iTWire - Government Tech Policy

Revolutionising Queensland healthcare with SaaS innovation

2024-06-26T11:26:58+10:00

GUEST OPINION: Healthcare organisations in Australia are under immense pressure to innovate to better support employees, drive efficiencies, optimise patient outcomes, and ultimately ease the burden on stressed people and systems.

Internally, organisations face challenges such as burnout, low employee retention and talent shortages, and the need to accommodate ever-increasing budget demands, while externally, they face growing and ageing populations, rising obesity rates and escalating rates of cancer, mental illness, diabetes and more.

Queensland Health is one organisation leading the way in addressing these issues with its HealthQ32 vision, which explicitly calls out the need for a sustainable health system and a valued, respected, and empowered workforce. The organisation is also transforming in the broader context of the Even Better Public Sector for Queensland strategy 2024-28, and a cloud-based human resources and financial management system is ideally placed to help realise these objectives.

For example, the strategy incorporates the goal to come together across public sector organisations to respond to complex challenges and cloud-based platforms and applications such as those provided by Workday are specifically built to manage change and adaptation.

From the public sector strategy, these include identifying the skills the state needs now and, in the future, growing these skills across the sector, and fostering future generations of diverse, purpose-driven leaders. From HealthQ32, these include ensuring Queensland’s health workforce is valued, respected and empowered to lead the delivery of world-class health services, each working to the top of their scope of practice. The organisation’s focus areas include supporting and retaining the current workforce; building new pipelines of talent; and adapting and innovating new ways to deliver.

Workday’s Skills Cloud can help the organisation better align its talent with opportunities, while Peakon Employee Voice enables the organisation to listen to employees for insights it can use to improve performance and engagement, reducing attrition rates. Augmented analytics provides AI and machine learning-powered insights that drive more informed and effective decision-making around people, while automating attract-to-pay minimises the time and costs of the process while minimising errors. Compensation and benefits tools can deliver more sophisticated and targeted remuneration and rewards actions, while a workforce and enterprise management solution can help foster engagement and build efficiency with improved frontline worker scheduling and management.

Delivering on these objectives is critical. According to the Health Workforce for Queensland Strategy to 2032 consultation paper, published in 2023, 7.2% of Queensland Health’s permanent workforce left the organisation in the previous year, while, over the next 10 years, the state will need an additional 45,000 staff working in its health system.

Intuitiveness and ease of use of an asset for healthcare organisations

The intuitiveness and ease of use of cloud-based human resources, financial management and planning is a considerable asset in the pursuit of efficiency and agility in healthcare. Organisations in this sector can now reap the rewards of adopting powerful features with ease, and secure increased reliability, safety, security and lower cost of ownership.

Workday combines agility and depth of functionality to present a compelling opportunity to the sector. For example, an ‘adopt, not adapt’ approach means features are pre-built and can be configured rather than customised to meet healthcare organisations’ needs. In addition, adapting new features to a healthcare organisation’s needs in a cloud-native system such as Workday can take less than a day.

Improving teams’ performance and agility

With SaaS-based systems, teams at healthcare organisations become more autonomous, data-driven and engaged because they can easily find and act on the information they need, when they need it. These teams and their organisations can also seamlessly adapt systems to their changing needs. However, help is still available when needed. Cloud-native providers like Workday and its partners can provide ongoing support and guidance to ensure healthcare organisations are maximising the return on their investment and operating with confidence.

Effective cyber security is also critical for healthcare organisations, which typically capture a raft of sensitive personal and financial data from individuals and interact with a wide range of service providers. Security resides at the core of Workday’s culture, processes, and technologies, and this extends to achieving a range of assessments and authorisations relevant to healthcare organisations in the private and public sectors.

