Identity Management - What's Happening?

I must say this is all getting pretty confusing. In the late 1980’s an initial attempt to introduce an identity card for the Australian population was rolled by the Privacy Lobby. This experience of public revolt scarred many politicians and bureaucrats and the “Australia” card remained off the agenda for a good 20 years.

After 9/11 there was a recognition that a review of the management of citizen’s identity could be valuable and this led to a number of proposals beginning to circulate within Government. At around the same time the HealthConnect program was recognising the need for patient identification as one of the key infrastructure pieces for the then proposed National Shared Electronic Health Record. When HealthConnect programs were transferred to NEHTA the work on patient (and provider) identification were key initial elements.

Consulting reports addressing this area were commissioned after COAG Meeting in July 2004 recommended the development of a National Patient Identifier System and the report was delivered in early February 2005. The report has not been made public but it seems likely some of that work has informed the Individual Health Identifier (IHI) which is being developed with funding from the March 2006 COAG Meeting. This identifier is planned to be voluntary, i.e. all health services will be available without its use, and the individual will have easy access to the information held under the identifier (e.g Name, Address etc). Registered Health Providers will also have access.

So far so good. However in the recent Federal Budget it was announced that there was to be a National Services Access Card developed – at a cost of $1.1Billion Dollars. This card is to be a Smartcard which will have to be produced to access any Commonwealth (and possibly State Based) payments for Health and Social Services. For most citizens this will make this card “about as voluntary as breathing” as it has been put by more than one commentator.

We also have in the mix the Document Verification Service (operated by the Attorney General’s Department) and up until a few days we had the Medicare SmartCard that was announced by Minister Abbott in 2004. We discovered a day or so ago – as the Senate Estimates Hearings that this project had been cancelled after $4.4M had been spent – and presumably wasted. The adoption of the card in the Pilot Area of Tasmania over the two years had been of the order of 1% of the population. Clearly a remarkable success with the Tasmanian Community.

Lastly, of course we have the identity management systems currently used by Medicare and Centre Link as well, of course, as the database used by the Passport Office running out of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).

It seems to this humble observer we have a large number of right and left hands ignorant of each other’s activities, objectives and requirements. Expect this mess to cost us all dearly both in financial failed system terms and in lack of progress with the e-health agenda.

David.