Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for the Digital Economy) Share this | Hansard source

I want to thank the minister for his contribution, and I refer him to his comment that he wants to see by 2025 that Australia will be one of the top three digital governments in the world, boldly going where no Turnbull government minister has gone before—less Keenan and more Shatner! It's very good to see. I look forward to seeing you reach that.

Mr Keenan interjecting—

Yes, I'm showing my age. I can't hide it anymore, Minister!

Given your bold ambition, I want to run through this great list of digital projects. You say you want us to be in the top three governments in digital transformation. Here's the list: the 2016 census; repeated crashes of the ATO website; delayed revamp of the Child Support website; halted the start of online NAPLAN; guillotined gov.au redesign proposal, and wasted nearly a million bucks there; shut the Digital Transformation Office, and then renamed it; waved goodbye to your CEO of the Digital Transformation Office; scored a thumbs down from small business for the over-hyped digital marketplace; saw the arrest of DHS IT contractors for suspected fraud; notched up a record spend on government IT; robo-debt, which no-one can forget; dumped the apprentice IT platform, AAMS; and, in the last few weeks, suspended the ACIC biometric project. That last project is of particular interest because the Biometric Identification Services project between NEC and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission was suspended and staff members escorted off government premises.

From that list of 13, I can't think of any of those instances where the government could build, in the general public, a confidence that it's got digital transformation right, or that they could expect more government services to actually work for them online, instead of having to call or turn up to government premises to get service. On the NEC project, in particular, I want to ask: when did the DTA come to understand that the project was in trouble? When did DTA put that project on its watch list? When the NEC project got into trouble, who did it report that to? Who was involved in the decision to scrap the NEC project? With the additional $60 million for the DTA's digital ID and another $30 million of existing DTA funding reallocated for digital ID, which of the multiple biometric projects is this funding for? Was the NEC project part of the back-end infrastructure of the digital ID rollout? Why are there so many biometric projects running in parallel within government? When did the minister become aware of the NEC biometric project being in trouble? Was the decision to scrap the $90 million project made by the department, the DTA or the cabinet subcommittee?

This NEC project goes to the heart of what is actually happening in DTA, where there's less delivery and more audit functions, but even then they can't keep track of all the projects that are going off the rails. The question I also want answered, and I think the Australian public wants to know, is: if the DTA is supposed to be keeping tabs on all these digital projects, how come it's keeping tabs on them but never intervening to prevent these projects going off the rails?

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