Folks, it’s finally happening. The new Australian federal government will be auditing the worst website in the history of planet earth — MyGov.
Minister for Government Services and Minister for the National Disability Insurance Scheme Bill Shorten (remember him?) has announced there’ll be an investigation into the user un-friendliness of the system.
Shorten said he wants to make the site “a much more seamless exercise” as per The Age.
“And I think that we’ve used, in some cases, digital technology to create two classes of Australians.
“We haven’t privatised the service. We just privatise your time. You spend hours on it. I’m amazed there’s not more rage out there.”
I agree with all of that except Shorten’s claim that there should be more rage. There is rage. Lots of it. But in order to navigate MyGov you need to be calm and collected otherwise you will literally cry.
“Listen … I found it (navigating the site) a little perplexing,” Shorten continued. “Maybe my 12-year-old could have done it better.”
Throughout the COVID pandemic most of us got a chance to see just how shit the MyGov system really is.
Anyone who has ever logged on to launch a Centrelink claim, access their vaccination certificate, check their medical record or lodge a tax return knows it’s quite literally a cyber hellscape.
MyGov was designed to transfer the workload onto the public enabling the govt to cut employees … and to outsource the public service. A mix of ideology and crude cost cutting. The whole system needs reform.
— ceebee23 (@pceebee23) June 4, 2022
The worst part of all? The dreaded “you have a new message in your MyGov inbox,” email.
That email is the literal embodiment of a panic attack.
I’ve lost more hours of sleep over MyGov emails than I can count and I can count to a pretty high number (approximately 2,000).
mygov took like 40 minutes just to tell me to make a new acc
— KOREY !! hold me like a grudge (@gorey_korey) June 3, 2022
Shorten also said in his interview with The Age that his top priority is establishing a Royal Commission into Robodebt.
You know, that scheme the Coalition government brought in which told people who didn’t have any debt that they did in fact have enormous debts? Yeah, that one.
