more quickly, also, it's more efficient for government and then thirdly, it has an economic benefit to the community. But one thing we were really conscious of, and I've got to say the Minister was critical to this, is that we're very conscious that we want everybody, all Australians, to have access to good services.

So, we don't want anyone left behind. But when you look at the data now, what, 90% of Australians have access to the Internet? And, amazing statistic, 85% of people have a smart phone. Now that doesn't mean they all use myGov that way. But the pervasiveness of technology is quite critical. So, we also said very strongly right up front we need to make sure that we are taking everybody with us so all the traditional services we will keep going, through Services Australia, you know so you can ring up, contact people, talk to people. Really important part of what we think should be there. So, there's a question of equity. You've got to remember that myGov is the front door. It's not - it doesn't provide all the services. It's a front door to help people get access to where they need to go, to tax or to fed services or to Centrelink or whatever you need to do. So, we think it's a really important consideration that government should take to really endorse it as the front door, because as you would understand, any government, good government, has many different parts to it. And we think it's very important that it really is endorsed as the front door. But as we did the study, there's user experience improvements that need to be done and that's both in straight usability, but in consistency of coming into myGov to the member services are how you interact with the actual information.

So, there's a lot of pent-up demand, let me put it that way in terms of improving just how the actual user experience is felt by the user as they use myGov. So quite a bit of the report, there's two parts, there's the volume one and volume two - goes into some of the recommendations about how to improve that, as I mentioned, critical national infrastructure. And I just want to pause on that because the Minister alluded to it. When you think of myGov as infrastructure, you have a different view about it. It's not a project, it's not another technology project. It's something that you need to take a long-term perspective on, and you need to fund and commit to, because in effect, you never really arrive because there's always going to be new services and new functionality that you can provide. Critically important to anyone who talks digital is around security, and we spend a lot of time thinking around, you know, privacy issues, security issues. And we concluded that myGov ID provides a wonderful identity management and authentication process. However, the usability of myGov ID and the confusion between myGov and myGov ID needs to be addressed. If we can get that right, I think we can really lead the world in terms of having a national identity and authentication system. So, myGov ID was very important. We also spent a lot of time looking at how we can take an Australian perspective, because I live in New South Wales, I use the Service New South Wales app, but the truth is I don't want to have to work between multiple apps.

So, we think there's a great opportunity to really bring together functionality and also have shared information between the myGov and also the state level. And as you'll also be aware, some of the states have not yet really started on their journey. So maybe there's a great opportunity for leadership from the Commonwealth and driving that forward. And then lastly, around governance and also support, one of the challenges with any Westminster government is that you get multiple departments looking at different things, and yet what we need is actually to take a common view across all portfolios. So, we had a very strong recommendation there that there should be a cross-ministerial governance team put in place so we're taking a citizen-centric view. Also, at the public sector level and then also get the voice of the citizen and the Australian into the room as well. So, if we can do that, we think we can really move this forward. But it does need a long-term commitment. We think you need a 4-to-5-year plan; you need to put funding in place to do that and really make a difference. And then I think we can lead the world. And I mean, often we hear about Estonia and various other places, but why can't Australia be a leader? And so, we're excited about the report. We think it's tangible and real and we think will make a big difference going forward. So, let me throw it back to you, but happy to take any questions?

SHORTEN: Well, why don't we take up that invitation? Questions for Mr Thodey and myself?

JOURNALIST: Is there a risk if there wasn't an extra money invested, that there would be cybersecurity risk going forward in people's information would be at risk? And then just one for you, Minister, afterwards, in terms of some of the backlash over the Prime Minister attending the Australian Open.

SHORTEN: We'll absolutely go to that, but why don't we do any myGov questions, and you've asked one, and then if there are any other matters that are important too.

THODEY: Well, cyber security is a big topic, as we all know, and it is going to require continued investment because things don't stand still. You know, we need to - you know, going digital is a critical part of delivering better services, but it does create risk around identity management, identity theft. It creates issues around privacy. Look, my personal view, having worked in the industry for a long time, you just got to keep at it. I mean, it's no different really to when we had bits of paper, and they were held out the back in a in a box. But it's a whole new world. So, I've been delighted to see the focus of this government on really putting in place the right cyber disciplines. So, I feel pretty positive about it. That's not to say we don't have risk and things could happen, but it's how you manage risk and how you respond to it is critical.

