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Comment by jkahn | Hacker News Reader

Really, this article is just a whinge. I'm an Australian. MyGov is fine, I interact with it as a citizen regularly. Government needs to outsource implementation of this kind of stuff because it's extremely hard to build software teams and manage their performance in permanent government roles. And those costs are reasonable - particularly for anyone that builds teams of software engineers and knows what aggregate team costs are like in Australia.

The hard part of the MyGov platform is the inter-department stuff, and I don't think that's a software issue, that's bureaucracy.

MyGov isn't perfect, but it's fine.

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> it's extremely hard to build software teams and manage their performance in permanent government roles

this problem should be solved by making it not-hard to build the teams etc, not by throwing 10s of millions of dollars at vampiric consultants

it seems it is far less risky to bleed money than it is to make any kind of meaningful change to the way gov depts are run

It’s difficult because civil service is designed for stable professions, clerks, attorneys, finance people. IT is too variable, and it’s usually impossible to attract mid career talent. So you hire early career talent, especially second career people, and “grow them”.

Usually gov IT is not a sexy place for smart political people to land. That is the key talent you need. You can always get smart technical people. Big 5 consultancies will deliver, but you need to always keep them afraid, and that’s a political problem.

Smart IT professionals specifically EXCLUDE working directly for Australian government organisations because of the dysfunctions and politics. Even being one of the consultants working 'for' them is bad but not as bad as being directly employed if you prefer doing IT to politics and bs.

I mostly second this. I use MyGov mainly for taxes, and it is fine in that regard.

To be honest, my interactions with the Australian government websites + apps has mostly been positive. There are some truly horrendous websites from other nations' governments out there.

I third this. Honestly have been pleasantly surprised by the fact that an IT product produced by the Government is fit for purpose.

Minimal bullshit filling out parental leave, getting our daughter a Medicare card and filing our taxes.

Worlds better than the old e-tax system, and significantly better than the UK's online portal too.

That's what I was thinking too. For tax, MyGov is so much better than the e-tax system was. It saves a lot of time.

You mean it's extremely hard to hire a full team of competent people when you're tethered to the APS pay scale and the federal government won't let you increase public servant headcount.

And those competent people would have to put up with career position squatters who can't be fired but are just obstructive, or political career squabblers as bad or worse than private sector.

> MyGov isn't perfect, but it's fine.

Sure. But then why have they spent tens of millions of dollars trying to build a new version - https://beta.my.gov.au - that works the same or worse?

I switched to beta a month or so and I can't even tell what the difference is, other than it being slightly shinier.

MyGov just seems like a portal containing bookmarks to various other services anyway, right? It consolidates your records for Medicare, ATO, and if applicable, NDIS, Centrelink etc. Seems kind of basic. Although I understand there's a lot of hidden complexity underneath these things, especially surrounding ID verification. But even so, I couldn't tell you the difference between the old mygov and the beta version.

That's part of the problem noted in the article: they haven't even implemented style changes that they could have - why are simple changes taking so long?

"it's extremely hard to build software teams and manage their performance in permanent"

Nk it's not - if we are talking about ordinary 1x develooers making ordinary web services, this is a normal job. Uk government has them.

Agreed. If people think MyGov is bad, they should try using ASIC. Absolute god damn nightmare

Ah, yes, the ASIC portal is hot garbage. I don't think it's really changed from when it was slapped together in the early 2000s...

No reason they couldn't put some money into fixing it - they're absolutely flush with cash from charging every company in the country an annual review/audit fee every year and then doing very little actual auditing... It's basically a $280 (and increasing) fee every year for them to just send you a letter with your company's name, registered address and list of directors. It's a massive scam.

Agreed, I’ve linked several services over the years and it all works when I need it. I can’t imagine the struggle it would’ve been to get all the various ancient systems and bureaucracies working together

I think you're missing the point. For the amounts paid given the relatively small tasks involved this whole thing is outrageous from a tax-payer's point of view: how much of even your personal tax dollars went burned on this? What else could that money have been spent on?

>how much of even your personal tax dollars went burned on this?

Australia has a population of 26 million, so that's like $1.50 per capita, once, to create a new system that will reduce the amount of bureaucracy and bullshit in our lives.

I'd gladly pay 50x that amount if they could get VicRoads on board.

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