>> Announcer: Live from Las Vegas, it's theCUBE. Covering IBM Think 2018. Brought to you by IBM. >> Welcome back to theCUBE live at the inaugural IBM Think 2018 event. I'm Lisa Martin with Dave Vellante. Excited to be joined by a guest from down under, Garrett McDonald, the head of Enterprise Architecture at the Department of Human Services in Australia. Welcome to theCUBE. >> Thank you very much. >> Great to have you. So tell us about the Department of Human Services, DHS. You guys touch 99 percent of the Australian population. >> Yeah, we do. We sit within federal government, we're a large service delivery organization. So through a range of programs and services we touch pretty much every Australian citizen on an annual basis. And within our organization we're responsible for delivery of our national social welfare system, and that picks up people pretty much across the entire course of their lives at different points, we're also responsible for delivering the federally administered portion of our national health system, and that picks up pretty much every Australian every time you go to a doctor, a pharmacy, a hospital, a path lab, indirectly both the provider and the citizen are engaging with our services. We're responsible for running the child support system, but then we also provide IT services for other government departments, so we implement and operate for the Department of Veterans Affairs, and also the National Disability Insurance Agency. And then finally we also run Whole-of-government capabilities, so DHS we operate the myGov platform, that's a Whole-of-government capability for citizens who government authentication and within out program we have 12 million active users and that number continues to grow year on year, and that's the way that you access authenticated services for most of the major interactions that a citizen would have online with government. >> And your role is formerly CTO, right? >> Yep. >> You've got a new role. Can you explain it? >> Yeah, I'm a bit of a jack-of-all-trades within the senior executive at DHS, I've had roles in ICT infrastructure, the role of CTO, the role of national manager for Enterprise Architecture, and I've also had application delivery roles as well. >> Okay, so let's get into the healthcare talk because the drivers in that industry are so interesting, you've got privacy issues, in this country it's HIPAA, I'm sure you're got similar restrictions on data. Um, what's driving your business? You've got that regulation environment plus you've got the whole digital disruption thing going on. You've got cloud, private cloud, what's driving your organization from a technology perspective? >> I think there's two main factors there. We have changing citizen expectations, like we've got this continued explosion in the rate of changing technology, and through that people are becoming increasingly comfortable with the integration of technology in their lives, we've got people who are living their lives through social media platforms and have come to expect a particular user experience when engaging through those platforms, and they're now expecting the same experience when they interact with government. How do I get that slick user experience, how do I take the friction out of the engagement, and how do I take the burden out of having to interact with government? But at the same time, given we are a government agency and we do have data holdings across the entire Australian population, whether it's social welfare, whether it's health or a range of other services, there's this very very high focus on how do we maintain privacy and security of data. >> Yeah, I can't imagine the volumes of transactional data for 12 million people. What are some of the things that DHS is using or leveraging that relationship with IBM for to manage these massive volumes of data? You mentioned like different types of healthcare security requirements alone. What is that like? >> We've been using IBM as our dominant security partner for quite some years now, and it's been the use of data power appliances and ISM power appliances out at the edge to get the traffic into the organization. We're deploying Qradar as our Next Gen SIEM and we're slowly transitioning over to that. And then as we work out way through the mid-range platform through our investment in the power fleet and back to our System Z, we've been using Db2 on Z for quite some years in the health domain to provide that security, the reliability and the performance that we need to service the workloads that hit us on a day-to-day basis. >> So you got a little IoT thing going on. Right? You got the edge, you got the mainframe, you got Db2. Talk a little bit about how, because you've been a customer for a long time, talk about how that platform has evolved. Edge data, modernization of the mainframe, whether it's Linux, blockchain, AI, discuss that a little bit. >> Okay, so over the past three years we've been developing our Next Gen infrastructure strategy. And that really started off around about three years ago, we decided to converge on Enterprise Linux as our preferred operating system. We had probably five or six operating systems in use prior to that, and by converging down on Linux it's given us a, the ability to run same operating system whether it's on x86, on Power, or Z Linux, and that's allowed us to develop a broader range of people with deep skills in Linux, and that's really then given us a