My Health Record- greater than the sum of its errors?

The technology behind My Health Record has been described by international experts as nothing more than “digitised paper”. Harvard Medical School International Healthcare Innovation professor Dr John Halamka claims it uses such out of date technology that crucial patient information may be unable to be ready or shared by computers.

“The My Health record is a noble idea but the standard they chose is from 1995; it uses PDFs, it’s not computable, it is just digitised paper,” he told News Corp Australia.

An ADHA spokesperson defended the software, replying that “Over 100 clinical information systems are accredited to connect to My Health Record and they consume structured data such as SNOMED [Systematised Nomenclature of Medicine] codes on diseases and AMT [Australian Medicines Terminology] codes on medicines. This functionality is driving decision support and other logic in those systems through those computable codes.” 

This criticism comes after My Health Record’s privacy chief quit early last month amid claims the organisation and Health Minister Greg Hunt’s office have not been taking the concerns of internal privacy experts seriously enough.

Whole Ms Hunt and ADHA have refused to comment, Ms Hunt has since joined ANZ Bank.

The agency has since announced citizens will be able to opt out of My Health Record at any time and permanently delete their records.

Previously, if an individual had not opted out by the given deadline, it couldn’t later be deleted- only made ‘unavailable’.

This decision comes in response to widespread criticism and concerns from citizens regarding the privacy of their data.

Mr Hunt has defended the scheme, arguing it offers greater benefits to citizens than the sum of these challenges.

“If you are a mum, you will be able to have access to the vaccination records of your children,” Mr Hunt told the Nine Network.

“If you have got older parents and you don’t know what medicines they have been on, and they are in an extreme moment in a hospital, the emergency department will be able to protect them and ensure they are not taking something for which they have an allergy.

“It is common sense and something that six million Australians have adopted. It will give all Australians access to their medical records, which should be a basic right.”

Still interested? Stay tuned for information on upcoming conferences and summits by following us on Facebook @ Akolade Aust 

Written by: Claire Dowler

Claire is the manager of Akolade’s government and digital portfolio. She’s passionate about emerging digital trends, particularly in the public sector. In her spare time she enjoys picking up heavy things and putting them back down again and animals are her favourite kind of people. 

Follow me on LinkedIn for information regarding future Akolade events as well as future blog posts @ Claire Dowler

Read more

You’re part of a National Facial Biometric Matching scheme...

New laws will allow federal and state government to access data and photos from passports, driver licences and visas as part of a national facial recognition system; the ‘ National Facial Biometric Matching capability’.

Unlike My Health Record, citizens won’t be able to opt out of their details being included in the system.

The NSW Minister for Counter-Terrorism David Elliott said it would enable authorities “to quickly identify a person of interest to help keep the community safe," according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

A Parliamentary Joint Committee inquiry into allowing identity matching services for “identity or community protection activities” has attracted submissions labelling the laws a breach of privacy rights.

Monash University Criminal Jurisprudence Professor Liz Campbell argued that the collection, storage and sharing of personal details from innocent people not suspected of an offence would compromise privacy rights.

Alongside this are the concerns that predictive algorithms misidentify ethnic minorities and women at higher rates than the rest of the population.

While Minister Elliott said there will be a threshold limiting the use of the system, there are currently no proper definitions of how the data will be used.

"People will not be charged for jaywalking just because their facial biometric information has been matched by law enforcement agencies," Mr Elliott said in state parliament. "The Government will make sure that members of the public who have a driver licence are well and truly advised that this information and capability will be introduced as part of this legislation.

"I am an avid libertarian when it comes to freedom from government interference and [concerns] have been forecasted and addressed in this legislation."

Still interested? Stay tuned for information on upcoming conferences and summits by following us on Facebook @ Akolade Aust 

Written by: Claire Dowler

Claire is the manager of Akolade’s government and digital portfolio. She’s passionate about emerging digital trends, particularly in the public sector. In her spare time she enjoys picking up heavy things and putting them back down again and animals are her favourite kind of people. 

Follow me on LinkedIn for information regarding future Akolade events as well as future blog posts @ Claire Dowler

Read more

What is Digitisation Anyway?

