The Minister for Human Services, Senator the Hon. Chris Ellison,
has released for public comment second exposure drafts of the Human Services
(Enhanced Service Delivery) Bill 2007 and the Human Services (Enhanced
Services Delivery) (Consequential Provisions) Bill 2007.

The period for public comment on the draft Bills closes on Tuesday 21 August 2007.

Chair of the Consumer and Privacy Taskforce, Professor Allan Fels
AO, has released the Taskforce’s second report (pdf), on whether Voluntary Medical and Emergency
Information should be included on the customer controlled portion of the access card
chip.

The Taskforce initially believed that there was considerable in principle support for the use of the Access Card as a device to enhance the access to emergency and health data which could
assist in the treatment of individuals in situations of accident and emergency.

However the submissions revealed how complex and difficult this would be to achieve in a practical sense. The critical issues revolved around the validation of data entered; keeping this data current and accessing it physically in emergency situations.

The main criticisms were :
• the use of the Access Card for the storage of medical and emergency health data is a purpose so removed from the essential rationale for having an Access Card that this functionality should not be supported
• that recommendations which preclude future uses in the medical and emergency health services area should not be supported
• insufficient attention has been paid to the additional and special privacy protections which need to be accorded to voluntary health data which is recognised as having a higher degree of sensitivity than many other classes of data
• there are numerous technical or architectural questions which still remain to be resolved before any effective system involving the storage of medical and emergency health data could be implemented. 

The Taskforce recommended that:

1. The Government should defer the possible implementation of this aspect
   of the access card program until such time as further consultation and
   consideration can be undertaken with a view to addressing the issues
   raised in this report;
2. At the point of
   registration, card applicants should be given the opportunity to
   register their consent to be an organ donor on the Organ Donor Register
   managed by Medicare Australia, and also be given the option to have
   their organ donor status reflected on the Access Card.

The Minister for Human Services Senator Ellison said that the Government will defer the introduction of
the owner-controlled part of the chip until further consideration and
consultation has taken place.

The Australian has reported that the Access Card legislation introduction will be delayed by up to 8 months (here and here): "legislation due to go before federal Parliament this month had been
delayed. Instead, a draft "exposure bill" will be released for public
debate in the next fortnight."

The Chair of the Access Card Consumer and Privacy Taskforce, Professor Allan Fels
AO, has released the Discussion Paper on the Registration process.

In this Discussion Paper, the Taskforce has focussed on questions which it sees as directly related to, or immediately arising from, the central question of how to enrol, in excess of 16.0 million Australian citizens, permanent residents and other eligible persons and to provide them with their own Access Card before the scheme comes into full operation at some date in 2010.

The paper raises the fundamental question of what is the appropriate level of proof of identity that an applicant for an Access Card will need to establish in order to be issued with one.

It also discusses:

•managing address issues for persons who are chronically homeless
• security features related to data capture, transmission and storage
• particular issues related to people with religious/ethical objections to requirements of the Access Card registration process
• the methods of return of issued cards to cardholders
• commencement arrangements to activate operation of the Access Card
• the cancellation, suspension or deactivation of the card
• preferred replacement arrangements
• the specific issues faced by transgendered Australians
• the specific issues faced by people with mental illness or disability
• the specific issues faced in relation to the issue of cards to prisoners on release
• the inclusion of data about dependents, carers or people with powers of attorney on the card
• arrangements for the issue of the card, or amendment of its details, by Australians and other eligible cardholders living overseas.

The
paper was written by the Taskforce prior to the Senate Inquiry Report
being released .

The  Minister for Human Services, Senator Chris Ellison, said following the release of the report of the Senate Committee Inquiry into the Human Services (Enhanced Service Delivery) Bill 2007:

“The legislation will now be presented as one package, to be introduced in June. This will mean members of the public can see the full detail of the legislation.”

“The Government is committed to providing ordinary Australians with a better health
benefits, veterans’ and social services system, and we remain on track
to rolling out the access card in 2008.”

The Minister for Human Services, Senator Chris Ellison, said the Senate committee’s
recommendation to combine the first and second pieces of legislation
for concurrent consideration had merit, and on examination of the
committee’s report he agreed with this approach.

Senator Ellison was confident concerns raised by the Senate inquiry could be addressed.

