Minutes - 14 Oct 2020

Data Standards Advisory Committee, Meeting Minutes

Date: Wednesday 14 October 2020
Location: Held remotely, via WebEx
Time: 10:00 to 12:00
Meeting: Committee Meeting No: 10

Download meeting minutes (PDF 211KB)

 

Attendees

 

Chair Introduction

The Data Standards Chair opened the meeting and thanked all committee members and observers for attending meeting no 10.

The Chair noted that it has been a pretty significant month across the regime and the Data Standards Body (DSB) specifically.

The Chair noted the month has involved two versions of the Data Standards, version 1.5.0 and version 1.5.1 which combined a number of critical changes but also some clarifications and explanations. A further update will be provided in the Technical Working Group Update.

The Stakeholder Engagement section includes a range of community engagement activities which will be taken as read. He noted that the level of interest at the weekly Implementation Calls continues to increase and next week’s call will include the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) presentation on version 2 of the Rules.

The Chair noted that he will be in touch with members about the ongoing composition of the Advisory Committee. He noted that there will be some changes to the membership.

ACTION: The Chair to reach out to Advisory Committee members to confirm about membership renewal

The Chair congratulated Jodi Ross from the ACCC on her new appointment and invited her to say a few words.

Jodi Ross noted that she is the new acting General Manager for the Policy Engagement & Compliance in the Consumer Data Right (CDR) division, but she is not new to the CDR. She has been working on CDR for several years and was closely involved in the development and design of the banking rules including through the implementation journey and is now looking forward to getting more involved in the energy sector.

The Chair invited David Havyatt to provide an update on his retirement from Energy Council Australia (ECA) and his new organisation.

David Havyatt noted that he retired from ECA at the end of August 2020 with a contract to remain involved in the CDR and in particular the Advisory Committee. He has decided to build a new consumer advocacy organisation in the Illawarra and he is representing the interest of energy consumers.

The Chair noted that the next CDR Board meeting is being held on Tuesday 20 October 2020. Due to a clash, Barry Thomas will represent the DSB at this meeting. Barry also attended the CDR Operational Committee meeting on Tuesday 6 October 2020.

The Chair noted that Van Le (Xinja Bank) is an apology for the meeting and Scott Farrell is unable to join us.

Minutes

Minutes

The Chair thanked the Committee Members for their comments and feedback on the Minutes from the 9 September 2020 Advisory Committee meeting. The Minutes were taken as read and formally accepted.

Action Items

The Chair noted that the Action Items were either completed or would be discussed later at this meeting.

Treasury Update

Daniel McAuliffe from Treasury provided an update as follows:

Treasury noted that, in relation to the announcements in the Budget 2020-21, in the Government’s Digital Business Plan there were some components on the CDR. At a high level, there was some further funding for the CDR for implementation by agencies. That included some funding for energy, for example there is some explicit funding for the Australian Energy Regulator (AER) to make Product Reference Data (PRD) available in the energy sector.

Treasury noted there is also funding for the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) to act as a gateway. The details of which have not been published because there is a still an ongoing process to work out exactly what the funding should be and part of that is dependent on the current consultation process about how the design for CDR energy will work.

Treasury noted that there was also a decision for some organisational changes to the CDR. As we transition out of the early stages and move into a stage where the core design will have been settled, the focus will be to accelerate the roll out to more sectors, data holders (DHs) and datasets and moving beyond the minimum viable product functionality of the system. They have been looking at what organisational arrangements can best achieve that so that they can scale up and build and draw on expertise. There has been a decision to centralise all the design functions of the CDR. The sectoral assessment and rulemaking processes will be moving from the ACCC to Treasury and they will be moving the hosting of the Data Standards Body (DSB) from Data61 (D61) to Treasury. The DSB will remain as an independent data standards setting body.

Treasury noted that in terms of timing, they have already gone out with a draft bill for introduction in the current sittings of parliament to move the rule making and sectoral assessment processes. The goal is to have it introduced in November and it's likely to be passed in late February at the earliest. Following that, they’ll be looking at moving the rule making and sectoral assessment processes.

Treasury noted that for the DSB, the Minister already has the power to change who is hosting the DSB and they are working through the administrative processes and arrangements with CSIRO. They will transfer the DSB across to Treasury as soon as possible.

Treasury noted that there is going to be a process to look at the IT arrangements, things like the registry and conformance test suite and related operational arrangements to determine the most effective way to deliver these elements going forward and to make sure that everything can scale up.

Treasury noted that, in regard to the rules review, they are going to look holistically at how the CDR system have been designed, including legislation, rules and standards. This will include the process by which they do design and the consultation arrangements. They have had some feedback on how it has been split up at the moment, and it can cause some challenges, especially for the smaller stakeholders who can’t throw as much resources to engage in a lot of the processes. This review will be looking at design principles, processes and consultation at a more strategic level.

Treasury noted that the data standards audit, which is broader than the CDR, does affect the CDR only. Treasury has been tasked, in conjunction with various other agencies, to have a look at what data-related standards are being used across the Commonwealth by government agencies or being used in Commonwealth laws. The goal is to look at whether or not there is duplication, conflicts, interoperability issues or whether there are unnecessary cost or efficiency impacts.

One member asked for clarification on what was being moved from the ACCC to Treasury.

Treasury confirmed that the rule making function and the sectoral assessment function will be moved. It will not be down tools at the ACCC and a new set of people at Treasury, they are looking at how to maintain continuity in people so the process can be seamless and not disrupt any development processes.

The member asked whether this meant that the ACCC will not finish the rules framework for energy prior to being transferred to Treasury?

