Yet Again It Seems The Federal Government Is Failing In Developing And Managing The Health IT Systems We Need.

This appeared last week:

Health criticised for error-prone Australian vaccination data

By Richard Chirgwin on Aug 18, 2022 10:56AM

Lacked assurance, IT controls with outsourced providers.

Australia’s Covid-19 vaccine rollout was hampered by poor data quality and oversight in the IT systems used by the Department of Health and Aged Care to manage vaccinations.

According to a report published by the Australian National Audit Office yesterday, data quality was a major issue, with error rates in some systems as high as 14 percent.

Data accuracy was hampered by the large number of users of the systems, and a lack of oversight by Health.

“Health has not formally reviewed the data entered into any of the systems … This has resulted in undetected and undisclosed inaccuracies in the data”, the auditor said.

After the delays experienced in vaccine approval, Australia began engaging the industry in late 2020, allocating funds in the December MYEFO  that year.

In May 2021, Services Australia rehosted the Australian Immunisation Register (AIR) onto a private cloud, to cope with expected demand.

Other systems were outsourced to various providers: Salesforce ran the Vaccine Administration System (VAS) which handled ordering; Salesforce and AWS operated the Covid-specfic Covid-19 Vaccine Administration System CVAS; and Accenture managed reporting dashboards. 

In February 2021, Accenture also implemented the delivery-side Vaccine Data Solution (VDS) which handled logistics and reported vaccine coverage.

The audit is critical of Health’s management of the data project: “Health put in place effective monitoring and reporting arrangements using the best available data.

“However, it did not undertake sufficient reporting against targets, and it does not have adequate assurance over the completeness and accuracy of the data and third-party systems”.

The auditor expressed concern for confidentiality, integrity and availability of data.

“Health relies on point of time assessments, contractual obligations and management statements from entities. These are not sufficient to demonstrate that IT controls have been implemented and were operating effectively over the vaccine rollout.

More here:

https://www.itnews.com.au/news/health-criticised-for-error-prone-australian-vaccination-data-584111

There is more coverage of the report here:

Health caned over vaccine systems data: Auditor

Justin Hendry
Editor

18 August 2022

The federal Department of Health failed to obtain assurance from third party providers like Salesforce and Amazon Web Services that outsourced vaccine administration systems had adequate IT controls in place, an audit has revealed.

The oversight means the department cannot be certain of the “completeness and accuracy of the data” in the systems, the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) said in a report into the vaccine rollout first flagged in August 2021 and tabled on Wednesday.

Health is now planning to undertake an independent review of its “IT controls and application of its internal quality assurance framework” in a bid to obtain greater assurance over its externally managed systems.

According to the report, the department used several key systems to manage and monitor the ordering of vaccines during the rollout including the COVID-19 Vaccine Administration System (CVAS) and the Vaccine Data Solution (VDS).

The CVAS, a Salesforce and Amazon Web Services-based system for managing the “ordering, allocation, delivery and receipt of COVID-19 vaccines and record any wastage,” was introduced in March 2021.

Data from CVAS, as well as the existing Australian Immunisation Register (AIR) and Vaccine Administration System (VAS) is surfaced in VDS, which was brought online by Accenture in February 2021 to “provide reports on vaccine delivers and immunisations”.

Since Accenture was awarded the contract to develop and maintain the VDS, the contract has ballooned from $6.7 million to just under $23.5 million, a quadrupling in value.

But despite having systems in place to monitor the vaccine rollout, the ANAO said there is no “assurance that third parties have IT controls in place to ensure the confidentiality, integrity and availability of data” in outsourced systems.

More here:

https://www.innovationaus.com/health-caned-over-vaccine-systems-data-auditor/

The direct link to the report is found here:

https://www.anao.gov.au/work/performance-audit/australia-covid-19-vaccine-rollout

The Audit Office put it this way:

Recommendations

Recommendation no. 1

Paragraph 3.25

The Department of Health and Aged Care establish processes, including during public health emergencies, to ensure it regularly obtains and reviews assurance over the data quality and IT controls in place in externally managed systems on a risk basis, including IT security, change management and batch processing.

Department of Health and Aged Care response: Agreed

Recommendation no. 2

Paragraph 3.55

Before 31 December 2022, the Department of Health and Aged Care conduct a comprehensive review of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout which:

1. invites contribution from all key government and non-government stakeholders;
2. examines all aspects of the COVID-19 vaccine rollout;
3. identifies what worked well and what did not; and
4. makes recommendations to the Australian Government about opportunities for improvement in the event of a future vaccination rollout.

Department of Health and Aged Care response: Agreed

----- End Quote.

The bottom line is that the Health Department has no clue in managing external IT contractors and really needs to lift their game in this area. After the length of time we have seen similar issues and comments you would have imagined such activities would be a core skill – but it seems not – and we, the poor taxpayer – keep funding the bureaucratic incompetence!

It feels like this is just a game that will go on forever!

David.