“The
Government remains committed to having the legislation passed this year
and ensuring the access card project delivers benefits for Australians
who use health, veterans and social services – and those Australians
who fund the provisions of those services,” Senator Ellison said

The Senate Finance and Public Administration Committee has released its report on the Human Services (Enhanced Service Delivery) Bill 2007 (Access Card).

The Committee considered that the bill needs to be combined with the second tranche of legislation into a consolidated bill to allow proper consideration of the access card proposal and provide safeguards.

The Committee concluded that the second tranche would need to deal with the following issues:

• Whether the government should consider providing appropriate terminals or readers to those agencies and providers providing benefits and services to access card holders.
• Whether the only mandatory information displayed on the surface of the card should be the card holder’s name and that other information should be at the discretion of the card holder.
• Whether the Commonwealth area of the chip should store existing agency identifiers and that these numbers should be used when linking a card to a participating agency database, rather than the access card number.
• Whether the form and manner in which the register is to be kept should be set out in legislation and prohibitions such as keeping the register separate from other data bases should be expressly stated.
• Whether the following determinations should be made by way of legislation or disallowable legislative instrument:

          (a) what proof of identity (POI) information and documents are needed for registration;
          (b) what proof of identity documents (or information about those documents) will need to be                     scanned and placed on the register; and
            (c) when applying for an access card, what ‘other specified information’ or documents that the                 secretary deems necessary: (i) to be satisfied of the applicant’s identity, or (ii) to obtain                         information required for the card or the register (clause 23(2)(b).

• Whether any proposals to appoint additional participating agencies should be made through legislative amendment of the principal act.
• Whether access of law enforcement and security agencies to the information in the register should be specified in the access card legislation.
• Whether any exercise of discretion by the secretary of DHS to grant law enforcement or security agencies access to the register should be reported to the Parliament, perhaps in the agency’s annual report in such a way as not to compromise operational matters or national security.

The Human Services (Enhanced Service Delivery) Bill 2007 (now available at ComLaw) passed through the House of Representatives on 28 February and has been introduced into the Senate.

Peter Timmins at Open and Shut gives a detailed analysis of the debate so far.

Chair of the Access Card Consumer and Privacy Taskforce, Professor Allan Fels AO, has released a discussion paper on Voluntary and Medical Emergency Information that can be considered for inclusion in
the consumer-controlled area of the access card.

The paper notes that:

"The key question which needs to be addressed is
what information is absolutely necessary to be available from the chip
[in the customer controlled area of the access card] to facilitate emergency medical treatment of a person in a crisis
situation. Furthermore, what information is merely convenient for a
cardholder to have available to them by way of storage in the
customer-controlled area of their access card…

The decision about what specific health and emergency data might be listed in the card is a considerably more complex matter than might have been anticipated. It is not simply a matter of storing anything or everything in an unselected fashion. This is because the data entered into the chip is data which is intended to be acted upon by other people. This is not data, such as the storage of a list or a telephone number or a birthday or a bank account number, where the action which flows from the storage of the data is action initiated by the cardholder themselves. This is data upon which other people act in good faith and where their actions may have significant (and potentially life-threatening) consequences for both parties concerned….

Because of this, there must, in the opinion of the Taskforce be a requirement, for the protection of the person who acts in good faith on the data provided by the cardholder, that a robust system of authentication and verification must be incorporated into the storage process. Without such a checking mechanism the storage of the data becomes less than useful, since third parties will either decline to act, or be restrained from acting, on the data, thus negating the whole purpose of its listing in the first instance."

The Taskforce has recommended that:

The customer controlled area of the access card should contain a two-tiered system of emergency and health information:
• in the first tier, which should be accessible to anyone with an approved reader, there should be listed only that data which is absolutely necessary to facilitate the provision of emergency health treatment in a crisis situation;
• in the second tier, which should be PIN protected (and thus accessible only with the express consent of the cardholder) other medical and health data could be listed in accordance with the Recommendations which appear below;
• the Access Card itself could contain, on the surface, some symbol (such as the caduceus) to indicate that emergency medical data is stored in the chip so that no time is wasted in an emergency situation looking for information which may not be there in the first instance.

Submissions on the discussion paper close on 16 March 2007.

The Minister for Human Services introduced the Human Services (Enhanced Service Delivery) Bill 2007 into Parliament today.

The Bill has been amended following comments on the Exposure Draft.

The Bill can be downloaded from www.aph.gov.au or here.

Access Card website