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Access Card should be ordered off the field for good

By Natasha Stott Despoja - posted Thursday, 12 July 2007


The Access Card debate so far has all the drama of Australia’s shattered 2006 World Cup Soccer hopes when Italy was awarded the controversial penalty in the dying seconds of the game that saw the Italians seize victory.

Although it looks like the Government is hoping to quietly drop this controversial proposal off the agenda until after the election (and possibly indefinitely), we must be mindful that the government could just as easily snatch victory from the jaws of defeat despite the valiant efforts of those who oppose the Access Card.

Those of us who oppose the card can not be complacent. This campaign could come down to extra time.

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The campaign against the Access Card has had some great successes to date. We have achieved a significant extension of the timeframe for analysis of the proposal, allowing for increased scrutiny.

For now, the Access Card’s fate rests on a second round of consultations in an election year. Some readers will remember the Australia Card that became the trigger for a double dissolution election in 1987.

This time round, the look and feel of the Access Card differs significantly from the Australia Card and is capable of being more privacy invasive: the Access Card will contain a three-dimensional photograph, an e-signature and a tiny microchip the size of a thumbnail. The chip will be broken into potentially three spaces, the government’s space, the individual’s space, and the health space.

About 50,000 card readers will be scattered in various locations ready to read the information off the chip. Information contained in the chip can be as benign as your name and as private as your delicate health information.

Connected to all this will be six Commonwealth government agencies’ databases. When consumers update their address with one agency it will register with all six participating agencies. There will also be a thinly applied coating of security to the whole system including the limited use of a PIN only if the cardholder chooses to protect certain information.

The controversial Access Card proposal has been found wanting more than a few times in its ability to produce a card system that will improve access to government services and minimise fraud in the welfare and health benefits systems.

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First, there are the principal documents upon which the scheme was founded and which are to this day still somewhat of an enigma. The business case, delivered by KPMG, and the Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) written by Clayton Utz are the cornerstone documents of the proposal. Traditionally, documents of this nature are circulated as a form of public consultation to address the question of independent scrutiny, but also to generate public confidence that costs, projected savings, and privacy have been considered.

The government has chosen not to widely circulate these documents. Only a redacted version of the KPMG report is publicly available and the PIA has not been released at all. Attempts by observers to obtain a copy of the documents under freedom of information laws has proved challenging. Could such silence mean that the original business case overstated the potential savings?

Second, there has been the issue of a never ending substitution of “players” over the life of the proposal which has impacted on its timeliness and effectiveness. The Hon Joe Hockey, who announced the scheme with some fanfare, was moved up and out of the Human Services portfolio in January this year. But not before the stewards of the original project had quit amid concern over the government’s failure to take seriously concerns about privacy, security and accountability. Did they have insider knowledge of something that the government was not telling us?

Minister Ian Campbell, his replacement, was then forced to resign over the Brian Burke scandal less than three months later. This again left the Access Card without a prime mover. While the present Minister for Human Services Chris Ellison has been left to defend the scheme, the Head of Human Services, Patricia Scott has been replaced by Helen Williams. In the top job for a mere two months, Ms Williams has the unenviable task of attempting to salvage the billion dollar project.

Third, there has been the mixed level of success that the Consumer and Privacy Taskforce (the Fels taskforce) has achieved in persuading any of the Ministers for Human Services to wholeheartedly adopt its recommendations to strengthen consumer, privacy and security protections within the scheme. The taskforce has warned against allowing the card to become a national identity card by virtue of function creep and has agitated for a greater degree of individual choice, for example, as to whether an individual's legal name or a photograph or a unique card number should appear on the surface of the card.

The taskforce has also stated that proof of identity documents should not be scanned or copied after they have been verified and has also recommended shelving plans to include voluntary medical and emergency data on the customer controlled portion of the chip.

Despite the Fels taskforce’s concerns, many of the more sensible recommendations have been rejected, such as making it voluntary to have a photograph or electronic signature on the surface of the card. The government has also yet to properly minimise privacy and security concerns in regards to the operation and design of the card as a form of concession system to be used by state government agencies, something which the Fels taskforce placed great emphasis on.

Finally, the government appears to have miscalculated whether short consultation periods, timelines, and reports would lead to the successful implementation of the scheme in its preferred timeframe. Arguably, such measures have had the reverse effect, grinding the project to a virtual standstill at the time of writing.

