Information and Communications Technology Issues

1
Information and Communications Technology Issues
Introduction

• David Vaile
• Executive Director
• Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre
• Faculty of Law, University of NSW
• http//www.bakercyberlawcentre.org/
• d.vaile_at_unsw.edu.au
• [phone]

2
Analysing IT projects General considerations

• Project failure
• Risk Management
• Protection of user rights
• Third party rights
• Privacy
• Surveillance/social sorting

3
IT project risk factors

• 75 IT projects fail immature industry
• time, cost, scope, quality
• 20 coding and engineering ignore?
• 80 analysis, communication, revision
• User-Centred Design Risk Management
• Neglected but critical
• Early vs. late error discovery
• User sovereignty
• Or ongoing disaster?
• Suppress or use the bad news?

4
User-Centred Design?

• Motherhood statement?
• Developers and managers reluctant
• How to recognise when you see it
• Starts at beginning
• Leaves lots of evidence!
• Repeated trials of prototypes
• Benefits faster, cheaper, better
• Essential!

5
Privacy

• Right to be left alone
• Defeat of Australia Card, Privacy Act
• Limited rights of data subjects
• Restricts what technology can do
• Requires security
• Affects everyone

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IT and tenancy Examples

• David Vaile
• Executive Director
• Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre
• Faculty of Law, University of NSW
• http//www.bakercyberlawcentre.org/
• d.vaile_at_unsw.edu.au
• [phone]

7
General issues

• Large organisations expect cost savings
• We should assume IT will not work
• Risk Management
• Certain groups more vulnerable to effects
• User-Centred Design
• Be honest and scrupulous about determining the
  nature of user needs
• Iterative prototyping - fail fast!
• Effects on non-user stakeholders
• Limits of regulation to remedy flaws

8
Tenants as IT stakeholders

• Move around a lot more
• Cost of relocation of ADSL 150
• May not be able to afford good connections
• Certain vulnerabilities more common
• Poverty
• Language and literacy
• Technical sophistication
• Disabilities and other discrimination
• Abuses can have serious consequences
• Privacy and data protection breaches can lead to
  homelessness
• Power imbalance exacerbates

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IT examples relevant to tenancy

• Other domains
• Electronic Health Record
• Online Dispute Resolution?
• Customs
• Housing
• Networked tenant blacklist - data abuse?
• Electronic documents, proof, evidence
• Networked banking
• Online tenancy information
• Surveillance

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Customs Agent Lodgement

• If there are no presents at Xmas
• Over budget 35M-gt 200m
• Over time years late
• Still doesnt interface with environment
• Denial, blame, buck passing
• Not making use of mistakes
• Pushed out early for policital reasons
• Now causing build ups on the docks
• Driving staff mad
• Back to manual handling and fax
• Development process failure

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Electronic health record

• Difficult process
• Much promised, little delivered, in denial?
• Potentially great gains - if it can be made to
  work!
• Complex, incompatible systems
• Government contribution very mixed in outcomes
• Federal/state confusion
• HealthConnect, HealthELink, shifting goals
• Sensitivities about privacy, confidentiality
• Legislative Gtee in NSW 12/04 - opt in?
• Reneged 6/05 - opt out?
• Demand for access for research
• Limited involvement of patients
• Risk of losing trust?

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Online Dispute Resolution - ODR

• Widely seen as the future?
• But only a few sectors work well
• Domain names!
• May only work for part of process
• Preparation of paperwork? Not hearings?
• see http//www.strategic-resolution.com/odr.html
• Need pilots and research
• NSW CTTT Electronic Service Delivery (ESD)
  http//esd.cttt.nsw.gov.au/
• Leah Jay Property Management NSW REA website
  provides online tenancy application
  http//www.ljpm.com.au/tenancy_form.php3