JOURNALIST: David, can I ask you about just the quantum of investments so far? It sounds like you're saying there hasn't been enough, but we know that over the last decade on myGov, or issues related to what myGov tries to address, I mean, spectacular amounts of money spent and in recent years?

THODEY: No, our key message is ongoing investment. So, it isn't a project that comes to an end. It's about like infrastructure. You've got to keep funding it over the long term. So, we're not looking back. We're about looking forward and making a real difference to people who need service.

JOURNALIST: Just on ongoing investment, one of the recommendations in the report recommended to keep rolling out the ongoing investment. I suppose this is more for the Minister, and also legislating for myGov. Is this something that the Government is going to uptake?

SHORTEN: We've received the report and we're going to take some time in coming weeks and months to assess which of the recommendations we can do now, which we can do later. But there's no doubt that this report is a game changer because it challenges government not to see digital projects, not to see myGov or digitisation as a series of one-off projects, a chain of happy coincidences, but rather say, the digitisation of the economy is perpetual, it's ongoing. What I think concerns a lot of people is that the previous government effectively booby trapped the budget, they had terminating measures. There's no money in the budget after June of this year to keep doing myGov. So obviously that's a question we'll have to address in the very near future. That'll be a question for myself and the Government, the Prime Minister and the Treasurer. But it's clear that this report makes it very, very, very black and white that we need to rethink the way citizens deal with government. It says at its heart, let citizens control their data. We've got all these smart phones. We should have one door into government and government needs to sort out the back office. It's really challenging us to deal with the sins of 120 years of federation, where we've got 19th century departments and in the 21st century, people want to - they don't want to hear about all the various steps it takes to fill in a piece of paper. They just want it done. And that's what this is really saying that the digital economy, that myGov is, it's a non-negotiable.

JOURNALIST: You noted at the start of the press conference that the report describes myGov as critical national infrastructure. Given that, how are you going to approach that funding question? Surely you can't let that funding lapse in June. Is that really a possibility?

SHORTEN: I think you're right. I mean, obviously the fairy tale says that the previous government and I know we don't want to dwell on them, but the fact of the matter is funding just falls off a cliff. Like, there's still going to be computers and apps here on July the 1st, 2023. But if you read the budget, it's almost as if that's a fiction. So of course, we have to deal with, but we're going to have to wait for the budget to deal with. What's good about this is it collates the experiences of 700 people who were surveyed, there were round tables, plenty of written submissions. I think this is a wake up call to say Australia either falls behind the world or we keep moving and trying to be the very best we can.

JOURNALIST: From a user perspective, then what can the average Australian expect to see change in kind of concrete measures when they access it?

SHORTEN: I'll get David to supplement this, but the sort of thing that I hope is that for those of you have a smartphone, you might have the Apple or, you know, now we've said when we set up our myGov app, we did a soft launch, didn't boast about it, didn't over promise. Now there's half a million people on it, and the apps actually rated four out of five in the App store, which is not bad for government, is to use a simple example. What I would like over time is to drop in, you know, your Medicare card, enrolment forms. Ideally, we could talk to the states about having their driver's licenses on our app. What I'd like to do is use the security features of a phone. It's a pain in the butt trying to remember all your passwords, it's a source of rage. People having to, you know, take a long time ties up government services for people who are really desperate and really have no other choice. So, I would like to have a wallet which just you go to, it's got your biometrics, it's secure and you can find the information you need. Bang, bang, bang. But David, of course, got a lot of ideas here.

THODEY: Yeah, well, thanks, Minister. Look, I think the functionality is just enormous in terms of what you can put in there. However, to your specific question around accountability and metrics, in Appendix D, we went through a whole list of usability measures, not measures from government out, but about the experience of the user, from response times to availability of information, timeliness of response, etc. So, we've actually gone through quite a lot of detail that the government are going to consider and then hopefully we can make it transparent because I think if you're in the private sector, very much of what you would do was you would make that public and people can see how it's going, but it goes through easy access, it goes through trust, because trust is a critical element and you lose trust in these systems, then you've got real challenges also in terms of availability, etc.. So, it's all in the document and really important

JOURNALIST: But in terms of some of those functions, say, Medicare card, driver's license. What's the timeline before it becomes so integrated?

THODEY: The timeline? This is why do you do a four-to-five-year plan, but I might handball that one.

