So what's all this about then?
And who is it for?
To begin with…if you don’t know what the Australian Consumer Data Right (CDR) is, or you know but don’t care, this is not the place for you. There’s going to be lots of nerdy and specific content that tends to assume a fair bit of knowledge about a, for most people, pretty esoteric topic. But if you do know and care about the CDR I greatly hope that you’ll find interesting things in this blog, and maybe even some interesting conversations to join.
Why listen to me?
I was deeply involved in setting up the CDR for about five years. I started out in 2018 as Open Banking Director at the Australian Banking Association (ABA), responsible for putting the bank viewpoint on the CDR technical standards that were only just beginning to be devised at that time. In 2019 I hopped to the government side and became the General Manager of the Data Standards Body for the CDR, initially in CSIRO’s Data61, then in Treasury from 2021 onwards, where I ended up as an Assistant Secretary. All lots of fun but also stressful at times and I resigned due to burn out in September of 2023. But I’m still a true believer in the value and potential of the CDR.
It’s probably also useful to point out that I’m a standards nerd from way back. I was a co-founder and Technical Director of LIXI, the peak standards body for the Australian mortgage industry. I was also heavily involved in a lot of the early standards work for the National Electronic Conveyancing Office, now morphed into PEXA. Despite the most recent few years of my professional life I still see myself as more of a private sector guy than as a public servant.
TL;DR: I have deep experience of both the CDR and complex, multi-stakeholder development in general. I know the CDR at every level from the fine-grained technical standards to the many vagaries of government policy. I have an intimate knowledge of what we’ve done well and of where we’ve stuffed up. Yet my perspective remains very much a positive and constructive one. I believe that consented access to your own data really should be a right that you can exercise with reasonable convenience and safety. I want the Consumer Data Right to succeed.
What’s this blog for?
The point of this blog is to seed useful conversations about improving the CDR. One thing my experiences have shown me very clearly is that the government can’t do this alone. This is not to throw rocks at all the government folk, many of whom I genuinely admire. It is simply a recognition that the CDR needs the active involvement of all stakeholders if it is to achieve its potential. We need a “coalition of the willing” to bring every viewpoint to the table in ways that government alone simply can’t do. Will this blog help? Perhaps. I’m hopeful.