If This is True, And One Would Hope Not, I Wonder Does NEHTA Know About It?

The following appeared today in the West Australian.

ID plan to curb welfare cheats

ANDREW PROBYN and SHANE WRIGHT, EXCLUSIVE, The West Australian December 15, 2009, 2:45 am

The private details of every Australian will be held on a giant national database under a Federal Government plan for "virtual" national identity cards designed to crack down on welfare and medical fraud.

The West Australian understands Human Services Minister Chris Bowen will use a speech tomorrow to claim the idea will save Australians from the paperwork involved in applying for employment benefits, seeing a doctor or collecting child support payments.

But the concept, expected to anger privacy advocates, is effectively a re-birth of the Howard Government's controversial Access Card proposal that was killed by the Rudd Government as a $1.2 billion saving measure in its first weeks of taking office.

However, instead of issuing all Australians with new identity cards - as envisaged under the trouble-plagued Access Card and its earlier incarnation, the Australia Card - the Government will create "virtual" ID cards by centralising vast amounts of information already held by various human services agencies.

These include Medicare, Centrelink, the Child Support Agency, Australian Hearing and CRS Australia, which coordinates rehabilitation services for people with disabilities, injuries or other health conditions.

.....

Coupled with the proposed national electronic health records, which would allow the sharing of patient details between healthcare providers, the new e-identity database will be a powerful Government tool to track down welfare cheats and deadbeat parents attempting to avoid child support payments.

Consolidating Government information would also aid the fight against so-called "doctor shoppers" who move between bulk-billing GPs to get multiple prescriptions for pain-killers and other addictive drugs.

.....

Full Article Here:

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/a/-/newshome/6585637/id-plan-to-curb-welfare-cheats/

There is some more coverage here:

Bowen to announce Government data reforms

By Brett Winterford

Dec 15, 2009 12:18 PM

Feds deny plans for another Access Card.

The Federal Minister for Human Services, Chris Bowen, will tomorrow make a speech that outlines reforms to Australia's welfare system expected to be underpinned by a major IT refresh.

While details are still scant, it is widely expected to include an announcement of some level of data sharing between Human Services departments - which includes Centrelink, Medicare, the Child Support Agency, Australian Hearing and CRS Australia.

An article in the West Australian today linked the pending announcement to scuttlebutt suggesting that the Rudd Government plans to implement a "virtual ID" card by centralising the databases across these departments.

.....

"That [West Australian] article is incorrect," the spokesman said. "There will be no Virtual ID card. The Government has no plans to create one central database across Government or store all data in one location."

The spokesman did not deny, however, that the announcement will involve some sharing of data between departments within the Human Services portfolio.

More here:

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/162925,bowen-to-announce-government-data-reforms.aspx

The possibilities are I think quite high there is the plan to use some sort of data matching approaches to improve services and reduce fraud – and that this will be without a card. It will be all “virtual”.

Amazingly one of the key systems – Medicare Australia’s Customer Data System is one of the 4 systems targeted and also the source of NEHTA’s IHI.

Of course the IHI is meant to have legislated protection – but the source for its information and for updates etc is now to be used for more general ID management – hardly a good look – and all too cute as well! I have a feeling this is a very bad case of the right and left hand not having a clue about what the other is up to.

Confusion about what is going on with all this has the real potential to derail the HI Service plans I suspect and someone needs – real quickly – to start getting a coherent overall plan together.

This has all the feel of the same sort of silliness and lack of communication that derailed the Access Card and the Australia Card.

The truth of the general thrust of these reports is somewhat confirmed by the fact that a 3AW host in Melbourne sought comments on what all this means from a colleague.

I await the speech tomorrow with considerable curiosity.

David.