Speech to the Edelman Trust Barometer Event

It is a pleasure to be here to speak at the launch of the Edelman Trust Barometer – which contains the sobering if perhaps not entirely surprising news that not all Australians trust their government or their politicians.

Of course every cloud has a silver lining and the revelation that the media sector is trusted by only 41 per cent of Australians offers one small consolation for we politicians.

But the insight which stood out for me in Edelman’s finding was that many Australians are finding the rate of innovation in our society to be quite confronting. 53 per cent of survey respondents in Australia said they found the pace of change in business and industry in Australia today is too fast.

A look at some of the other findings suggests that the picture is more nuanced – with plenty of evidence that people are adopting new technology where they see a benefit in doing so. For example, 30 per cent of people said that the source they use most to confirm or validate news is online search.

Today I want to link some of these findings to the question of how best to innovate in the delivery of government services. I will start with some history in this area – which suggests it is prudent to recognise a nascent suspicion by citizens of government use of technology.

Next, though, I want to look at the way people have taken up internet based services over the last two decades – and what that says about people’s attitudes.

That will bring me, thirdly, to talk about the approach the Abbott Government is bringing to the delivery of government services online – with a very clear focus on delivering benefits to citizens.

History Suggests Some Suspicion About Government Use of Technology

Let me turn firstly, then, to some lessons from history.

In the eighties, the Hawke Government sought to introduce what it called the Australia Card – a national identification card to be issued to every citizen.  While it would not have been legally compulsory to have a card, it would have been very difficult indeed to function as a citizen without it. For example, the legislation to establish the scheme essentially compelled businesses such as banks to require customers to produce their Australia Card if they wanted to transact.

The proposal became very unpopular in the community, and ultimately the legislation was abandoned by the government in 1987.

The popular campaign against the Australia Card turned on concerns about privacy and government intrusion in the lives of citizens.

Looking back at the arguments used at the time, it is striking that the case for the Australia Card was largely made in terms of benefits for government.  For example, Australians were told that it would improve tax compliance, reduce welfare fraud and reduce the number of government identification systems.  There was not much attempt to demonstrate benefits to individual citizens.

This episode, now almost thirty years ago, has had a significant impact on the policy and politics of government use of IT in Australia ever since.  The term ‘Australia Card’ has become somewhat synonymous with the concept of new technology impeding on civil liberties.

Edelman’s media release about its findings this year contains the statement, “the Barometer looked at trust and its link to innovation and found that trust issues are hindering acceptance of technological advancements.”  This statement could equally well have been written in 1987!

Take Up of Internet Services – And People’s Attitudes

Of course, an enormous amount has changed since 1987 – in the availability and ubiquity of technology, and in the way that people behave in relation to that technology. 

Today, technology is intensely personal. 56 per cent of Australians own a tablet device and 77 per cent own a smart phone according to the Sensis e-Business report. 

This might help to explain a striking finding from the Trust Barometer - when different business sectors in Australia are ranked according to the degree of trust that Australians have in them, businesses in the technology sector have the highest ranking, at 74 per cent, of all fifteen sectors.

For many of us our mobile phone or smart phone is an extension of our body.  We do not leave home without it, we feel naked and ill at ease if we do not have it, very often it is the first thing we reach for in the morning. 

According to the 2014 Deloitte Mobile Consumer Survey, 46 per cent of Australians check their smartphone within 15 minutes of waking up – and amongst 18-24 year olds it is 75 per cent.

Is it any wonder that we have a high degree of trust in the businesses which provide us with these devices?

We are voracious users of social media.  According to socialmedianews.com.au, fourteen million Australians use Facebook each month – and that is only one of many social media platforms. 

This means that a great many of us are sharing large volumes of personal data – with friends and very often with the world at large.

And of course we routinely and extensively transact with banks, airlines, insurance companies – every imaginable business in fact – online.  According to the ABS survey on Household Use of Information Technology, in 2012-13 15.4 million Australians used the internet at home and 72 per cent of those users aged over 15 did banking or paid bills online.

Today, Australians routinely share large amounts of data online – if they see a benefit to doing so and if they feel that they remain in control.

Social media is the most obvious example of how citizens are willing to share their personal data in exchange for something they want – in this case, entertainment, connectivity with friends and family, and the convenience of being able to use one account to access a broad range of websites without having to set up new profiles for each one.

Social media users have also shown that they are willing to publicly share real-time personal data such as their location – if there is something in it for them.

On a recent visit to the University of Wollongong’s SMART infrastructure facility, I learned about their Peta Jakarta project – using Twitter to collect and disseminate information about flooding in Jakarta.

Indonesia has one of the highest usage rates of Twitter in the world, and the ‘Peta Jakarta’ platform allows residents to share information about local floods via Twitter using their geo-location enabled mobile devices, which the system then maps online so other residents can plan their movement around the city accordingly.

Similarly, Australians have demonstrated that they will readily take up new financial technology applications which involve providing personal or business data in exchange for benefits such as analysis tools.

One example is Pocketbook, an Australian-developed smartphone app which allows users to track transactions and spending across bank accounts and credit cards from a range of financial institutions.

The user gains a free tool to easily track and manage their finances, while the app developer gains access to a significant amount of anonymised user data about spending patterns – data which can be valuable when organised and analysed.  Recently Pocketbook announced it had reached 100,000 users. 

Users have shown a similar willingness to share their data in exchange for discounts or rewards on travel and shopping sites.

Travel websites like TripAdvisor connect to users’ social media accounts and collect reviews on destinations and activities, and users benefit from rewards programmes and customised offers for flights, hotels restaurants and more.

Shopping websites like Amazon are based around customised user experiences, analysing data provided by users from their reviews and shopping habits to provide discounts and specialised offers on products the user is more likely to buy.

