[LINK] Australian Government spending $256M to transform government but wasting $485M on failed eHealth system

[Tom Worthington]

Just about every year since the Australian Federal Budget was first put 
on the web, I have done a quick search though the documents to find 
matters of interest in information technology.

IT IN THE BUDGET

The budget search function failed at 10:30pm, reporting "A software 
error has occurred.". So I used Google to search for "Information 
Technology", finding seven results (up from four in 2014/2015):


* Budget 2015 - Protecting Australia

     "The new measures include $296 million to strengthen the 
capabilities of our intelligence agencies, including updating 
information technology systems. ...
     New legislation requires telecommunication companies to retain 
metadata for two years. We are providing $131 million to assist the 
telecommunications industry to upgrade its systems to implement this 
policy." 
http://www.budget.gov.au/2015-16/content/glossy/nat_sec/html/nat_sec-02.htm


* Metadata ...Budget 2015 - Overview - Fairness of benefits

     "We will invest an initial $60 million to kick start the Welfare 
Payment Infrastructure Transformation to upgrade the Department of Human 
Services’ (DHS) information technology to meet the demands of today’s 
digital world." 
http://www.budget.gov.au/2015-16/content/overview/html/overview-17.htm


* Defence Housing Australia — reform

     "The Government will provide $4.0 million over two years from 
2015‑16 to undertake a reform of Defence Housing Australia (DHA). This 
will include a review of DHA's accounting, information technology and 
business reporting systems to improve transparency of the cost of 
providing DHA's services, as well as a review of DHA's business plans to 
support the sustainable delivery of quality and accessible housing and 
accommodation services. " 
http://www.budget.gov.au/2015-16/content/bp2/html/bp2_expense-12.htm

* Information technology security enhancements for Parliamentarians

     "The Government will provide $12.9 million over four years from 
2015-16 to the Department of Finance to install more secure networking 
equipment and to provide additional capability for secure wireless 
infrastructure in electorate offices and Commonwealth Parliamentary 
Offices connecting to the Parliamentary Computing Network. The 
replacement of obsolete communications equipment will result in improved 
information technology security for electorate offices and parliamentary 
systems in Parliament House. " 
http://www.budget.gov.au/2015-16/content/bp2/download/BP2_Capital.pdf#page=11


* Part 2: Staffing of Agencies - Budget

     "Some of the overall reductions in staffing levels will be offset 
by temporary increases in particular areas to manage implementation of 
policy change or to build infrastructure required to achieve future 
automation and efficiencies. This includes investment in the information 
technology systems of the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the first 
tranche of the Welfare Payment Infrastructure Transformation Programme." 
http://www.budget.gov.au/2015-16/content/bp4/html/bp4_part_02.htm


SOME IT HIGHLIGHTS

The "National Broadband Network" (NBN) recieves limited attention for 
such a large project, with only two mentions, down from four last year 
and eleven the year before. Curiously I could not find a dollar figure 
for the NBN, instead "Your Government online":

      "The Government is delivering the National Broadband Network 
faster and at less cost, to enable all Australians to connect to 
transformative services online. ...
     That is why the Government is investing $254.7 million in the 
Digital Transformation Agenda to transform government service delivery. 
..." http://www.budget.gov.au/2015-16/content/overview/html/overview-27.htm

The provision for the "Stage One and establishment of the Digital 
Transformation Office" is a relatively modest $0.3M.

Pia Waugh, from the Digital Transformation Office  will be speaking at 
Open Knowledge Australia's "Open Data and Digital Services: Foundations 
for a New Information Economy" in Canberra, 2:30pm, 13 May 2015: 
https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/open-data-and-digital-services-foundations-for-a-new-information-economy-tickets-16689925015

In 2013/2014 the Government "recommitted" to "Remote Indigenous Internet 
Access", but but without an explicit amount of money committed to the 
program. Last year there were no such programs in the budget. This year 
there is provision for: " remote Indigenous internet training"  $2.2M 
http://www.budget.gov.au/2015-16/content/bp2/download/BP2_Expense.pdf#page=15

In 2013/2015 the Government announced it would save $31.2 M over two 
years by incorporating the functions of the National Health Information 
Network (NHIN) into the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record 
(PCEHR) system. Last year $140.6 million was provided in for the PCEHR. 
The government has now renamed the project "My Health Record":

     "The Government will invest $485 million to improve the electronic 
health record system for all Australians." 
http://www.budget.gov.au/2015-16/content/overview/html/overview-25.htm

This project has already cost many hundreds of millions of dollars for 
little result. I suggest it requires investigation by the 
Auditor-General, if not the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions 
(CDPP).


QUALITY OF THE WEB PAGE

This year budget web site worked well (except the search function). Each 
year from 1996 to 2006 the budget web site was improved. By 2007-08 it 
reached a stable design, also used for to 2011/2013, using HTML 4.01 
Transitional. The 2014/15 had s similar design using HTML5.  The 
2015/2016 website has changed to a more mobile friendly design. The home 
page scored 91/100 on Google's Mobile PageSpeed Insights for User 
Experience. The page received a 62 / 100 for Speed, which is not as good 
as it could be, given the heavy traffic it is likely to experience.

The home page failed a W3C HTML Markup Validation test, with fifteen 
errors. These are not serious problems and easily fixed, but it is 
curious that such a high profile page is not tested more thoroughly.

The home page scored a very poor 0 out of 100 on the W3C mobileOK 
Checker. The total size of the page is  527.2KB (document: 14.6KB - 
stylesheets: 81.4KB - images: 431.1KB). This much smaller than 
2014/2015 when the page ballooned to 17.9MB, but the style-sheets and 
images could be trimmed.

The budget home page failed a aChecker automated accessibility test 
(WCAG 2.0 Level AA) but with just two very minor and easily corrected 
problems.

As introduced last year, important tables in the budget documents are 
rendered as well formatted HTML tables, not as the blurry image files in 
previous years. This make it possible to increase the size of the text 
for easier reading. Also a table can be simply copied into a word 
processing document with the layout intact, or into a spreadsheet for 
extra analysis. The headings are marked up in HTML has headings, which 
should make it much easier for assistive technology to interpret.

The PDF version of the budget overview has almost halved in size, down 
from 5 MB last year to 2.7 MB. , but still much smaller than the 
16.6Mbytes, the web page quotes. The Budget is released under a a 
Creative Commons BY Attribution 3.0 Australia licence, in line with open 
access government policy (commenced 2012/13).

Blog version of this: 
http://blog.tomw.net.au/2015/05/it-matters-of-interest-in-20152016.html


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
The Higher Education Whisperer http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards
Legislation

Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science,
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/