Government services minister Bill Shorten has kicked open the door for the public and stakeholders to express their unfiltered opinions on the performance and utility of the centralised myGov transactional and communications platform, as part of a comprehensive review of the website.
Shorten late last week revealed the previously announced sweeping audit of the primary commonwealth services portal will now take into account the experiences of end users as well as stakeholders, as the Albanese government looks to augment and reform the key digital touch point.
The opening of the audit to general end-user input demonstrates a firm recommitment to independent assessments of utility over trust in internally generated figures and strongly suggests the Albanese government won’t accept previous rosy assessments.
Announcing the call for input, Shorten stressed the need for real-world performance over selective metrics.
“The myGov platform has the potential to deliver outstanding personalised, intuitive services for Australians when and where they need it,” Shorten said.
“I recently announced an expert panel will review myGov and make recommendations to help unlock the platform’s full potential. This consultation is an integral part of that review and will seek the views of users, community and industry representative groups in the coming weeks.”
Shorten has appointed a crack team of investigators headed by serial reviewer ex-Telstra and IBM chief David Thodey to determine the baseline of myGov’s performance following a series of conspicuous IT-related meltdowns under the previous government.
They include the robodebt scandal, now the subject of a royal commission, the ministerial blaming of a demand-driven online breakdown on a fictitious Denial of Service (DoS) attack and a horror audit of the Digital Transformation Agency.
“We’re moving quickly on our election commitment to identify the changes needed to improve myGov’s reliability, functionality and deliver a more user-friendly experience. These consultations will be an important step to delivering improvements as soon as possible” Shorten said.
The audit is slated to take a shot and sharp 12 weeks.
“The report’s recommendations will help map the path towards a world-class, unified government service delivery approach that makes it simpler for people to connect with government services online. It’s what Australians expect and deserve.”
Let it rip…
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