Delivering customer transformations

Workday’s platform and applications are already delivering transformative improvements to healthcare organisations in Australia and New Zealand. For example, Catholic healthcare provider Mercy Health selected Workday Human Capital Management to improve job candidate experiences, enable employee engagement and seamlessly add new people and locations. In addition, aged care provider Anglicare has used Workday Adaptive Planning to enable its finance managers and analysts to move from spending 80% of their time constructing or representing data to spending the same percentage of time on valuable analysis activities. The solution also enabled Anglicare to create detailed what-if scenarios that allowed its finance team to create parameter-driven forecast sheets for each business unit.

In the United States, St Luke’s University Healthcare improved nurse retention by 50% and developed three workforce apps in eight months with Workday, while John Muir Health saved USD$650,000 annually by reducing accounting FTEs, building the financial sustainability of care delivery.

For healthcare leaders looking to address their people and financial challenges, cloud-based platforms and applications such as those provided by Workday present a dynamic, highly functional and intuitive option. They offer healthcare organisations a compelling opportunity to proactively address the raft of challenges faced by the sector and set the course for a bright future.

Tokyo Government launches dating app to boost country birth rate

2024-06-10T18:16:27+10:00

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government will launch an official dating app aimed at boosting Japan's dwindling birth rate.

During 2023, the Tokyo Government revealed, births numbered 758,631 while deaths were more than double at 1,590,503. This is the eighth consecutive year that births have fallen and was a drop of 5.1% from 2022 numbers.

Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has promised to counter growing labour shortages with financial aid for families, increased parental leave, and simpler access to child care.

And, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government is working on increasing birth rates by introducing an official, Government-created and run, app to help genuine singles find each other and marry.

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"We learned that 70% of people who want to get married aren't actively joining events or apps to look for a partner," said a Tokyo government official in charge of the new app. "We want to give them a gentle push to find one."

The app is expected to launch during the Japanese summer, between now and late September 2024. Prospective users will be required to provide evidence they are legally single, a tax certificate to prove their annual salary, and a letter that states they are willing to get married.

The Government will also require prospective users to take an interview proving their identity.

The news has met a mixed reaction with some Japanese saying the app's provisions will help them feel safer when dating online, while others questioned if this is a sensible use of taxpayer money.

Consumers, businesses and economy to benefit from ‘stronger merger laws’

2024-04-11T11:27:10+10:00

The Federal Government’s announcement that it will move to strengthen Australia’s merger laws, bringing Australia into line with most other developed economies, will benefit Australian consumers and businesses of all sizes, as well as the wider economy, according to the head of the competition watchdog, the ACCC.

Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb said “higher prices, less choice and less innovation can result from weakened competition,” and “stronger merger laws are critical to ensure anti-competitive mergers do not proceed.”

“These proposed changes are significant and will reinforce public confidence in Australia’s competition laws,” she said.

The proposed reforms will be announced by the Treasurer, Dr Jim Chalmers, at the 10th annual Bannerman Competition Lecture in Sydney today and follow submissions by the ACCC calling for a fit for purpose merger regime to better identify and prevent anti-competitive transactions.

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Welcoming the Treasurer’s announcement, Cass-Gottlieb notes that currently Australia's merger regime does not require merger parties to notify the ACCC of proposed acquisitions or to wait for ACCC clearance before proceeding - and the proposed reforms include introducing a mandatory notification requirement for merger deals above certain thresholds, and a prohibition on merger transactions proceeding without receiving a determination from the ACCC or Tribunal.

The ACCC also welcomed the Treasurer’s announcement that merger laws will be updated to better deal with “serial acquisitions, where a number of smaller transactions occur over time that result in serious harms to competition”, as well as welcoming the Treasurer’s announcement that he will seek to appoint respected industrial organisation economist Dr Philip Williams AM as a Commissioner of the ACCC.

Dr Williams is former executive chair of Frontier Economics and a former Professor of Law and Economics at the University of Melbourne. He has advised leading law firms as well as the ACCC and the National Competition Council on competition and regulatory issues.

Dr Williams holds a Masters in economics from Monash University and a PhD from the London School of Economics, and his appointment is subject to confirmation by the states and territories.

