
Australia's new e-health platform crashes as people rush to opt-out - porjo
https://www.zdnet.com/google-amp/article/my-health-record-systems-collapse-under-more-opt-outs-than-expected
======
dav43
As part of my work, I've had to read a fair amount of the legislation and
reports coming out in this sector and also the "Consumer Data Rights"
legislation (similar to the UK's open banking scheme.

What I found was a massive difference in policy coming out from the same
government but in two seperate streams of work.

A) Consumer Data Right (legislation being built into Australia Privacy Act)
focusing on banking, energy and then telecommunications: The user has complete
control of their data. If a consumer asks a business to delete, they must do
so (except for information that is legally required).

B) MyHealthRecords: The government has complete control of your data. You
cannot delete your account or your data.

I'll add sources if I can, but its in the legislation.

~~~
auslander
> ... focusing on banking... - yeah. Commonwealth Bank Privacy Policy:

5\. Who do we share your information with?

\- Service providers — for example, mortgage insurers, loyalty program
partners and our product distributors

\- Businesses who do some of our work for us — including direct marketing,
statement production, debt recovery and IT - support

\- Organisations involved in our funding arrangements — like loan purchasers,
investors, advisers, researchers, trustees - and rating agencies

\- Auditors, insurers and re-insurers

\- Current or previous employers — for example, to confirm your employment

\- Credit reporting bodies and credit providers

[https://www.commbank.com.au/security-privacy/general-
securit...](https://www.commbank.com.au/security-privacy/general-
security/privacy-policy-html-version.html?ei=gsa_generic_privacy)

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Yeah, how would they delete data they’ve already sold?

~~~
auslander
Good one :)

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deevus
This is a problem every time the government launches a new service. They
always have "an unexpected amount of traffic".

The last time we had a census the "census night" was totally bust since the
majority of Australian internet users tried to use the online form and hardly
anyone succeeded. They tried to blame it on "hackers".

Leading up to census night there were threats of fines if you didn't submit on
time, but due to the shitstorm with their online failures people were still
submitting their census data months later.

~~~
SyneRyder
The census fiasco was a truly special kind of incompetence. The best inside
analysis was from the folks behind the Risky Business infosec podcast:

[https://risky.biz/censusfail/](https://risky.biz/censusfail/)

Summary: The project was outsourced to IBM (that alone probably says it all),
who didn't purchase any DDoS protection. A small attack crashed the first
firewall, and the backup firewall didn't have rules loaded. That caused IBM's
monitoring tools to flag system logs as exfiltration, so they called in the
Australian Signals Directorate (ie national security) and turned everything
off until intelligence agencies completed an investigation of the false
positive.

~~~
Namidairo
All the marketing calling it "Census night" and encouraging people to do it on
the same evening instead of over the week probably didn't help spreading the
load out.

~~~
halchion
Furthermore, although it's true that IBM didn't purchase DDOS protection,
neither did the government pay them to purchase it. IBM is incompetent but in
this particular case I can't blame them for attempting to make a meager profit
out of the pittance the Australian government chose to spend on their first
act of digital governance.

------
TheSpiceIsLife
The Australian government is _paying_ doctors to upload patient records to a
centralised government controlled database.

The Australia government is incentivising doctors to _sell client data to the
government_.

What part of this is ok in any sense?

~~~
msamwald
It seems overall okay if you accept the premises that A) A centralized health
record system can do substantial good by improving effectiveness and
transparency of healthcare processes, and enabling medical progress through
data re-use. B) Doctors won't lift a finger to do extra work if they have no
selfish incentive for doing so.

~~~
jazoom
It's really not that much money as an incentive. Doctors won't do it unless
they believe it's a good thing.

Source: I'm an Australian doctor.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
What are you doing, and what is your professional organisation (the AMA)
doing, to counter long wait times for doctors visits?

~~~
RichEO
So much entitlement in this post

Never the less, I’ll bite because this is a topic of interest to me. What kind
of wait times are you talking about?

Emergency room? Public non-emergent and elective surgery? Private practice
specialists? Bulk billing or private billing general practice?

------
mb_72
I will be curious to see how this pans out - I have dual Australian and
Estonian citizenship, and in the latter case I can tell you it's extremely
useful to have centralised medical records, prescriptions etc. For my
Australian medical records in MyHealth or whatever it's called, I have a
couple of pages uploaded by my then cardiac doctor (after I had a suspected
heart attack last November that ended up 'only' being something related to
medication), and I've already used these pages with a related consultation
here in Estonia. So, for me at least, this system has been quite useful
already. I guess time will tell in terms of security and other important
factors.

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bigiain
Anything IBM can do (with the census) - Accenture can do better, huh?

Waiting for the claims it's government sponsored Chinese hackers attacking the
opt out website...

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throawway
The Australian government gets away with a lot more authoritarian BS than
other comparable governments, and there seems to be less of an emphasis on
individual rights. I wouldn't trust them with medical records.

------
lbriner
There are problems with paper-based systems but they don't affect everyone to
the same extent: * I visit another doctor when on holiday - they don't have my
records * Certain treatments need the approval of my home doctor, it talkes
longer than it should * Harder to collate statistics that are supposed to show
the state of the nation's health

But there are problems with an electronic system: * A single point of attack *
No way to assure people it is ultimately secure, because it can never be *
Fluffy exemptions to the protection offer - especially if they are more far-
reaching than existing exemptions used for accessing your paper records *
Creeping requirements mean that a few years later, the government might change
what they can use it for.