Digitisation means different things to every organisation. I’ve just returned from an Inter-parliamentary Union (IPU) mission to Tuvalu to undertake an ICT capability assessment for the Tuvalu Parliament. Tuvalu is a small and isolated pacific nation, which is travel brochure beautiful and full of wonderful people. Tuvalu has little in the way of natural resources, and is heavily dependent on imports and international aid. Getting a computer working after something goes wrong is challenging in its own right. To the Tuvalu Parliament, just being able to store parliamentary documents electronically, in a central repository, and then being able to share these documents with the 15 members of parliament electronically, would seem like digitisation.

When Gartner introduced the concept of the Nexus of Forces back in 2014, it was hard for many of us to appreciate the impact the Internet of Things was going to have on our personal and professional lives. Why on earth would you want an internet connected fridge?! The constant improvement in consumer technology, and the increasing ease at which previously complex tasks can be completed by anyone with a powerful enough smart phone, led to an expectation of the same ease and choice we have in our personal lives to also be available in our professional lives.

New Zealand Parliaments journey of digitisation started back in 2013. We started with the vision of “enabling a mobile workforce to work securely anywhere, with fit for purpose tools”. Like most organisations, we knew we would need multiple streams of activity.

We knew we needed to rebuild the parliamentary network to support a mobile workforce. We also knew we would probably want to move to the Cloud at some point, so the network design needed to support this type of traffic. It was when we replaced our 30 year old PABX with Skype for Business (SfB) we had our first reality check – don’t believe anyone who says you don’t need to have some form of Quality of Service (QOS) in place to make good quality phone calls using SfB! Four years later we have just about completed the network refresh – it is hard to make substantive change around the busy business of parliament.

Another major stream of activity was our Line of Business applications. Many of the systems supporting the House were built on old technologies that were either no longer supported or becoming end of life. With an eye to one day moving to the Cloud, we defined a Technical Reference Model (TRM) for parliament that ensured the same frameworks, languages and technologies were used for all of parliament’s applications. Rightly or wrongly we choose SharePoint as the common platform on which to deploy our applications. We now have a stable and supportable stack of applications that, with a little bit of work, can be redeployed to the Cloud when we are ready to do so.

Security is a major concern in itself. Parliament naturally becomes a target for cyber activity by the very nature of what it represents. We are required to implement the highest level of security our users will tolerate, without impeding members rights around parliamentary privilege. Security is a constant tension against usability, and too often if you leave it up to the security experts to determine what is needed, you end up with something not very useful to your users. You can achieve a lot in the security space just through implementing a good user education programme.

Which brings me to our last major stream of activity – supporting our users. User expectations are constantly increasing against a back drop of evolving technology in the consumer space. If you can’t make it easy for them, they will work around you – implementing their own solution is just a google search and credit card away. More than ever you need to be talking to your users, understanding what they are trying to achieve and help guide them towards a solution you will be able to support them on, will also meeting your own standards and requirements.

I’m still not sure if my fridge will ever be connected to the internet, but it is starting to looking more compelling five years on from when I first heard it suggested, and, at some point, the choice may not even be mine to make.

Still interested? Stay tuned for information on upcoming conferences and summits by following us on Facebook @ Akolade Aust 

Written by: Michael Middlemiss, Chief Information Officer at Parliamentary Service

Michael has worked within the Information Technology industry for over twenty years and has acquired significant experience across a wide variety of roles, technologies, industries, and business processes. 

Michael has been involved in all levels of Information Technology, from hands on design and requirements gathering, through to roles involving Strategic Planning and thought leadership.

Michael is a seasoned people manager who has built several of his teams from scratch. 

Read more

How can a Virtual Assistant help you?

“Oh my god, this person’s Executive Assistant is a robot!” A colleague of mine looked incredulously at an email she had received, signed off with the job title ‘Virtual Assistant’.

How many of you would have had the same reaction?

We know the Executive or Personal Assistant is dynamic and has evolved drastically over the past few decades. The ability to remember a coffee order and answer phone calls is no longer what defines an exceptional EA. Rather it is now their ability to navigate complex public relations situations, liaise with business leaders and collaborate across departments.

The boundaries of the role have been challenged again by the possibilities brought by the digital era. The virtual assistant fulfils many of the same responsibilities as a ‘traditional’ executive assistant but correspondence is performed virtually.