“Philip is an eminent and respected economist with a deep understanding of the intersection of economics and competition law in Australia. We warmly welcome news of his nomination by the Treasurer,” Cass-Gottlieb said.

The Treasurer has also confirmed the appointment of Stephen Ridgeway as an Associate Commissioner of the ACCC.

Ridgeway joined the ACCC as Commissioner in June 2019 for a five year term and the Minister notes that he is “widely recognised as one of Australia’s leading competition and consumer lawyers and an expert in the field”.

“I am very pleased that the ACCC will continue to have the benefit of Stephen’s wisdom and intellect in his role as an Associate Commissioner. Stephen’s insights and guidance have been invaluable to our merger work in particular,” Cass-Gottlieb said.

During his address, the Treasurer will also announce a new Statement of Expectations (SOE) for the ACCC. Statements of Expectations are issued by the responsible Minister to a regulator to provide greater clarity about government policies and objectives relevant to the regulator in line with its statutory objectives and functions.

Cass-Gottlieb said the SOE announced by the Treasurer notes the Government’s expectation that the ACCC will promote a competitive, dynamic and inclusive economy and modern, well-functioning markets that work for consumers - and that boosting productivity and dynamism are critical to achieving the Government’s objectives and that “the renewal of competition policy, including through merger reform, is a key pillar of the productivity agenda”.

“The ACCC has responded to the SOE though a Statement of Intent (SOI), outlining how we will meet the Government’s expectations. This includes our strategic objective to prevent anti-competitive mergers and to support the implementation of merger law reform and a fit for purpose merger regime,” concluded Cass-Gottlieb.

The Statement of Expectations and Statement of Intent can be found here: https://www.accc.gov.au/about-us/accc-role-and-structure/statement-of-expectations-and-statement-of-intent

By way of background the ACCC also notes:

Treasury’s Competition Review was announced in August 2023 with terms of reference that included considering reforms to Australia’s merger laws. Further information is available here: https://treasury.gov.au/review/competition-review-2023

The ACCC’s submissions to the Treasury Competition Review, which includes detailed analysis and argues the case for reform can be found here: https://www.accc.gov.au/inquiries-and-consultations/accc-submissions-to-external-consultations#toc-mergers-

The ACCC first released proposed merger reforms at the Law Council in 2021. ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb commenced her term in 2022 has continued to advocate for merger reform including at the National Press Club in April 2023.

Government pours $50 million to improve mobile connectivity in roads

2024-01-31T10:16:33+11:00

The government will draw $50 million from its "Better Connectivity Plan" into improving coverage on roads and highways, which, it said, will benefit communities and commuters across regional and remote Australia.

The Regional Roads Australia Mobile Program (RRAMP) was announced by communications minister Michelle Rowland yesterday.

In a statement, she said the pilot programs will fund "new infrastructure" or the "expansion of existing infrastructure" on regional highways and major roads and inform development of a scaled-up national program.

The program will prioritise multi-carrier coverage "to improve customer choice and access."

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State and territories can contribute through partner funding or in-kind contribution (which include fast-tracking access to Government controlled land or provision of project and contract management services).

Proposals will be due on 23 February, Friday.

“The Regional Roads Australia Mobile Program will help deliver targeted solutions that address unique local challenges, boosting mobile connectivity for communities and commuters alike," said Rowland.

“Successful multicarrier solutions will ensure we leverage existing infrastructure to keep Australians connected – regardless of who their carrier might be," she added.

“I welcome proposals from State and Territory Governments, and look forward to seeing the successful pilot projects roll out across Australia."

According to budget papers in December's Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook, the $50 million will be spent in a span of three years: $10 million in the current financial year and $20 million in 2024-2025 and 2025-2026.

US Department of Homeland Security recently hosted the first Western Hemisphere Cyber Conference

2023-09-29T11:19:18+10:00

On September 27-28, 2023, DHS hosted the first Western Hemisphere Cyber Conference, which convened foreign government cyber leaders to discuss cybersecurity challenges and identify areas of collaboration.

