Turnbull's Transformers intend to test single sign-on to Gov.au on the offshore, public cloud Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull's Digital Transformation Office (DTO) has posted the bones of a proposal for federated identity across Australian government web sites to GitHub. Given that Australia can't manage a census, the idea that it's considering something as technologically and politically complex and/or …
I'm thinking of writing direct to him explaining why this whole thing is a bad idea in principle, without worrying about how screwed up it's going to be in practice.
What the Feds haven't yet grasped is that while a one-stop-shop is appropriate at some levels, it's completely inappropriate at others. At the local council level, yes it's good to do everything in one place. At the State level it's debatable but defensible. At the Federal level it's a nightmare. I don't want anyone but the tax office having access to my tax data, and I don't want anyone but Medicare having access to my medical data etc. If this data is all merged then we will have 'customer service reps' who aren't experts in any area having too much access to too much data. If the data remains siloed, then the MyGov single-sign on just becomes another layer of obfuscation keeping me from the people in the relevant department who might actually know the answer to my question. When you add on the potential for identity theft when it is all screwed up it's definitely a bad idea.
Been there, done that, it doesn't work. The inventor of the internet is way out of his depth trying to lead his party of rabid cats. I am convinced that they lock him in a small room where he dreams of innovation and agileness while remaining completely divorced from his responsibilities to represent the views of Australia's civilian population. Turnbull is probably not liked by the traditional LNP donors (or voters) and is not going to score a win in anything of consequence politically. Letting him play on github and public clouds is probably seen as a safe way of not offending the guy who stumped up $1M for the LNP's partial reelection campaign, just in case they need him to do it again. We are still a long way from being bound by law to actually put data into his creation. The conservative branch of the LNP is starting to make noises about privacy as if after the census they have just discovered it is a thing and possibly even a vote winner. Turnbull is a lame duckling so I would not be too worried yet.
Steady on there chaps. What's actually wrong with storing things in some murky overseas system beyond the reach of Australian law that most voters have never heard of anyway? After all, Mal happily trusts all those millions to a repository somewhere in the Cayman Islands so he should know. What could possibly go wrong?
When will reporters or the great unwashed masses, news hacks etc. realize that elected representatives have a minute effect or say on the any outcome of policies which the civil servants have on the running of any government policies. " Yes minister" then carry on with what they were doing before.. Bureaucracy rules not parliaments,local councils or elected officials. Even dictatorships have to rely on a civil service.
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