What a virtual assistant can (usually) do:

• Complete time-consuming, repetitive tasks- Data entry and administrative work can be mind-numbing but they’re essential to ensuring the smooth running of your business

• Bookkeeping- Whilst virtual assistants can help manage your budgets and track your expenses, they cannot do your actual accounting. However you will have a very happy accountant when they find your books are in order.

•  Lead generation- find more opportunities

•  IT outsourcing- for the tech-illiterate among us, VAs can often help with website building and graphic design

• Research- Whether it’s for an event, potential investors or office space, virtual assistants can save you a lot of time in laying the ground work for your biggest projects

What a virtual assistant can’t do:

• Develop your organisational strategy- You know your business best. Usually Virtual Assistants are based in other countries and simply don’t have the thorough understanding of your business necessary to weigh-in on the business plan

• Relationship building- While virtual assistants will be able to help you with email correspondence, there is little substitute for one-on-one meetings when it comes to building lasting client relationships

If you’re after someone to alleviate your workload and organise your life, a virtual assistant could be an avenue to explore. However if you want someone to discuss strategy and help build your company’s reputation, nothing will replace your face-to-face Executive Assistant. 

Attend the Public Sector EA & PA Summit NZ from 5-7 of December 2018. More information here

Still interested? Stay tuned for information on upcoming conferences and summits by following us on Facebook @ Akolade Aust 

Written by: Claire Dowler

Claire is the manager of Akolade’s government and digital portfolio. She’s passionate about emerging digital trends, particularly in the public sector. In her spare time she enjoys picking up heavy things and putting them back down again and animals are her favourite kind of people. 








Follow me on LinkedIn for information regarding future Akolade events as well as future blog posts @ Claire Dowler

Read more

Maintaining ongoing cyber security within government organisations

Sometimes, the biggest misconceptions with cyber security are to associate products and services with an ideal cyber security strategy and create a bulletproof level of confidence.  However, most of Australia's ASX 20 organisations including the top four banking institutes, financial services, capital markets and of course the government sector couldn't be further from the truth.

Let’s take a look back over the last couple of years and months - recent hacks have compromised some real sensitive details such as payroll information, user personality tests, medical records, performance reviews, drivers’ licenses, personal addresses etc.  As you can think, organisations at this tier spends millions on cyber prevention however, organisations get involved in an incredible amount of cyber security risk and breaches.  Why?

Often at times people talk about ‘people’ being the weakest link in the cyber security chain.  I disagree.  People aren't the weakest link if they are utilised correctly.  "IT" people see users as liabilities, however, "IT" people do very little to empower, educate and create recurring moments where if users see, or feel something wrong is happening they challenge the situation.  In most cases attacks happen in less than 2 hours by doing a targeted attack on an individual.  Creating a level of pain, or associating a level of discomfort where the user will likely want to know "more information" and getting the user, to do a certain action which essentially causes the breach.

Using and complying with ISO standards is a good starting point, but as anything else it needs more attention.

As part of our cyber security strategy the number one tactic many organisations use is: to ensure they are ISO compliant –making sure they are following the "frameworks and industry best practices to prevent attacks" however, it doesn't seem to do much.  Having policies, documentation, standards and processes doesn't mean anything.  I'm here to give you the understanding that attacks are real and guess what - organisations are doing exactly what each other are doing - they are following one another and are in a state of what I call "mob mentality ". Organisations should rather be in their own dedicated cyber security tier and develop specific strategies that align with their core business challenges.

Sometimes the best strategies and tactics to developing a winning cyber security strategy is often having minimal and simple technology and no flashy lights.  -Not wanting to have the latest and greatest but implementing clear and simple strategies that can take your organisation from a somewhat

I can't wait to share with you some tactics that cost literally $0 to implement and give you a real false positive notification of an actual threat taking place.

Still interested? Come and see my workshop on Maintaining ongoing cyber security within government organisations at the Digital Government WA Summit 2018, Perth from the 4-6 December.

Still interested? Stay tuned for information on upcoming conferences and summits by following us on Facebook @ Akolade Aust 

Written by: Andrew Constantine, Founder & Managing Director, CIO Cyber Security 

Andrew Constantine is the founder of Australia's Largest Private Community of technology leaders specialising in preventing cyber security threats with more than 3,000 private members.  His vision is to improve traditional cyber security education by introducing the real world approach.