All participants affirmed the value of building on past cooperation and committed to continuing to work together to promote our shared values and interests. In this spirit, DHS completed a variety of activities with attendees in advance of the conference, and has committed to a wide range of future trainings, exchanges, and other engagements.

Counties attending were Argentina, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago, Uruguay and the United States.

Cyber Resilience & Security

In advance of the conference, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) hosted a series of Industrial Control Systems trainings at the intermediate and advanced level to more than 10 partner countries across the region.  

CISA additionally completed activities in support of the Trilateral Critical Infrastructure Exchange with Canada and Mexico, deployed a subject matter expert to serve as an Embassy Science Fellow at the U.S. Embassy in Colombia, and provided vulnerability scanning assistance to select partner nations.  

Following the conference, CISA will continue to work collaboratively with Western Hemisphere partners on a variety of topics, such as expert exchanges on CISA’s establishment and partnership model, CISA’s role in the National Cyber Incident Response Plan, CISA’s public-private partnership operational efforts, as well as key initiatives like 5G security and supply chain security. 

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Transportation & Maritime Cybersecurity

Prior to the conference, the Transportation Security Agency (TSA) assessed cybersecurity standards at various foreign partner airports, in nations such as Argentina, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Trinidad & Tobago, and Uruguay.  
The United States Coast Guard (USCG) additionally hosted a delegation from the Mexican Naval Secretariat (SEMAR) and discussed plans for a long-term joint plan for cybersecurity.  

Following the conference, TSA will conduct a series of trainings and workshops on cyber-related topics, including a table-top exercise on transportation cybersecurity with the Bahamas and Chile.  

USCG will conduct technical assessments of port and maritime cybersecurity standards with partner nations, such as Panama, Peru, and Chile. 

Cybercrime 

In advance of the conference, the United States Secret Service (USSS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) provided several trainings to Western Hemisphere nations, such as Argentina, the Bahamas, Canada, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Mexico, Panama, Peru, and Uruguay. Topics included network intrusion, cyber law enforcement, computer evidence recovery, and the criminal use of cryptocurrency.  

Earlier this year, HSI formalized the deployment of a cyber liaison at the U.S. Embassy in Ottawa and is currently evaluating the placement of another cyber liaison.

Following the conference, USSS and HSI will continue to provide a variety of trainings, with additional training on international computer hacking, intellectual property theft, and the dark web and cryptocurrency. 

Cyber Policy & Emerging Technologies 

Prior to the conference, DHS facilitated information exchanges on cyber regulatory approaches, incident reporting harmonization, and the National Cybersecurity Strategy with countries such as Canada, Colombia, and Mexico.  

Councils, telcos, and communities urged for inputs as govt opens $20m peri-urban mobile programme

2023-07-09T17:57:11+10:00

The Federal Government is seeking the particpation of councils, telcos, and communities as the Federal Government opens up a $20 million round of the peri-urban mobile programme (Pump), which aims to deliver a more disaster-resilient communications in underserved peri-urban communities as communication in these areas tend to suffer from high infrastructure cost and difficult terrain, making connectivity access hard to reach.

According to reports, the community will also have their own say on how to spend the money allocated for Pump.

The $20 million funding is part of a $39.1 million commitment in the Federal Budget. Another round of the programme is yet to come.

"We want to make sure that industry, the community and state and territory governments have an opportunity to have their say on the draft grant opportunity guidelines for Round 2 before they are finalised and the round is opened for applications," read the announcement of the Department of Infrastructure government website.

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The Infrastructure website also said comments will "help finalise grant opportunity guidelins for the peri-urban Mobile Programme Round 2."

Local media reported that Telstra, Optus, and TPG divided $28.2 million of the Pump programme last year.

Ballarat, Bendigo, Cairns, Canberra and Queanbeyan, the NSW Central Coast, Darwin, the Sunshine Coast, Tweed Heads, Toowoomba, Townsville, and Wollongong will be covered for future Pump support.

