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

[Karl Auer]

On Sun, 2015-05-17 at 09:25 +1000, Tom Worthington wrote:
> Okay, so Australia could design, build and test an e-health system, at a 
> cost of a few tens of million dollars and see if it works, before 
> spending more.

The things that make people angry and dismissive of the current plans,
are pretty much the same things that made them angry and dismissive of
earlier plans.

- no evidence that the Government has learned from the past
- no evidence that the system will solve the stated problems
- a huge disconnect between the stated purposes of the system and the
actual design of the system
- clear evidence that the system is designed as an identity system
- refusal by the Government to prevent the use of the system as an
identity system
- removal by the Government of almost all rights of the individual over
their data
- not making the system opt-in
- the almost complete lack of recourse a where privacy is abused or the
collected data is misused
- no acknowledgement of the "honeypot" problem

... none of these defects is particularly easy to fix, except the "no
use as identity system", which is extremely easy to fix: have a clear
law stating that such use is illegal, with appropriate penalties, and
don't put any visible information on the actual cards or other tokens
involved. You issue blank white cards - people can the mark them however
they wish. They are useless except via a reader.

The eventual solution, if it is to have any integrity at all, is going
to have to be a distributed database, not a centralised one (think
DNS/DNSSEC), and access to the am individual's data is going to have to
be controlled by the individual. The need to access data for individuals
who cannot give their permission can be dealt with by authorising senior
staff, and by informing individuals about all accesses to their data.
Solid laws around misuse, with actual scary penalties and meaningful
recourse for people affected, will do the rest.

Regards, K.

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer (kauer at biplane.com.au)
http://www.biplane.com.au/kauer
http://twitter.com/kauer389

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