Being the author of the CIO Solution Book - This was followed by the launch of CIO Cyber Security, a private advisory firm designed to help fellow Technology Leaders raise more cyber security awareness to executive management, by running simulated cyber security attacks and cyber warefare scenarios in a controlled environment.

 Andrew is an advocate of giving back to the community and supports Bear Cottage -fundraising and supporting children with life-limiting conditions.

Read more

Measuring the levels of data maturity to capitalise on data accuracy – THE ICONIC

As we head into a world where organisations are becoming more and more dependent on data and analytics, the Head of Analytics and Data Science from The ICONIC divulges into where the industry is going and key steps to transform into a data-driven organisation.

Kshira Saagar:

At a very high level, there are two big challenges for a Data and Analytics team at any organisation:

• Credibility
• Time to insight.

Credibility refers to the aspect of the end user’s willingness to believe, agree and action on the top of our data-driven insights - and to get any logical thinking person across the spectrum of belief to action using data as your only tool is quite a challenge.

Following on from the first challenge is the natural second one of deriving fast and useful actionable insights from the humongous volume of data rapidly. As the famous adage goes, decisions don’t wait for data - so if the data and insights are not ready in time for decisions to be made, they most likely end up being exercises in vanity on a nice little PowerPoint buried within someone’s unread mails.

The future for any data-related initiative must be able to answer and accommodate three major components:

• Scale
• Veracity
• Access

Scale - the one thing that we can predict confidently about the future is that the size of the data and the input sources for data collection will definitely increase exponentially. This means a lot of current approaches and technologies to data warehousing from 15-20 years ago will no longer help us with the data needs of the future - leading us to rethink a data architecture based on the new age data solutions - for the next 5 years, if not more.

Veracity - with such a big volume and velocity of data, comes the problem of veracity - i.e. data credibility. Collecting and processing millions and millions of rows/tuples/columns of data in a day is all fine but it will all mean nothing if, at the end of it all, the data is deemed unreliable and incorrect. A lot of older data solutions encourage data collection over data verification. Performing real-time event-driven algorithmic data integrity checks sits outside these solutions or need to be over engineered, which highlights the need for a new architecture that can not only collect process and clean data but also provide the options to check for integrity and provide more confidence over the data collected.

Access - the biggest roadblock to a future-looking solution is that given the lack of maturity of these solutions in the market, making data collected and processed on these platforms accessible to a wider section of the company becomes a challenge - not only for the wider business folk, but also to the common analyst who’s not too happy about having to write complicated Scala code to be able to even start interacting with data. This makes it absolutely imperative to come up with an accessible-for-all last mile that integrates well with the future data platform.

One crucial suggestion for companies investing in going deeper would be:

·         To set up a less fragmented and more cohesive foundation for their data and analytics teams.

That involves thinking about the data and analytics team as a horizontal, and not like a vertical tied to individual departments. Think of Data and Analytics as you would think of your Finance or Human Resources team - horizontal for the whole company.

Rather than having a separate Marketing Analytics department that churns out amazing insights into customer behaviour and another separate Product Analytics department that in turn generate their own deeper insights running counter to the aforementioned first team which is quite consuming in terms of time and energy - it pays to have all the Analysts and Data Scientists under one common umbrella but still deputed to work for individual teams. This is where cross functional thinking plays a big role and can not only unify data initiatives but also help in scaling them efficiently.

The data-action loop is getting closed faster than widely expected and I expect this momentum to keep growing upwards. For quite a long time data and analytics was pigeon-holed mostly within certain groups like Strategy and Marketing teams, and the output of most of this work ended up in the limbo land of PowerPoints and inboxes. The data-action loop was mostly never closed and analysts/data scientists could “predict” stuff and get away with incorrect and sometimes invalid findings - because the actions were never taken on the back of this data and analyses. This was and is not particularly motivating to data teams that want to make a serious impact and causes a vicious cycle of ineffectiveness.