The consultation is open until 16 August.

This first appeared in the subscription newsletter CommsWire on 07 July 2023.

US court blocks govt from leaning on social media companies

2023-07-05T08:33:22+10:00

Some US federal agencies have been banned from contacting social media companies to push for removal of material the government deems inappropriate.

An order issued by Judge Terry Doughty of the US District Court for the Western District of Louisiana said some government agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services and the FBI, were banned from getting in touch with social media companies for “the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech".

The injunction, issued on American Independence Day, is preliminary and comes in response to a suit filed by the attorneys-general of Louisiana and Missouri.

Republicans have long accused social media companies of censoring right-wing critics, while Democrats assert that platforms like Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have failed to act on misinformation and hate speech, which at times leads to violence.

{loadposition sam08}Justice Doughty made an exemption in the case of posts on social media sites that detailed crimes, national security threats or foreign attempts to influence elections.

A White House spokesperson said in a statement: "This administration has promoted responsible actions to protect public health, safety, and security when confronted by challenges like a deadly pandemic and foreign attacks on our elections.

“Our consistent view remains that social media platforms have a critical responsibility to take account of the effects their platforms are having on the American people, but make independent choices about the information they present.”

Well-known American journalist Glenn Greenwald described the decision as a huge win for the US first amendment.

"Of course The New York Times depicts this anti-censorship ruling as a dangerous shield for 'disinformation', he added.

"The most surreal fact of US political life is that the leading advocates for unified state/corporate censorship are large media corporations."

Staffing issues delay US Virginia-class subs program by two more years

2023-06-13T09:42:09+10:00

In what could be a setback for Australia's plan to acquire American Virginia-class submarines, a US government audit has found a shortage of staff and work efficiency estimates will set back the building of new submarines by two years longer than reported in 2022.

The report from the Government Audit Office said: "Performance on VCS [Virginia-0class submarines] construction continues to degrade. The program now estimates construction of each Block V submarine will take an average of over two years longer than reported last year. The delays are due to problems meeting original staffing and work efficiency estimates.

Block V is the most recent version of the nuclear-powered, attack submarines capable of performing multiple missions and including enhanced undersea acoustic improvements.

"Due to delays, program officials are developing a new, more realistic schedule for Block V. They said that they expect to complete this process in early 2023," the audit, the 21st annual review of the Department of Defence's weapon system acquisition, said.

"Program officials stated that the shipbuilders do not have sufficient workforce to complete VCS while also constructing the Columbia-class submarines and overhauling several Los Angeles-class submarines. They noted VCS construction is about 25% below staffing needs as of September 2022."

{loadposition sam08}Australia announced a plan in September 2021 to buy two or three nuclear-powered Virginia-class submarines from the US by the early part of the 2023s and then build 10 or 12 submarines along with the UK, with the latter to form the bulk of the country's submarine fleet.

The Virginia-class submarines are needed to fill the void between the retiring of the Collins class submarines and the arrival of the new fleet, with the latter expected to be delivered only in the 2050s or even later.

But the US has been barely able to provide VCS submarines to meet its own needs. It needs new boats in order that it can sell second-hand boats to Austraila.

Additionally, the price of these defence assets may increase, according to the audit report.

It said: "In an effort to improve VCS construction, shipbuilders are outsourcing certain work that they would have otherwise completed in their shipyards, noted program officials. The officials told us that the shipbuilders implemented these changes due to shipbuilders’ workforce constraints and the limited physical capacity of some facilities.

"The same factors that delayed the schedule also contributed to cost increases. While the fixed price incentive contract set target and ceiling prices for each submarine, program officials reported that the VCS shipbuilders have not met the work efficiency and material cost estimates that informed the target pricing.

"Consequently, the Navy plans to request more funds to complete Block V, as its prior budget requests covered the target prices, but not up to the ceiling prices."

In an introduction to the audit, the GAO said: "The Department of Defence continues to face challenges quickly developing innovative new weapons. These challenges persist even with recent reforms to its acquisition process intended to help deliver systems to the warfighter in a timelier manner."

