Card effort steps up
Author: Christopher Jay
Date: 18/08/2006
The Financial Review, Page: 69
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Copied in the public interest
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The federal government is pressing ahead with technical implementation
of an Australia-wide smartcard designed to replace at least 17 different
kinds of magnetic stripe cards or related documentation including the
Medicare card.
Under the catchphrase "chip for strip", it plans a generic framework to
form the basis for an entire range of future smartcards, including cards
such as driver's licences issued by state governments and a variety of
claim cards for Centrelink social services.
The Minister for Human Services, Joe Hockey, in several speeches and
media releases recently, has emphasised his determination to avoid the
sort of situation which produced the 19th century break of rail gauges
between and even within the Australian states.
He wants a uniform set of smartcard standards to ensure compatibility
between all smartcards issued by different federal and state departments
and agencies.
The federal Department of Finance and Administration is seeking a
consultant to prepare a smartcard implementation guide, as part of an
Australian government smartcard framework. This will be one of the major
ICT consultancies for the next few years, as it will be setting the
rules and approaches for a huge implementation effort.
Australasian tenders' consultant TenderSearch reports a closing date of
September 6, 2006 for applications. The work is to start by October 11
this year and be completed by 28 February, 2007.
Within the Department of Finance, the specific agency handling
electronic government is the Australian Government Information
Management Office (AGIMO). It is operating to an overall 2006
e-Government Strategy, released in March this year, which includes the
smartcard initiative.
The federal government is aiming to achieve value for money and
interoperability between agencies on smartcards with a four-part
framework. The four parts are overview and principles, a smartcard
handbook, standards and model specification, and a smartcard
implementation guide.
The first two parts, the Overview and Principles and the Smartcard
Handbook, were launched by the Special Minister of State, Gary Nairn, at
the Australian Smartcard Summit 2006 on June 29, 2006. A working draft
of the third part, the Standards and Model Specification was also
released at the summit.
But development of the fourth part, the Smartcard Implementation Guide
has not yet begun. It is this fourth part that is the subject of the
current tender, for a suitably experienced and qualified organisation to
assist AGIMO.
At an estimated cost of $1.1 billion, the government plans to replace
all existing Medicare cards, plus a plethora of Centrelink cards and
other claim documents, on a time frame extending until 2010.
The cards will have a photo of the holder, in a bid to cut the massive
misuse of existing cards and fraudulent Medicare and social service
claims each year which drain an unknown but sizeable quantity of funds
from the $92 billion a year spent on health and social welfare.
All existing kinds of magnetic stripe cards are easily counterfeited by
overseas criminal groups, even driver's licences with holograms.
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