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The challenge
A government agency was working towards developing a digital offering that would streamline processes and drive efficiencies for both its staff as well as the public it serviced. There was significant opportunity to commercialise the technology given the interest from other government agencies and commercial entities, such as banks and insurance companies.
Achieving commercialisation would require new legislation to address certain constitutional issues. The agency did not have in-house legal policy capabilities to carry the process forward, so it approached the market for expertise in legal research, policy formulation and legislative development.
Approach
The agency engaged Proximity to develop an options paper on the legal liability and redress framework, which was ultimately accepted as the policy position for the project. Proximity also developed papers on a range of topics to present to a multi-departmental steering group, as well as content for the discussion and position papers.
Proximity was also involved in an analysis of feedback provided through several public consultation processes, including an early scoping paper and subsequent options paper. We also assisted with the development of an executive summary of feedback from the options paper.
Our approach was to start by analysing an earlier scoping paper before researching the current Commonwealth laws and strategies, and then reviewing international precedents in Europe and New Zealand.
In the initial period when the project team had only three members, we scaled our team to meet our client’s needs. We developed up to eight options papers covering a range of topics. When the team size increased, we focused on one key topic – setting a liability framework that considered how legal liabilities should be managed. This included considering whether there should be some form of compensation scheme to manage liabilities if the technology was compromised, and if so, how it could be funded.
We presented numerous papers to a cross-government forum of up to 30 agencies that met fortnightly. Feedback from forum members was considered and incorporated into a final position paper, which fed into the drafting instructions to the Office of Parliamentary Counsel for the final Bill.
Value delivered
Due to Proximity’s experience and expertise in legislative development, the Agency was able to advance several policy positions, undertake a comprehensive stakeholder consultation process and, ultimately, develop policy positions that informed the drafting instructions to Office of Parliamentary Counsel.
