Re: [Gnumed-devel] secure messaging

[Tim Churches]

J Busser wrote:
> Would you have produced any (even crude) introductory or background
> description for the minister to consider? I was hoping / thinking it
> could be the kind of thing worth sharing around further as my own region
> is in the early stages of working on secure messaging.
> 
> Could not find much about wagtail. Is it a larger project i.e. beyond
> yourselves? Other than wagtail birds and cleaning supplies, all I could
> find was an audio encoding project
> http://freshmeat.net/projects/wagtail/
> 
> maybe bears a relation to BAE Systems being the" design authority for...
> existing fielded, Australian tactical communications equipment including
> RAVEN and WAGTAIL combat net radio"
> http://www.baesystems.com/newsroom/2002/apr/170402news2.htm

Tony Lembke named the project after Rhipidura leucophrys, I think - see
http://www.epa.qld.gov.au/nature_conservation/wildlife/native_animals/nocturnal_animals/birds/willy_wagtail/

Australia already has an open source secure health messaging system
called ArgusConnect, which as Horst says is fighting a rear-guard action
against proprietary pay-per-message secure health messaging service
providers. ArgusConnect has had some wins, including support from a
large path lab company, but its position is still shaky. ArgusConnect
has some features which don't enamour it to everyone, such as a) being
completely dependent on the HeSA PKI - which is an X.509 PKI operated by
an agency of our Federal govt, but which insists on users signing
inappropriate legal agreements and on the use of proprietary hardware
dongles etc; b) it doesn't support alternative X.509 or GPG/PGP PKIs,
which are preferred by some because they are good enough to get the job
of secure health messaging done satisfactorily without teh considerable
bureaucratic or legal overhead which HeSA has - and thus may be more
sustainable than HeSA, which is vulnerable to a flick of the finance
minister's pen, I dare say; c) the ArgusConnect software itself is a bit
over-engineered, although it does work well in its more recent versions;
d) related to c), it is written in Java and is not that easy to extend,
although Syan managed to crack it; e) the open source version lags 6
months behind the version that ArgusConnect (teh company) distributes in
binary form and for which they provide support for a fee.

Wagtail, if I understand correctly, is intended to address all these
issues. I think the idea is to complement ArgusConnect and provide even
more choice for open secure health messaging, rather than to try to
usurp ArgusConnect. Indeed, it would be great if ArgusConnect (the
company) eventually provided commercial support contracts for Wagtail as
well as for their own software product. The real targets are the
proprietary health messaging providers.

A secondary goal is, I think, to demonstrate that "good enough" health
informatics facilities can in fact be created and deployed at very
modest expense - all that is needed is some vision and some smarts, but
not necessarily a lot of time or money.

Tim C


> 
> At 10:18 PM +0000 9/5/05, Horst Herb wrote:
> 
>> Both Syan and me are currently active with "wagtail". It has highest
>> priority
>> for a reason: Australia is sitting on the fence between open and
>> proprietary
>> lock in situation for clinical secure messaging. A few companies
>> hoping for
>> lucrative customer lock-in contracts from the government are lobbying
>> away,
>> and the health minister is hellbound at making the final decision this
>> very
>> year.
>>
>> Tony Lemke, Syan, and I are trying to produce something workable soon as
>> possible; something we can demonstrate that it *works* as a free and
>> standards respecting alternative to costly lock in. Needless to say, the
>> secure messaging application can certainly be integrated into gnumed
>> and will
>> be useful there too.
>>
>> You can follow progress or even contribute at
>> http://ozdocit.org/websvn/listing.php?repname=wagtail&path=%2F&sc=0
> 
> 
> 
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