During the traditional summer Australian holiday period, a draft Bill was released for comment, but it contained a mere fraction of the whole proposal. Many submitters were disillusioned by this process and they criticised the government for their piecemeal consultation process.

When Parliament resumed in February this year, the Bill was rushed into the House of Representatives. This was a calculated endeavour by the government to force the passage of the Bill through the House. However, moves by the Democrats and other minor parties to have the Bill referred to a committee were reluctantly agreed to - albeit with a narrow timeframe. It is here, when the proposal received greater scrutiny, that the project truly came unstuck.

In a rare show of solidarity, cross-party committee members joined together to "red card" the smartcard. The government-chaired committee considered many of the features of the proposed card and supporting database infringed unnecessarily on personal freedoms and the right to personal privacy. Not least that the Access Card appeared to be nothing more than an ID card in disguise.

The Senate Committee’s line of inquiry stripped away all the technology and gadgetry and revealed the more sinister aspects of this scheme. For example, this piece of plastic may see the demise of the much loved, and widely used, not-for-profit Medic Alert system, to be replaced by the customer-controlled health area of the smartcard that has the potential for profit.

The biometric photograph is to form part of a databank able to be tapped into by law enforcement agencies. ASIO and the Australian Federal Police will be able to request the Secretary of the Department of Human Services grant access to photographs to assist with their criminal intelligence work, and in some instances they will not even need a warrant.

Each card and the smart card chip itself will carry a number which could be used to link databases both internal and external to the smartcard system.

The scathing Chair’s report backed by all members of the Senate Committee could have largely been ignored but for the fact that the issue of a national identity card is capable of polarising the community. Minister Ellison was left with no choice but to scrap the bill and go back to the drawing board.

Yet, despite many independent commentators, experts, politicians, and ordinary citizens warning of the Orwellian nature of this proposal, the government appears to be intent on persevering with the access card (although whether or not it will in fact go ahead - especially before the election - is another matter).

In its latest reincarnation, the Access Card proposal now consists of two bills, the exposure draft Human Services (Enhanced Services Delivery) (Consequential Provisions) Bill 2007 and the original Human Services (Enhanced Services Delivery) Bill 2007. In the second bill the detail (or lack thereof) of the Access Card has finally been laid bare.

Now in a last ditch effort to get the scheme off the ground, the public and other stakeholders have until August 21 to scrutinise the exposure draft as to how it will protect privacy, secure personal information, save taxpayers' money and prevent against fraud.

Perhaps, rather than resurrecting the access card for further battle, the government would have been better to start again. As suggested elsewhere by many interest groups, privacy commissioners, and bidders, it makes sense to simplify and upgrade the existing Medicare scheme through a smart card that isn’t dependent on mandatory photographs on the surface of the card. It also makes sense to have a separate system which solely deals with government benefits and concessions. A third system, which deals with health information, could also be a viable alternative from the current proposal of having health information stored on part of the microchip.

There is one last, but important issue which relates to accountability. The Auditor-General this month announced a potential investigation into the Access Card procurement process this financial year.

The Australian National Audit Office intends to examine the Department of Human Services' administration of major procurements to introduce the access card, including the tender process; services standard; performance monitoring; and processes and practices for making payments under relevant contracts.

In the next couple of months it is likely that as well as scrutiny from the public, the Minister and his department will also face some serious questioning as to the worth of this project from the Auditor-General. The audit will occur before the government has signed any contracts and may be viewed as a failure by the government to consult and properly detail the breakdown of spending on the Access Card.

The current proposal for an Australian smart card puts every Australian’s personal and health information at risk. If this new technology is to be deployed, we as consumers have the right to expect that at the very least the government will get the design of the scheme right. Will they get it right in an election year that is proving to have more than its fair share of other distractions? I guess time will tell.

Rather than wait for another failed IT project, we should not allow the government another opportunity to devise band-aid measures. The decision-making process should be out of the hands of the government and in community hands with a vote of no confidence in this proposal. Such a vote worked for the people of Ontario whose government was forced to cancel its Citizen ID Card Project in 2002.

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More information about Senator Natasha Stott Despoja's NO ID campaign is available here.



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About the Author

Senator Natasha Stott Despoja was the Australian Democrats spokesperson on Foreign Affairs, Attorney-Generals, Science & Biotechnology, Higher Education and the Status of Women (including Work & Family). She is a former Senator for South Australia.

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