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Networked Tenant Blacklists

• TICA and others - dodgy data process
• Open to arbitrary abuse or error
• Extended homelessness or discrimination
• Demonstrates gaps in regulation
• Fed. Privacy Commr upheld 4 complaints
• Accurate? Up to date? Excess charges? Notice?
• But OFPC claims no jurisdiction to enforce
• State can only get to listing agents, not dB
• Now with Fed/State ctee
• Not fully supported by RE and landlords

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TICA Descriptors (May 2003) - No well-defined
listing criteria

• Arrears of rent
• Broke tenancy agreement
• Absconded
• Dishonoured Cheques
• Tribunal orders (Against the Tenant in favour of
  the Agent or Lessor)
• Court orders (Against the Tenant in favour of the
  Agent or Lessor)
• Failed to comply with Residential Tenancy Act
• Rental bond claims
• Failing to provide adequate notice
• Sublet without consent
• Bankruptcy
• Entered into Payment Arrangement

• Damage to property
• Taking possession without consent
• Past tenant history no default recorded
• Satisfactory payment history
• Tenancy History
• Current tenant
• Recommended tenant
• Breaches of body corporate bylaws
• Poor periodic inspections
• Unauthorised pets
• Schemes of arrangement
• Noise and Nuisance

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Examples of databases

• TICA (Tenancy Information Centre of Australia)
  operates a bad tenant database and charges a fee
  to tenants who want to find out what is being
  alleged about them and by whom.
• The Landlord provides a Defaulting Tenant
  Database to members (pay to join) with the
  ability to search and add a Defaulting Tenant.
  Also provides a Recommended Tenant Database and
  similarly allows members to search and add a
  Tenant for recommendation.
• Issues include use and disclosure, privacy,
  accuracy, reliability, defamation, security of
  credit card transaction
• http//www.thelandlord.com.au/

16
Electronic documents?

• Trend towards digital documents for convenience
  of REs, some tenants
• Copies must be given of certain documents -
  Condition report
• Electronic copy may be more difficult to verify
  in a dispute
• Can receipts be by email?
• How deal with non-reception?
• Digital Document Retention and Destruction
• Generally more complex to unravel
• Specialised skills required to analyse flaws
• Cf. simplicity of a plain paper copy

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Pay rent by networked banking

• Some RE/LL deprecate cash
• Easier for some, but can present problems for low
  income tenants
• Standing order or automatic deduction inflexible
• Harder to defer rent paymet to buy food
• Internet banking/direct deposit convenient but
  needs access to Internet

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Examples of online payment

• DEFT (Macquarie Bank Limited) is a customer
  initiated (rent) payment solution and enables
  automatic regular recurring payments to be set up
  online or by phone.
• Issues include data security of personal
  financial information (credit card details),
  payment history record, privacy
• www.deft.com.au
• WA Fastpay is an online payment service that
  enables payment of rent, or tenant liability
  payments etc. to be combined with payment of
  other government bills in a single transaction.
• http//www.dhw.wa.gov.au/404_450.asp

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Online tenancy information?

• Expectation that info is online?
• But can be hard to deliver
• Difficulties for community law publishers
• Perceived conflict with traditional hard copy
  publication
• Tenants Rights Manual not online
• Expense and skills needed to keep online info up
  to date, readable
• An on-going periodical, not a one-off event
• Lack of commitment to maintain over time?
• Cheap editing model?
• Arcane art of writing for the Web
• Chunking
• Structure
• Language who is the audience?

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Surveillance generally

• Obligations under new terror laws?
• Records?
• Neighbourhood disputes?
• Fence cam
• Landlords, Tenants, Surveillance Society
• UK Survey and discussion of landlord surveillance
  of tenants without technological devices, and
  policy implications - perhaps indication of
  landlords inclination to adopt technology in
  future surveillance?
• http//www.surveillance-and-society.org/articles2(
  4)/landlords.pdf

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Conclusion

• Further examples
• David Vaile
• Executive Director
• Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre
• Faculty of Law, University of NSW
• http//www.bakercyberlawcentre.org/
• d.vaile_at_unsw.edu.au
• 02 9385 3589