SHORTEN: It's a matter for negotiating about our comrades in arms at the state governments and of course getting various federal government departments on board. This is the blueprint. And then what we want to do is, what I would like to do in the next four months is to be able to articulate the calendar, when we can start dropping cards in. We're hoping to put the Medicare card on the app in March. But what I would like to do is put more in, wouldn't it be good if we could solve that sort of Holy Grail? I remember we had the breaches and the hacks last year of private sector organisations, and one of the reasons why private sector organisations are keeping ID is that they get that 100 points of ID. My hope is, the vision is, that you've got sufficient ID in your government wallet that you can show a private sector business, here, I've got I've got my myGov and it's got the x number of points, and you don't actually have to transfer your data to that private organisation. So, I think this does set a new momentum for a digital identity which actually works well with the private sector. A lot of private sector companies are going to love this because they're going to say, great, we don't have to keep the people's data. And for a lot of citizens, it means that we improve their privacy and control over their data. So, I don't see privacy and control over data as optional extras, as cute add ons at the end. If we design that using this plan, then I think a whole lot of people who are uneasy, are going to sort of move into a better frame of mind.

JOURNALIST: The report also noted there's a risk of fraud. So, I'm just wondering how that gets addressed and whether having an app could make it easier for people to duplicate accounts or to put things through their phone rather than having to prove it in person or something along those lines.

THODEY: We don't have any data to say that an app gives you a greater instance of fraud. However, fraud is something we have to live with and plan for. And I think that the multi factor authentication that we have within the myGov ID, and you use both the phone, and you use other authentication means, means that we think the instance of fraud can be brought down significantly. But interesting, we did not find significant issues in our report around high instances of fraud. There was some specific very, quite narrow issues. So even today, it's okay. However, we need to keep ahead of the game because, as you know, there's a lot of people out there who are trying to undermine things.

SHORTEN: Multifactor identifications is what the federal government use, I'm not saying that's foolproof and there's - bad actors are always trying to climb over the defence we build but using the features of your phone, which a lot of Australians currently do with our multi factor identification, it can be better than just handing out your data to some of the big companies.

JOURNALIST: Has the Treasurer given you any assurances that this myGov revamp will be taken care of in the upcoming budget? And a second question on the economy if I may. Economists are warning that home buyers could face up to four interest rate rises by August, which is only going to compound the cost-of-living pressures already facing households. Do you think it's time the Jobseeker rate is lifted.

SHORTEN: Okay, just on the myGov component, we've received a report. Today isn't about our response to the report. We'll carefully consider that through the Cabinet processes we've got. So got no promises. But you know, this the fact that we've got this report is an initiative directed by the Prime Minister and myself before the election. So, it is really useful work and I think it's there for people to comment on and give us feedback on. There were some non myGov questions, so I'll come back to your economy and to the ice cream matter.

JOURNALIST: On myGov, just on a governance question. Can you see as necessary big machinery government changes for this? MyGov's currently in Services Australia, the Digital Transformation Agency, which was trying to push this agenda, has atrophied, and been moved around. Does it need a separate organisation like the New South Wales government's Department of Customer Service to manage this stuff?

SHORTEN: I think you find when you go through the report and you clearly have started to look at it so thank you, but there's a proposal that Ministers talk to each other. I'm not sure we do need large machinery of government changes. Katy Gallagher is doing an outstanding job as Finance Minister, and I think it's really appropriate that the Digital Transformation Agency's with her because they have a line of sight across government. As we see with this report, Katy's on the release, the Ministers are interested. Ed Husic is interested in the digital economy, home affairs, tax. You know, they've got big ICT spends, visas, you know, so there's a lot of interest about the digital economy across government. So, I'm confident that without a lot of machinery of government changes, we can keep things moving along. In terms of myGov, it's about political will, not just structures, but turning to you, you had a question about tennis?

JOURNALIST: Do you think that the criticism against the Prime Minister about being at the tennis longer than he was in Alice Springs is fair?