Commpete fronts parliament to support co-investment for regional mobile

2023-05-29T09:23:58+10:00

Telco alliance fostering competition in digital communications Commpete has brought teams from Pivotel and BAI Communications to front the parliamentary inquiry into co-investment in multi-carrier regional mobile infrastructure. Australian legal firm Maddocks also appeared at the hearing as external counsel for Commpete.

Initiated in October at the request of Minister for Communications Michelle Rowland, the parliamentary inquiry aims to examine the current state of Australia's non-co-located mobile infrastructure and explore the feasibility, cost, and benefits of introducing multiple carriers, especially in regional areas.

Commpete chair Michelle Lim said the four entities uniting before the inquiry to represent the alliance demonstrates the significance and urgency of the message.

"While Commpete's members may have differing commercial interests, we stand united in advocating for government co-investment in regional telecommunications. Our focus is on fostering competition and choice in expanding coverage in regional areas, and maximising public benefits right from the start," she said.

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“The current regulatory settings were put in place in a different era, 25 years ago. They could not and did not anticipate the massive change in the sector over that time. We’ve seen decisions over coverage become concentrated in a few hands, and these providers can restrict the geographic reach of their networks and hinder roaming and active network sharing, preventing wholesale opportunities for a broader range of market participants.”

"Moreover, the government's Mobile Black Spot Program, designed to incentivise smaller providers to invest in underserved areas, is undermined by market monopolisation. If funding programs fail to support a broader national market, and leave isolated black spots, these providers lack rational incentives to participate. There’s never been a better time to break this cycle.”

Lim concluded that mandated active network access is required to restore competition and bring access and choice to regional Australia.

“At a minimum, the operator of any co-funded infrastructure must provide active network sharing on an open access basis at designated rates which are set by the regulator. This should also include access by mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs).”

“Now is the time to make changes to positively favour co-investment and mandate sharing of mobile infrastructure that is fully or partially publicly funded. We need to shape the policy for the future, recognising that public funding will always be an important element, but that co-investment will attract smaller private investors.”

Commpete is reaffirming its support for co-investment in regional telecommunications. The group believes that supporting regional telcos has a positive impact on market competition for retail and wholesale markets in Australia.

China bans Micron memory sales to key infrastructure operators

2023-05-23T10:26:12+10:00

China's cyberspace regulator has said it will block sales of memory chips by American firm Micron Technology to operators of key infrastructure.

The ban came to light on Sunday, with the regulator saying Micron had failed a network security review, according to a Reuters report.

Micron chief financial officer Mark Murphy told a conference on Monday: "We are currently estimating a range of impact in the low single-digit percentage of our company's total revenue at the low end, and high single-digit percentage of total company revenue at the high end."

The US Commerce Department criticised the move as being inconsistent with China's assertions of opening up markets and being committed to a transparent regulatory framework, according to a report in the Global Times, a newspaper that reflects official Chinese opinion.

{loadposition sam08}The Times quoted Chen Jia, a veteran macro economy observer, as saying that China's memory chip plants could now ensure stable supplies and product prices even if overseas companies quit the Chinese market.

"Nowadays, China's memory chip sector can achieve almost 100% localisation, while domestic companies only need to strengthen stability in certain high-end production lines," he was quoted as saying.

Chen pointed out that Micron earned about 11% of its annual global sales from China in 2022, down from a peak of about 60%.

Tech analyst Ma Jihua said the US has been citing national security in order to carry out various reviews of Chinese companies and adding them to its entity list. So the US "is not qualified" to say anything about China's review, he added.

"As Micron's market share in China is shrinking, whether South Korea and other foreign manufacturers will make up for the vacuum left by Micron in the Chinese chip market remains to be seen," Ma said.

About 30% of the domestic demand for memory chips is met by Chinese companies. Ma said if South Korean and US firms decided to withdraw from China, domestic firms could quickly meet demand.