common platform upon which we can build an elastic private cloud to service our Next Gen application workloads. >> Now you've talked off-camera. No public cloud. Public cloud bad word (laughs) But you've chosen not to. Maybe discuss why and what you're doing to get cloud-like experiences. >> Yeah, so we are building out a private cloud and we do have a view towards public cloud at a point in the future, but given mandatory requirements we need to comply with within the Australian government around the use of the Cloud, given the sensitivity of the data that we hold. At this point we're holding all data on premise. >> Can we talk a little bit more about what you guys are doing with analytics and how you're using that to have a positive social impact for these 12 million Australians? >> Yeah, we've got a few initiatives on the go there. On how do we apply whether it's machine learning, AI, predictive analytics, or just Next Gen advanced analytics on how do we change the way we're delivering services to the citizens of Australia, how do we make it a more dynamic user experience, how do we make it more tailored? And on here that we're exploring at the moment is this considerable flexibility in our systems and how citizens can engage with them, so for example in the social welfare space we have a requirement for you to provide an estimate of the income you expect to learn over the next 12 months, and then based on what you actually earn through the year there can be an end-of-year true-up. Right, so that creates a situation where if you overestimate at the start of the year you can end up with an overpayment at the end of the year and we need to recover that. So what we're looking at doing is well how do we deploy predictive analytics so that we can take a look an an individual's circumstances and say well, what do we think the probability is that you may end up with an inadvertent overpayment, and how can we engage with you proactively throughout the year to help true that up so that you don't reach the end of the year and have an overpayment that we need to recover. >> So I wonder if we could talk about the data model. You talk about analytics, but what about the data model? As you get pressure from, you know, digital, let's call it. And healthcare is an industry that really hasn't been dramatically or radically transformed. It hasn't been Uberized. But the data model has largely been siloed, at least in my experience working with the healthcare industry. What's the situation in Australia, and specifically with regard to how do you get your data model in shape to be able to leverage it for this digital world? And I know you're coming at it from a standpoint of infrastructure, but maybe you could provide that context. >> Well, given for privacy reasons we continue to maintain a pretty strong degree of separation between categories of health data for a citizen, and we also have an initiative being deployed nationally around an electronic health record that the citizen is able to control, right, so when you create your citizen record, health record, there is a portion of data that is uploaded from our systems into that health record, and then a citizen can opt in around, well what information when you visit the general practitioner is available in that health record. When you go to a specialist you're able to control through privacy settings what information you're willing to share, so it's still a federated model, but there's a very, very strong focus on well how do we put controls in place so that the citizen is in control of their data. >> I want to follow up in that, this is really important, so okay, if I hear you correctly, the citizen essentially has access to and controls his or her own healthcare information. >> Yeah, that's right. And they're able to control what information are they willing to share with a given health practitioner. >> And it's pretty facile, it's easy for the citizen to do that. >> Yeah. >> And you are the trusted third party, is that right? Or -- >> It's a federated model, so we are a contributor to that service. We provide some of the functionality, we feed some of the data in, but we do have another entity that controls the overarching federation. >> Do you, is there a discussion going on around blockchain? I mean could you apply blockchain to sort of eliminate the need for that third party? And have a trustless sort of network? What's the discussion like there? >> We've been maintaining a watching brief on blockchain for a good couple of years now. We've been trying to explore, well how do we find an initial use case where we can potentially apply block chain where it provides a value and it meets the risk profile. And given it does need to be a distributed ledger, how do we find the right combination of parties where we can undertake a joint proof of technology to identify can we make this work. So not so much in HealthSpace, there are other areas where we're exploring at the moment. >> Okay, so you see the potential of just trying to figure out where it applies? >> Yeah, absolutely, and we're also watching the market to see well what's going to become the dominant distribution, how a regulatory framework's going to catch up and ensure that, you know apart from the technical implementation how do we make sure that it's governed, it's administered -- >> Do you own any Bitcoin? No, I'm just kidding. (laughter) How do you like in the Melbourne Cup? So, let's talk a