Beyond these commercial offerings, users have even shown a willingness to share their medical data if they see a benefit in doing so.

Apple recently launched its ‘ResearchKit’ software which can collect a user’s health data to be shared in medical research studies tapping the power of ‘big data’.

Less than 24 hours after the product was introduced at an event featuring a Stanford University cardiovascular study, 11,000 people had signed up to voluntarily provide a range of personal health data[1] - a feat which would normally require a year’s work in 50 medical centres.

In the thirty years since the Australia Card, then, technology has advanced enormously – and consumers in Australia as well as other countries have shown a great willingness to share data and transact with service providers online, provided they can see a benefit such as greater convenience, or cost saving, or better service.

This is now creating a powerful ‘pull factor’ from consumers.  They expect businesses to provide efficient online channels which they can use to transact – and increasingly they are expecting it from government as well.

Unfortunately, all too often governments are not meeting the expectations of citizens when it comes to delivering services online.

A recent report by Boston Consulting Group titled ‘Digital Government: Turning Rhetoric Into Reality’ summarised government progress as:

“Getting better – but still plenty of room for improvement: that’s the current assessment by everyday users of their governments’ efforts to deliver online services… Many citizens – accustomed to innovation in such sectors as retailing, media, and financial services – wish their Governments would get on with it.”[2]

What the Abbott Government is doing to improve digital service delivery

What, then, is the Abbott Government doing about delivering government services online?

Our approach is very much consistent with the lessons of the Australia Card – and the attitudes revealed in the Edelman Trust Barometer.

The case for the Australia Card was largely framed in terms of the benefits to government. That’s the wrong perspective to start from.  Our approach, by contrast, is to emulate private sector thinking and ask: how can we use technology to serve our customers – that is, citizens – better?

But as the Trust Barometer results indicate, we need to do so in a way which is not only convenient to end-users – in this case citizens – but also in a way in which users can trust in, and benefit from, the services they use online.

The Coalition took a policy of ‘Convenient Service Anytime Anywhere’ to the 2013 election.  Our goal is that by the end of 2017 all major services and interactions will be available to the public online, making government more accessible and more efficient.

Recently we announced the creation of the Digital Transformation Office (DTO) which reports to Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

From 1 July the DTO will be an executive agency in the Communications portfolio; it will comprise a small team of developers, designers, researchers and content specialists working across government to develop and coordinate the delivery of digital services.

It is designed to address the reality that some government agencies have made good progress in digitising services that could once only be accessed over the counter or over the phone – but the level of progress from one agency to another is inconsistent.

The DTO will have a very strong focus on end-user needs in developing digital services.

One of its first tasks will be relieving people of the need to complete separate log on processes for each government service. Instead, people should have an opt-in ‘digital identity’, which they can use to log in to each of their services across the government.            

By designing digital services that are consistent and simple to use, fewer people will need to come into a shopfront or make a phone call.

As Minister Turnbull recently said about the work of the DTO:

This is going to ensure that government services are vastly more compelling, vastly more attractive to citizens, and of course it will save them time and money.

The DTO will also work closely with State and Territory Governments to identify opportunities for collaboration, including ways to make better use of myGov.

State governments have also made promising moves to online service delivery. To renew your car’s registration, you would once have had to travel to the local motor registry, taken a number, waited in line, filled in paper-based forms and completed a payment in-person at a counter.

It was a time-consuming and often frustrating experience for customers, and it is no surprise that people have embraced online registration renewals.

The cost of bringing a state government agency onboard to myGov will be low – as low as $50,000 – and so Minister Turnbull has said that the federal government is going to make this platform available to state and local government at no charge from the commonwealth.

Another option open to both government and private-sector operators is the use of third party service brokers. This is another area where user – or citizen – trust in new technology will be critical to success.

The concept of using service brokers is not new – tax agents assist citizens in completing and filing tax returns; community organisations assist jobseekers to find work utilising government-funded employment programmes.

More recently, government adoption of open data policies has led to a flourishing of new service broker apps.  One of my personal favourites is TripView. This handy smartphone app uses open data on public transport services to provide users with real-time information on bus, train and ferry timetables.

The third-party service broker model has already had early successes in areas such a childcare, and has great potential to deliver end-user benefits in areas like healthcare and other social services.  Continuing success will depend on users being able to see the benefits to themselves rather than the government – and for them to be able to trust that their personal data is secure.

Conclusion

Let me conclude, then, by congratulating Edelman on developing and releasing the 2015 Trust Barometer.  It has some important insights about the degree of trust shown by Australians in business and government.

The findings about the effect of innovation and changing technology on levels of trust are particularly interesting.  It is all too easy to assume, in government as well as in boardrooms, that innovation is an unambiguously good thing and will be welcomed by all.  As these findings remind us, people often find change unsettling

I have argued today that as we seek to improve the digital delivery of government services, we need to be informed by the experience of the Australian Card in the eighties, and of consumer behaviour in the past two decades. 

These experiences suggest conclusions that are very much consistent with the findings of the Edelman Trust Barometer.  When government seeks to impose something on citizens without them being persuaded of the benefits, it can inflame citizen suspicion.  But when consumers see benefits to themselves in the use of technology, they will take it up enthusiastically – and the same principle applies to the digital delivery of government services to citizens.

That is why our focus in the Digital Transformation Office is on using technology to deliver services in a way which better meets the needs of citizens.

We hope that will bring many benefits – including an improvement in the degree of trust between citizens and government. 

[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-11/apple-researchkit-sees-thousands-sign-up-amid-bias-criticism

[2] BCG Report Digital Government: Turning Rhetoric Into Reality p3