SHORTEN: No, I don't. What's happening in Alice Springs is a crisis. The scenes are shocking. I know that Marion Scrymgour, the local federal member, is working incredibly hard as is Senator Malarndirri McCarthy and the Minister for Indigenous Affairs, Linda Burney, when the Prime Minister visited, stayed on the next day, and was certainly meeting with people. The Prime Minister regards it as a very important issue. But what we're seeing in Alice Springs didn't just happen, the causes didn't happen the day before or last week. This has been 25 years of policy drift in many ways. We had the intervention, Stronger Futures, where we banned alcohol then, you know, to be honest, the previous government wasn't fussed about keeping the bans on. It's complicated. It's important to get right. It's about, I think, jobs. It's about giving young people hope. Whether or not the Prime Minister watched a game of tennis, to me, it's just looking at all the wrong issues here. And I know how hard the Prime Minister works. And just for the record, in Melbourne, Saturday, Lunar Festival in Box Hill. Massive event. He was there, you know that's work. Sunday, he was with Kate Thwaites, our member for Jaga Jaga in MacLeod talking to small businesses and residents Monday with Tony Burke in St Kilda, launching for the first time a long time, a national arts policy. So, you know, I think that issue really will melt like an ice cream in the sun. It's not the main game.

JOURNALIST: Do you think there's any other ministers, do you know if there's any other federal ministers planning to go back to Alice Springs to talk with local community?

SHORTEN: Oh, I'm sure there are. I'm sure there are. I know that there's a whole lot of initiatives that - Labor took a Central Australian policy to the last election. I know even in my own portfolio of Service Australia; we've put in a people to help get people who are not connected up to Services Australia and see if they can connect up. So, you know, people take it absolutely seriously and I think that some of the critics do the issue with this service, which they're claiming to think is important. I mean, there's plenty of Lib politicians go to the tennis. I don't know, what are they saying about their pollies? It's the people in Alice Springs want to know what we're doing for them. And I want to assure them that the government from the Prime Minister down are completely focused on what's happening there.

JOURNALIST: Just on Alice Springs, the same issues are happening in Carnarvon, in WA's north. It doesn't seem like the Prime Minister or anyone's taking those issues seriously. Is the Prime Minister or another Federal Government Minister planning to go there and witness firsthand what's happening on the ground?

SHORTEN: I can't tell you about people's travel movements, but I know that Carnarvon is being discussed. It's - people are conscious that there's a problem and this problem hasn't happened overnight. If you've got kids who don't feel safe, if you've got a lack of jobs, this doesn't happen overnight. It's going to take a collective national effort to provide opportunity. We've got to involve communities and not just be top down as well, but to reassure people, yeah, absolutely. I know that my colleagues are very focused on this. Sorry, you were asking a question?

JOURNALIST: Yes, I'm saying that economists are predicting four interest rate rises by August. What's your response to this? And do you think the Jobseeker rate should be lifted?

SHORTEN: Well, listen, the Reserve Bank is independent. It sets its monetary policy independent of government. I saw reports from an economic forecaster at Deutsche, four more rises. I mean, just for those who would be cheering that outcome on as a way of tackling inflation, you know, what's that old saying? The operation may be a success, but the patient died. I mean, the operation to blunt force trauma inflation has to be balanced against making sure that you don't crash the property market. And there are a whole lot of mortgage holders, you know, interest rates have gone up 300 basis points. That's the APRA sort of loan regulation that when you give a loan there's a range 200 to 300 points above their ability to service it. Once you're going above that, it'll be people in real distress. So, you know, the Reserve Bank's independent, it's gotta do what it's do. But some of the forecasters are sort of saying this is where they should go and what they should do. I just say there's real people you're talking about with real consequences. There's a $2.1 trillion loan book out there. So, I know it may be easy for some forecasters say just up the rates, but it has real world consequences. As for our JobKeeper, that'll be a matter for the Treasurer and the Budget.

JOURNALIST: Minister, what's your take on the Robodebt Royal Commission proceedings, and former Ministers appearing before that? What have you made of it?

SHORTEN: I think Robodebt is a giant stain on the history of public administration in this country. There were half a million people against whom the most powerful entity in Australia, the Commonwealth government, raised unlawful debts against half a million people, their own citizens. The previous government said they could do it and then they ignored all the warnings. Now we're finding out there was a real soullessness at the heart of government, where public servants felt they had to give advice to please their ministers, where ministers felt they didn't have to interrogate the advice. I think that the Royal Commission on Robodebt is showing probably one of the bleakest peacetime moments of a government and there are going to be lots of lessons here for how advice is given and how we prioritise speaking truth to power, which I'm not sure is what happened during the era of the last five years. Thanks everybody. Have a lovely day.

[ENDS]

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