myGov has more than 10m users

More than 10 million Australians have created online accounts on the myGov government portal, making it one of the biggest digital services in Australia, according to Minister for Human Services Alan Tudge.

In a speech at the GovInnovate summit yesterday, Tudge noted that more than 130 million items of government correspondence have now been sent digitally via myGov rather than by post, generating savings of over $100 million in postage costs alone.

The myGov portal has also enabled cost savings of more than $93 million to users of the service.

“There is still so much to do. But we are delivering. Which is why we are investing over $50 million to improve and sustain the service that myGov offers,” he said.

“This will see enhanced security features, improvements to the ‘Tell Us Once’ feature that people use to seamlessly update their details across government, improvements to the digital mail service and significant improvements to the user experience of myGov.”

Government is under increasing pressure to transform service delivery to match the kinds of seamless, user-friendly experiences provided by the private sector, Tudge said. He asserted that the government’s innovation agenda is making strong progress towards this goal.

As part of these improvements, 97% of all Medicare transactions now require no further action from the citizen once they have swiped their cart at the clinic, and for the remainder of the transactions patients can submit their information over the Medicare app.

Improvements to the online tax lodging system and the $1 billion Welfare Payment Infrastructure Transformation project are other examples.

To maintain momentum behind innovation and change, Tudge said it is critical that governments build capability and set high standards while getting the policy right.

“A significant part of ensuring that there is constant innovation in government service delivery is getting our internal settings right, which includes the capability of our people and the standards we set for ourselves,” he said.

“The government has done the hard thinking on these issues and put in place structures to ensure that there is a constant drive for improvement across all departments and ensure that projects get delivered. One of the most important elements of this change is the Digital Transformation Agency.”

In terms of policy, Tudge said the government must prioritise delivering services to those with the greatest need, design services that place the citizen in control and simplify the services provided through government.