little bit about the things that excite you as a technologist. We talked about a bunch of them, cloud, AI, blockchain, what gets you excited? >> I think the AI and machine learning is a wonderful area of emerging technology. So we've also been pushing quite hard with virtual assistants over the past two to three years, and we have six virtual assistants in the production environment. And those span both the unauthenticated citizen space, how do we assist them in finding information about the social welfare system, once you authenticate we have some additional virtual assistants that help guide you through the process, and then we've also been deploying virtual assistants into the staff-facing side. Now we have one there, she's been in production around about 18 months, and we've got very very complex social welfare legislation, policy, business rules, and when you're on the front line and you have a customer sitting in front of you those circumstances can be really quite complex. And you need to very quickly work through what areas of the policy are relevant, how do I apply them, how does this line up with the legislation, so what we've done is we've put a virtual assistant in place, it's a chat-based VA, and you can ask the virtual assistant some quite complex questions and we've had a 95 percent success rate on the virtual assistant answering a query on the first point of contact without the need to escalate to a subject matter expert and we figure that if we saved, we've had it round about a million questions answered in the last year, and if you think that each one of those probably saves around three minutes of time, engaging in SME, giving them the context and then sorting through to an answer, that's three million minutes of effort that our staff have been able to apply to ensuring that we get the best outcome for our citizen rather than working through how do I find the right answer. So that's a bit of a game-changer for us. >> What are some of the things that you're, related to AI, machine learning, cloud, that you're excited about learning this week at the inaugural IBM Think? And how it may really help your government as a service initiative, et cetera. >> Yeah, so I think I see a lot more potential in the space between say machine learning and predictive analytics. On based on what we know about an individual and based on what we know about similar individuals, how do we help guide that individual back to self-sufficiency? Right, so for many many years we've been highly effective and very efficient at the delivery of our services, but ultimately if we can get someone back to self-sufficiency, they're engaged in society, they're contributing to the economy, and I think that puts everyone in a pretty good place. >> Alright, so I got to ask you, I know again, architecture and infrastructure person, but I always ask everybody in your field. How long before machines are going to be able to make better diagnoses than doctors? >> Uh, not so sure about doctors, but within our space our focus has been on how do we use artificial intelligence and machine learning to augment human capability? Like, the focus is on within our business lines within our business lines we have room for discretion and human judgment. Right, so, we don't expect that the machines will be making the decisions, but given the complexity and the volume of the policy and legislation, we do think there's a considerable opportunity to use that technology to allow an individual to make the most informed and the most consistent and the most accurate decision. >> So then in your term you don't see that as a plausible scenario? >> No. >> Maybe not in our lifetime. >> As I said the focus is very much on, well, how do we augment human capability with emerging technology. >> So Garrett, last question and we've got about a minute left. What are some of the things that you are excited about in your new role as head of Enterprise Architecture for 2018 that you see by the end by the time we get to December, your summertime, that you will have wanted to achieve? >> Okay, so, over the last roughly two years I've been developing the future state technology design that will reshape out social welfare system for probably the next 30 years. This is a generational refresh we're undertaking in that space, so I think it's been a hard slog getting to this point, we're now starting to build on our new digital engagement layer, we've got a new enrichment layer starting to come to life where we do put that machine learning and AI in place and then we're also starting to rebuild the core of our social welfare system, so this is the year for me where we go from planning through to execution, and it brings me an immense sense of pleasure and pride to see the work that you've been pouring yourself into for many years start to come to fruition, start to engage with citizens, start to engage with other government agencies, and start to deliver the value that we know that it's capable of delivering. >> Well, sounds like a very exciting year ahead. We want to thank you so much, Garrett, for stopping by theCUBE and sharing the insights, what you guys are doing to help impact the lives of 12 million Australians. >> Thank you very much. >> Have a great event. >> Thank you. >> And for Dave Vellante I'm Lisa Martin. You're watching theCUBE's live coverage of the inaugural IBM Think 2018. Stick around, we'll be back with our next guest after a short break.