Mental health indicators assisted by more sophisticated data

In early 2020, the Health department joined forces with the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) to bring deeper real-time insights to decision-makers about the toll the COVID-19 pandemic was having on mental health.

Finance secretary Jenny Wilkinson told a government data forum this month that experts believed stay-at-home orders of the COVID-19 pandemic, and subsequent lockdown measures, were set to have some adverse effects on mental health. So they moved to use data to develop an up-to-date snapshot of how mental health services were being used and what demand pressures were evolving, as close to real-time as possible,

"Governments recognised there was a need for more rapid access to mental health data to inform policy responses. So in April 2020, the Department of Health and Aged Care worked in partnership with AIHW to produce a mental health services placemat," Wilkinson said.

"This placemat brought together new indicators from across the mental health system, including from crisis and support lines, digital mental health services, medicare services, emergency department presentations, specialised community mental health services, and including mental health care admissions data."

The placemat offered insights into general trends and patterns across jurisdictions and was used by the most senior levels of government through the early stages of Australia's pandemic experience to understand what was happening across the economy.

Mandarins often briefed the PM and health minister with data from the tool, Wilkinson said, as well as the national cabinet for deliberations on appropriate policy responses to COVID-19.

"These are two examples across two different portfolios about how real-time data insights, and a much broader range of data, were used to inform government decisions through the pandemic," she said.

In terms of using data to deliver better government services, the Finance boss discussed the continuous improvement focus to deliver accessible and secure services to all citizens.

At Home Affairs, she pointed to the deployment of bespoke optical character recognition capabilities for the intercept of illicit goods in international mail systems. This was allowing the department to work more effectively and efficiently, she said, to disrupt the illicit goods trade.

"This involves extracting data, for example, names and addresses, from images of mail in real-time as they come along the conveyor belt at international mail gateways.

"The data are then used in matching and targeting packages for inspection. Cloud and edge computing are used to deploy optical character recognition and data analytics to international mail gateways, which are enabling analytics to be run in situ.

"And, on trial, artificial intelligence capability is being trained to identify those mail packages with similar appearance to those previously detected as containing illicit goods," she said.

Over at Services Australia, the implementation of the MyGov platform, with more than 25 million users, has relied on data. A platform revamp was launched last September alongside a new app boasting more than 152 million sign-ins to date.

"This is service delivery at scale, enabled by data, and supported by very modern digital platforms," Wilkinson said.

"When combined with the right data frameworks and protections, there are opportunities to simplify user interactions with government through MyGov."

Wilkinson invited the audience of public servants to imagine a future in which they only ever needed to share their circumstances with the government once and then had the power to choose in what circumstances that information would be re-used to support further interactions with government.

"Just imagine being able to share elements of your data, through your identity credentials, without having to offer up more than you need to or are comfortable with — that's the digital ID agenda," she said.

She also went on to explain that Services Australia was using data and natural language processing to respond to customer functions through an online chat function by answering questions about Medicare, Centrelink and child support payments from the department's policies and procedures.

"Within a customer's Centrelink online account, the digital assistant can answer payment-specific questions about online claims," Wilkinson said.

Wilkinson said that across every portfolio of government there was an opportunity to use new data sources for real-time insights and deliver more "enlightened services". In fact, more maturity across every department and agency of the APS would be needed to meet the goals of the recently released interim data and digital strategy.

"Agencies that perform the best here are always on the lookout for new data sources, they have to be in a position to manage their data well, and they have to have the analytical capabilities and strategies to drive their data priorities," Wilkinson said.

"We’ll be looking for more opportunities to deliver services where the government can be more proactive in providing access to services to citizens — and these are services which are integrated across agencies and even across jurisdictions.

"In some ways, the ultimate objective is making access to these services as easy as ordering Uber Eats," she said.

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Melissa Coade is The Mandarin's news editor based in Canberra's parliamentary press gallery. She has had various government, communications and legal roles, and has written for the Law Society of NSW Journal and Lawyers Weekly.

Tags: AI AIHW Australian Government Data Forum Australian Institute of Health and Welfare chat function cloud computing Data and digital Department of Finance Department of Health and Aged Care Department of Home Affairs Edge computing Home Affairs indicators IPAA ACT Jenny Wilkinson Mental health natural language processing optical character recognition placemat Services Australia

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