Audit review of government tool housing Medicare and Centrelink services recommends significant changes

myGov report highlights how slow decision-making at the federal level, along with a lack of legislative support for digital ID, have left Australians vulnerable.
09 February 2023
Image sourced from https://my.gov.au

The federal government’s problematic myGov app faces an overhaul and could soon be used for online identity verification, as well as increasing the number of government services. 

A  review, just released, found that in the nine years since myGov launched in 2013, it had gone from “a strategically important ICT system to an indispensable part of the Australian government service delivery ecosystem”.

The report, in two volumes, highlights how slow decision-making at the federal level, along with a lack of legislative support for digital ID, have left Australians vulnerable.

It also tackles clunky processes, lack of inclusion, and fragmentation of digital ID, which it said created confusion for agencies on which to adopt, and for citizens on which to use.

Governments have dragged their feet on providing legislative support for both the digital identity framework and biometric matching, the report stated.

It’s now urgent for legislation to catch up, the report said, because while legislation is lacking, the “use of digital identity and limited facial verification is accelerating without any dedicated legal safeguards or governance framework in place, leaving Australians vulnerable to security, privacy and other human rights violations.”

- CyberBeat

 

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