But now that’s changing. Be it an in-house data team or an external consultancy, everyone is asked to ‘prove’ the value of their data-driven insights, offerings and strategies - and this can be seen reflected in how senior leadership and executive teams have started approaching the data angle. The landscape has evolved to an extent where it has become easy to “measure” effectiveness of a strategy, insight and/or the solutions powered by data. Data-driven insights can no longer hide behind the veil of “you-didn’t-implement-it”

When this healthy trend keeps growing, it will ensure that data is no longer a ‘good-to-have-eye-candy’ on a document but will be the centerpiece of all decision making. In turn, that will lead to people working in data and analytics to feel more vindicated about their work and feel the output from their teams are valued. Which finally will ensure that the these happy data team members produce amazing and more boundary-pushing outputs which will benefit the end customers’ overall experience with an organisation.

Still interested? Come and see me speak about Measuring the levels of data maturity to capitalise on data accuracy at the Australian Data Summit 2018 Sydney from the 19-21 November.

Still interested? Stay tuned for information on upcoming conferences and summits by following us on Facebook @ Akolade Aust 

Written by: Kshira Saagar, Head of Analytics and Data Science, THE ICONIC

Kshira Saagar (Shee-Ruh Sa-Ga) has been with the Analytics/Decision Sciences industry for almost a decade now having worked across Americas, Asia, Europe and more importantly Australia. The bulk of his work has been focussed on developing solutions for the Analytics problem spaces of the Retail, Telecom and Insurance marketing departments at some of the leading Fortune 100 clients. In his other roles, he has enabled decision making through data for clients from the Media, Healthcare, Aviation, Logistics and FMCG organisations.

In his current role at The Iconic, as the Head of Analytics and Data Sciences, he's responsible for understanding and enabling data driven decision making. Previously at Datalicious & prior to that at Fairfax, he was responsible for institutionalising data-driven analytics across the company’s core competencies and building new-age analytical products for the organisation.

Read more

It’s Show Time! - WA’s New Cyber Security Initiatives

With Western Australia having launched the Office of Digital Government under the Department of Premier and Cabinet, the importance of driving the public sector’s digital capability have never been greater.

WA’s McGowan Government is now investing more than $500,000 into the creation of a dedicated cybersecurity team to improve public sector cyber security. To put it simply, WA is driving digital and cyber security transformation. They promised a better approach to cyber security and that’s exactly what they are doing.

In summary, the McGowan Government’s approach to cybersecurity is a force to be reckoned with. They are implementing the following:

• $7.4 million in funding for the new Office of Digital Government
• More than $500,000 for a new cyber security team, who will develop whole-of-government cyber security initiatives
•      The establishment of a Cyber Security Reference Group, comprising of representatives from 9 public sector agencies, to support development of a whole-of-government approach to cyber security
•       A partnership with Edith Cowan University-  a globally recognised cybersecurity institution to collaborate on projects that improve the security of the WA public sector

What begun on July 1 2018 the Office of Digital Government initiated work as a discrete business unit within the Department of Premier Cabinet to drive public sector digital capability and improve cyber security issues that were neglected in the past eight years by the Liberal Government.

In a public statement, ICT Minister Dave Kelly stated “As the business of modern government becomes increasingly driven by technology and data, government must be prepared for the growing threat of cyber attacks”.

In early 2016, a Trojan virus ‘penetrated WA Parliament’s information technology network despite sophisticated firewall virus protection’ and affected key ICT systems. To avoid such a breach, WA is taking key steps to empower the public sector with confidence and systems to ensure that if such a threat occurs again, they are equipped and ready to handle it.

By forging the partnership with Edith Cowan University, the WA Government have made it clear that that they are joining forces to keep Western Australia resilient and safe against all cyber security threats.

The 1^st of July 2018 saw Western Australia experience their most trans-formative ride ever. The public sector is joining forces to ensure that WA is prepared for a smarter, safer and reliable Digital WA. It’s Show Time!

Still interested? Stay tuned for information on upcoming conferences and summits by following us on Facebook @ Akolade Aust 

Written by: Vishi Peters 

Vishi is a Conference Producer of Akolade’s Government and Digital portfolio. She has a strong interest in current affairs and enjoys giving an educated opinion about emerging trends. She is passionate about photography, enjoys playing cricket and cooking different cuisines and expanding her knowledge of food.  

