IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

The Royal Flying Doctors Service (RFDS) has come out in support of the Federal Government’s $466.7 million commitment to personally controlled electronic health records.

RFDS chief executive officer, Nigel Milan, said that, while the initial burst of publicity in the Budget was around the metropolitan issue of hospital beds, the famed healthcare provider was pleased that there is more money for primary healthcare.

AusCERT will be replaced by the federal government’s newly established CERT Australia, which will take over the critical role of frontline protection against cyber-threats.

Federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland said CERT Australia "will now be the sole supplier of national CERT services to the community and the point of contact for international CERTs".

This would have involved installing brand new optical fibre for part of the network, but used Telstra's existing copper wires to run the last few hundred metres into homes and businesses.

The cost would have been around $15 billion.

The government's response needs to be big, bold and far-reaching. It has to spark and re-energise. It has to call to action. Kevin Rudd's National Health and Hospitals Network announcement this week meets those expectations.

Almost $30 million has been poured into developing six regional health and local council networks under the second round of the $113 million Clever Networks program.

The Clever Networks program, part of the federal government's $1.1 billion Connect Australia scheme, co-funds communication upgrades to regional and remote services under the Innovative Services Delivery (ISD).

The funding was awarded in yesterday's 2007-2008 South Australian state budget and comes after extensive lobbying by the department over the past few years.

According to a South Australian Treasury capital statement issued as part of the budget, the $11.5 million will be used to support the replacement of several IT systems, including the ageing patient administration platform.

"Scandinavia is considered a leader in e-health and design of health facilities," Gallagher said in a statement. She hoped to gain some pointers for the territory's e-health investment, which amounted to $90 million in this year's budget (passed early this morning).

To shore up support for the e-health scheme, advocates have compiled dozens of examples of how the patient identifiers would save lives and end long delays in locating patient records for effective treatment.

Every newborn, as well as every Australian holding a Medicare card or Veterans Affairs card, will automatically be allocated a "healthcare identification" number that privacy groups have branded a de facto national ID card.

The number may eventually be linked to patients' medical records, but anyone who misuses the information will face two years' jail, under draft legislation released by Health Minister Nicola Roxon on Friday.

The federal government is trying to hose down alarm over privacy by rebranding its planned e-Health scheme the "personally controlled electronic health record system", and insisting that patients will be able to control what information is fed into the database, and who can access it.

Howard shifted the Australian Government Information Management Office from the Department of Communications, IT and the Arts to the Department of Finance after the last election to give the office more clout.

Overseeing the operation of AGIMO is Tasmanian Senator and Special Minister of State Eric Abetz, who hopes to drive a change in cultural attitudes towards technology in government agencies, and to save hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in the process.

Most Australian government agencies are considering or implementing some form of shared services arrangement. These have often arisen as a solution to the acute cost pressures facing government agencies and even as a means of delivering inter-agency integration required for e-government initiatives.

The scheme, announced by Special Minister for State Gary Nairn, will provide access to services through a single sign-on on a single portal - the government's australia.gov.au site - rather than having to navigate multiple websites and have to re-enter personal details each time.

Speaking at the launch of the South East Asian Regional Computer Confederation (SEARCC) conference in Sydney, Special Minister of State Senator Eric Abetz said that the government was working on a number of initiatives that could involve the use of so-called "smartcards".

In Sydney to speak at this year's Australian Smart Cards Summit, Nairn said building "communities of interest" will stimulate interoperability which will pave the way for more government use of smartcards.

The Medical Software Industry Association says members are also yet to see a working demonstration of the system, developed by Medicare Australia in conjunction with the National E-Health Transition Authority.

Spending on e-health had crashed during the previous year, with $41.5 million left unspent out of $79 million allocated to national projects, including the now defunct HealthConnect.

But even the heavily trimmed allocation for the past financial year was underspent by $11.2 million, the Department's annual report reveals.

Ms Roxon told the Health-e-Nation conference in Canberra that the Federal Government was determined to build a connected, secure and efficient health system.