What I wrote on the BeConnected Facebook page:

Re Blueprint to close Australia's digital divide.

My feelings are that even if the blueprint is fully actioned a substantial part of the digital device will still exist.

Having been a computer programmer and in the industry for over 55 years, I can say, with a high level of confidence, that the digital device is mainly caused by extremly bad user interfaces.

The user interfaces is the method were the user of the technology interacts with the software. What you see and are able to respond to.

It appears to me that programmers produce user interfaces in such a way that it way it makes it easier for them to write programs, rather than what is easier for the end user. I'm aware of this because I used to do so myself when on tight time constraints.

Unfortunately the end user community have grown to accept this situation and end up propagating the situation by doing much the same thing themselves when writing web pages or even emails. Often they may not even realise that they have done it and when they do it they dont no why.

Something I call the 5 monkey principal: http://greig.homeip.net/doku.php?id=5_monkey_principle

I'm sure ther are millions of examples of very bad user interfaces that are contributing to the digital device. Doing so, not only to those that are just learning, but also that have advanced skills, like myself.

My observations are that the worst user interfaces are those created by Governments. Considering that online government services are “supposed” to provide a service to most members of society I see that as a great failure that very few seem to be concerned about.

The second worst user interfaces, to me, appear to be in direct proportion to how popular they are. Like facebook, Google and Microsoft. Perhaps the more difficult something is to use, the more popular it is because it give those that use it some felling of superiority? Bit like literacy.

What prompted me to write this the email was I received from BeConnected an email with a subject of “You're invited to our fifth anniversary event!”. That mentions attendance to the event physically or online, but even though it has a link to get tickets to the physical event, I cant see any way of getting to the online event. This is a simple example of bad technology user interface

Overall I would give the parts of the world IT systems that I use, user interfaces, 3 out of 10. The only other thing that I can currently think of that I would give worse rating is english orthography, which I would give 1 out of 10. Perhaps the latter affects the former?

Steve Dixon reluctance of society in general to move away from paper and physical based identification is another example of my five monkey principle.

I agree with you that the older forms of identification simply provide those that want to rort the system the ability to do it.

I have a similar example as yours.

Local medical clinic I go to insists that I show them my Medicare card even though it has no photo of me on it. I show a scan of my Medicare card that is on my phone. I point out there was no legal requirement for me to show the physical card. All have to do is give them the number. But the clinic has a internal policy starting they have to site the physical card. I eventually ended up with a black mark against my name on their computer system and they insist that I bring in the card at some stage. However it was mentioned that I could use the Medicare app which shows the card. Via myGov, I got into the Medicare app and found my Medicare card. However rather than showing them that I did a screen capture of it, on my phone and now each time I go to the medical clinic I now show them the screen capture, not the Medicare app.

That seems to keep them happy.

Don't know what the situation is now, but at one point in time there were something like 30 million Medicare card names issued for the less than 25 million people that lived in Australia. Yet the Medicare card counts so many points towards the 100-point identification.

Another example. Whilst trying to apply for a Commonwealth government senior health care card, (yet another card), I tried to do so via myGov and had to prove my identity via a driver's licence, a passport or a Medicare card. In my case all three failed. So I rang the support line and was asked to enter a CRN (Customer Referance Number) or say if did not have one. I said did not have one. The next question I was asked was to enter a CRN.

That is a really classic example of a really bad user-interface.

After going around in circles of few times I eventually gave up an had to physically attend a Centrelink office. Luckily I arrived at a non busy time. The bottom line of all this was that sometimes I had registered my name as Geoff Greig and other times as Geoffrey Greig. The various government computer systems couldn't handle that. Yet interesting something like Google can.

Unfortunately the likes of Centerline and MyGov have set some really bad standard that most people seem to have just accepted. Perhaps if more people took the attitude that they are the customer and the government provides a service for which we all pay, then then things might be a bit different.