Prime Minister Anthony Albanese made a few promises in the
leadup to the 2022 Federal Election: one was to initiate a
Royal Commission into Robodebt and another was to kick off an audit of the Australian government’s online portal, myGov.
The user audit, Albanese said previously, would take a “fresh look at how well myGov is performing when it comes to reliability and functionality for a user-friendly experience”. And today, the myGov audit has been
officially announced.
Justifying the audit back in May, Labor said there had just been “too many crashes and outages”, no doubt alluding to that time former Minister for Government Services Stuart Robert thought
myGov had been DDoS’d. (There was
just a lot of people checking to see if they qualified for COVID relief, btw.) That sentiment was echoed today.
The minister who has absorbed the issue-plagued myGov, Bill Shorten, said he wants to turn using myGov from an often-frustrating experience into a seamless one. Amen.
In case you’re unfamiliar, myGov was meant to be an easy, and secure, way to access services online with one login and one password.
Currently, users can link Australian JobSearch, Australian Taxation Office (ATO), Centrelink, Child Support, Department of Health Applications Portal, Department of Veterans’ Affairs, HousingVic Online Services, Medicare, My Aged Care, National Disability Insurance Scheme, National Redress Scheme, State Revenue Office Victoria and My Health Record services to their myGov.
There’s a two-year program for improving myGov underway that ends in mid-2023 and Shorten said the audit will help to inform next steps for the upgraded myGov platform.
“We’ve moved quickly on our election commitment to identify the changes needed to improve myGov’s reliability, functionality and deliver a more user-friendly experience,” Shorten said.
“We’ve recently seen the first significant updates to myGov in a number of years, but the evolution of myGov into a service that truly unifies government digital services – to make life easier for Australians – will be constantly improved.”
Chairing the audit is former Telstra CEO David Thodey, who also chaired a recent inquiry into the Australian Public Service. He’ll be joined by former Human Rights Commissioner Edward Santow, eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, social epidemiologist Professor Emily Banks and the former head of global economic policy at Uber, Amit Singh.
The new user audit into myGov will begin in the coming weeks, reporting back by the end of the year.
This article has been updated since it was first published.The post Oh Thank God, Labor Is Actually Auditing myGov appeared first on Gizmodo Australia.