Follow me on LinkedIn for information regarding future Akolade events as well as future blog posts @ Vishi Peters

Read more

Technology and Logistics: The Odd Couple

When I started my career in logistics in 2001, the most impressive piece of technology in our business were the vending machines in the lunchroom. If a customer wanted to know where their delivery was, we would call the driver’s mobile, and then ring the customer back on theirs. If they needed a proof of delivery, we’d fax it through. Two years down the track, we were getting pretty excited about the ability to book jobs online. Warehousing wasn’t much different - our clients were typically wanting to store slow-moving goods, or bricks and mortar retail stores holding replenishment stock.

In 2005 when I started importing and distributing footwear, I leased a warehouse in Sydney and stacked it with thousands of pairs of shoes, receipting each pair manually, we had no automation or warehouse management system to speak of. When I landed my first deal with David Jones and they asked if we were ‘EDI compliant’ I answered yes, and quickly googled what the heck EDI meant.

The incredible growth of eCommerce in Australia is showing no signs of slowing down, and it’s dragging a variety of Aussie industries and businesses with it. Even old-school ‘bricks and mortar’ icons like Gerry Harvey, who in 2008 famously labelled online business as a ‘con’, and claimed online businesses do not make any money. I lost count of the number of retailers who told me their customers preferred the ‘experience’ of shopping in store, some of whom have struggled in recent years. In 2018 Harvey Norman claims to be Amazon’s most ‘formidable opposition’, demonstrating the need to embrace Australia’s new found love of online shopping. Love it or loathe it, technology is advancing, and for many freight providers, DC’s, 3PL’s or retail businesses, it’s a case of evolve or die.

I think it’s fair to say that the growth of eCommerce in Australia has brought about a somewhat symbiotic relationship between freight and technology.  As eCommerce grows, naturally freight volumes continue to grow in-line, and as freight grows, technology companies have latched onto that growth. Those that have hung on for the ride, find themselves in an accelerated position, like the strangler fig in the daintree rainforest, which attaches itself to a bigger tree in the hope of reaching the canopy, often becoming bigger than the tree it harnessed.

In 2018 the fascinating rise of tech companies winning freight business continues. Companies with no vehicles of their own are doing some serious volume on the back of crowdsourcing great rates for everyone from mum and dad eBay sellers to multinational retailers, and giving the small guys economy of scale benefits usually reserved for the heavy hitters. In addition they have the the technical nouse to deliver a generally superior user experience in areas like tracking and returns. Tech in fulfillment is becoming so lucrative, that some players like Aftership are focusing almost solely on the tracking piece, whereas others like Shippit will provide the all-in package.

Warehouses and DC’s face a different challenge all together. Mid 2000’s plenty of 3PL’s were still relying on accessing the back-end of their client’s website to pick orders, or if you were really tech-savvy, an FTP server was used to exchange data. These days it’s all about API’s, and instant communication between merchant, warehouse, courier and customer. Warehouse automation has moved past conveyors, to robots picking orders overnight, to machines that make branded boxes to size.

Technology and logistics are well and truly intertwined, and tech companies have levelled the playing field for smaller businesses, creating a free market. The challenge for freight and logistics companies is to become more agile and innovative, to continue to invest in technology, and to learn from the guys who are changing the way freight and logistics looks in Australia. Presently at Showpo, we continue to deal directly with a variety of carriers, while least-cost routing the trade-lanes ourselves. We believe this helps us to offer a premium service, free to our customers, without too many middle-men clipping the ticket along the way. That’s not to say that might change in the future, as the evolution in this space has been rapid and impressive - Watch this space.

Still interested? Stay tuned for information on upcoming conferences and summits by following us on Facebook @ Akolade Aust 

Written by: Paul Waddy

Paul is the Operations Manager of Showpo, one of Australia's most successful ecommerce businesses. Paul founded an omni-channel men's footwear business in 2007, and has been importing and distributing products around the world for more than 10 years, including exporting to some of the world’s leading retailers including Asos, Zalora, Zalando and many more. Paul’s role at Showpo includes overseeing the supply chain, including two warehouses in Sydney and LA, Payment Gateways, and the Customer Happiness Department.

Read more