At the end of the day, neither system can be measured in terms of risk or
reward in any meaningful way - many advantages are theoretical and risks are
downplayed - so you pretty much have to accept the centralisation of the
worlds systems or move to a Banana republic!

~~~
Avamander
* A single point of attack

Totally the same with your data in that one primary doctor's office or
whatever

* No way to assure people it is ultimately secure, because it can never be

Totally same with your paper records, someone could walk in and steal your
data, imagine that.

* Creeping requirements mean that a few years later, the government might change what they can use it for.

Just like paper records, you can't say what they will use them for in the
future.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
I believe you’ve misunderstood the concept of _single point of attack_.

This means single point of attsck _for everyone with an ehealth record_.

With paper records, or in-house digital records, a hacker / thief, or
malicious government, or what have you, has to compromise many systems.

The same applies to your paper record comment.

~~~
Avamander
> I believe you’ve misunderstood the concept of single point of attack.

Single point in who's perspective though, OP worded it more like (s)he cares
about his/her data not everyone else's (e.g. "I visit another doctor when on
holiday - they don't have my records"). But yes, you are right about it being
in general a higher risk endeavour. The question now is though, when other
commenters here describe how their life and career could get in danger when
someone steals _their_ data, which do you think is going to be much harder to
breach, your local doctor's office or a central database that's guarded by
armed guards and experts?

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
> which do you think is going to be much harder to breach, your local doctor's
> office or a central database that's guarded by armed guards and experts?

Who’s going to break in to a doctors office, then scan and upload your medical
records? I don’t think thieves in Australia would even bother with doctors
offices because no drugs or cash.

Rather, it seems certain that this database will be breached and the data sold
on the black market, and / or some future government using it outside its
intended scope.

------
auslander
It works now, opted-out, got email confirmation.
[https://www.myhealthrecord.gov.au/for-you-your-family/opt-
ou...](https://www.myhealthrecord.gov.au/for-you-your-family/opt-out-my-
health-record)

------
enturn
As well as opting out, if you're concerned about privacy it might be good to
contact your doctors directly to let them know that you don't give consent for
your data to be uploaded in the first place.

------
TheBeardKing
I get that there's benefit to a centralized health database if you're in a
country with socialized medicine, but if dealing with private doctors, why not
let the market provide this capability? My primary GP uses one version [1],
and I get that there would be several competing others until some convergence
happens. But at least with these private providers, if one fails or falls out
of trust, patients and doctors can move to another - your data isn't
permanently locked with an untrustworthy government.

[1] [https://healow.com/](https://healow.com/)

~~~
RichEO
You haven’t established that the government is less trustworthy than the
private providers?

~~~
TheBeardKing
I meant that as a hypothetical, as in if the government proves itself
untrustworthy (or technically incompetent, as is the case of Australia judging
by these comments), you can't legally switch to a new system, whereas you
could if it were private.

------
ekianjo
They even have a propaganda youtube channel

[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8UWg1-qaHAOKrzJA17EHLQ](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8UWg1-qaHAOKrzJA17EHLQ)

------
danieltillett
Anyone know who is the contractor running this fiasco?

~~~
jpmoral
Accenture, AFAIK.

~~~
bigiain
Accenture - with Oracle and Orion Health - according to this:
[https://www.itnews.com.au/news/my-health-record-
replatformin...](https://www.itnews.com.au/news/my-health-record-
replatforming-talks-begin-494467)

Hilariously, they've already let on they're not going to renew the Accenture
deal - which no doubt will _highly_ motivate them to provide exemplary support
and security over the next two years:

"The Australian Digital Health Agency has begun talks to replatform the My
Health Record system ahead of the 2020 expiry of its multi-million deal with
national infrastructure provider Accenture."

~~~
zinckiwi
Wow. What do they expect the take-up rate to be with that kind of vote of no
confidence from the people who commissioned it in the first place?

------
amelius
> When citizens rush to opt out of an Australian government service, it says
> something about their levels of trust. When the system falls over under
> heavy load, it proves them right.

What a stupid conclusion.

~~~
ekimekim
The context is that there's a lack of trust about the system being stable and
implemented properly. Hence why it falling over proves them right.

------
rjvbk
Having a centralised system with health records is bad? I've had that since I
was born in my country and I think it's useful and handy. Something happens to
you, they know what could've been, if you're on meds, what things and meds
you're allergic to, etc.

I guess the outrage makes sense when looked from an American point of view
where you distrust the government by principle?

~~~
shakna
Its not the idea that Australians mistrust - its the implementation. No great
technical project in the last couple decades has been successful.

Under the current government we have the broken NBN, the fractured MyGov that
has been repeatedly hacked, the falling over census website, other broken
health care systems.

We can't trust that they can build it safely.

~~~
auslander
Agree. AU Gov is failing in same way any big corporation fails. There is that
strange notion that Managers know better than Engineers and can make technical
Decisions.

Good engineers, who love coding, can design a big system, are unlikely to rule
over the Design. It'll be bad engineers, now Managers, with good political
skills, that got promoted because its their only way to survive, being
otherwise useless.

It is totally upside-down, hence the mess.

~~~
auslander
If any AU Gov hot shot is here, I'll fix your mess, I'm good at it, did it few
times before, drop a line at ausland@protonmail.com, I'll try to vet you :))

It will be AWS, no nonsense like kubernetes, possibly a dash of OpenBSD for
public layer, least privilege IAM, Cloudformation everywhere. Solid. :) Open
Sourcing it is an option too.