ACCC noted that they have finished reviewing submissions on energy and they are shortly commencing drafting of version 3 of the rules and their broad intention is to be able to publish a draft of those rules for consultation around mid-February and have them legally in place by 30 June 2021. Until such time as the legislation has formally resulted in functions being transferred to Treasury, the ACCC intend to continue to press ahead. The milestones are very important to meet, and they are working very closely on a transition plan with Treasury to ensure the process is seamless.

One member asked how D61’s role will be impacted?

Treasury noted that D61 will cease being the formal host of the DSB, but the reality is that there will be continuity in staffing as far as possible, and continued drawing upon D61 on a whole range of data related issues. They have not worked out things like where people will be physically located and there might be scenarios where staff might be sitting for example in the D61 offices in Sydney. They noted that employees at DSB will be transferred across to Treasury.

The Chair noted the independent DSB which has always been established in the design will remain, but the hosting will move, and the view is that the team will move as a whole as soon as practicable. One of the issues they will address is whether the range of IT systems, for example GitHub which is the centre of our open consultation process, will be able to operate inside the higher security firewall that exists in Treasury. If it doesn’t then there may be an arrangement with D61 to continue to provide those services.

Treasury noted that this is not new for them, they have a lot of small independent bodies that are hosted within the Treasury portfolio like the Takeovers Panel and the Australian Accounting Standards Board (AASB). These functions operate independently and from the perspective of people externally, they don’t even know they’re hosted and part of Treasury. A lot of it is about a shared services model to support the bodies whilst still being within the larger Treasury family.

One member asked if this has been planned for some time, what was the trigger, and could they elaborate on the overall objectives?

Treasury noted that the issue of the current organisation has been raised by stakeholders for some time. When DSB was established and put into CSIRO the original decision was that it would only be temporarily (for 3 years maximum). It was recognised that this would be a good thing for the initial set up stage but as the system matured it may not be the best place. Part of the rationale for the transfer of design responsibilities is that they want to make sure all the design is coordinated with the CDR and broader digital economy initiatives. Scaling is another issue. If we move to doing two or three sectors, how do you scale up staffing etc. You need to be in an area where there's other policy people and you can draw them in as you need them and then release them back.

ACCC noted for the transition they will work very closely with Treasury to make sure that they have one plan for work on the rules and whenever the decision is made by parliament it should have no impact on the timeframe. Their commitment is to maintain momentum and that includes putting out the consultation for the next series of rules in the early part of next year to cover anything that is needed for energy.

One member asked when does the review over the various schemes and legislative regimes start? As simplifying and aligning obligations on businesses could assist in driving faster adoption of digital solutions and help remove barriers of cost and complexity for data sharing more broadly than the CDR intent.

Treasury noted that the audit for the data standards has funding for this FY and the goal is to start in the coming weeks. It will be largely a desktop audit with part of it going out to the private sector for their views.

One member noted that the consumer organisations are quite concerned about the rule making function going to Treasury. They are committed to making sure that consumer rights and consumer empowerment is the centre of this scheme given that we are empowering consumers with their data and that needs to be balanced with economic growth through innovation policies and directions. They are very interested to understand the additional guard rails that Treasury will be putting in place to ensure that consumer rights and consumer empowerment will be continually upheld.

Another member noted that not necessarily all consumer organisations share that same view.

Treasury noted that it all comes back to the rules review and how they make sure going forward they’ve got a collaborative process between agencies and the different considerations are balanced. They are not unsympathetic to the goals that the consumer groups have about protecting privacy and vulnerable people. If you don't have trust in the system, all the benefits will not be realised.

The Chair noted he is looking forward to exploring the timing of where the CX related research is in the process as he thinks that it is occurring a little bit later than it should be, and there is an opportunity to bring it earlier in the process. There are a number of other opportunities from the consolidation of the various agencies in this regard. For example, the move out of D61 will enable them to join more formally the global standards-setting bodies. Because of constraints on CSIRO staff that hasn't been possible, and they have had only informal interactions.

The member noted that they are very conscious that this comes in the context of other major reforms happening in the digital space, and a high priority on a digital led economic recovery. There is a lot of pressure at the moment on initiatives that are perceived to deliver presumably jobs and growth that are associated with the digital economy and these are going to be sped up because that is the policy objective of government. This comes with some risk for the medium-term and long-term objectives. They want to ensure that we have consumer trust and confidence underpinning the medium term outcomes of the scheme and associated with that is ensuring that consumers are protected both from an info security perspective and from an empowerment and decision making perspective as part of this program and in the broader protection framework that consumer are currently facing.

Another member agreed with the the issues raised but noted that one of the reason there may be some significant benefit to the change is that if the CDR has been a bolt onto what they regard as a deficient privacy regime, by actually bringing the whole question back into the relationship with government, this may enable them to make some progress on developing a more generally and fit for purpose data protection right for Australia.

Treasury noted that the Privacy Review by the Attorney-General’s Department and the Budget announcement of further work looking at cyber security and information security may result in a change to the broader landscape.

One member asked is there an equivalent of ongoing support for CDR for incremental improvements as there has been in the set-up phase.

Treasury noted this budget has seen funding increases for CDR implementation for this FY. They realise that they are not going to just build the CDR and consider it done, it is going to be an ongoing process of maintenance, adjustment and adaptation to new sectors and broader developments. The long-term funding arrangements have not been settled and that will need to wait for a future budget.

One member wanted to clarify that the transition is scoped for rule making powers, but the co-regulatory model managed by the ACCC and OAIC is not impacted?

Treasury noted that there have been no changes in terms of enforcement and compliance and they still haven't resolved how they are going to do external dispute resolution in the CDR energy sector. They are hoping to have a conclusion by the end of the year. The general compliance and enforcement model, education and related functions will remain as currently divided between the OAIC and ACCC.

One member asked what directional changes does this mean?

Treasury noted that the organisational change hasn’t been done to change policy direction, there may be changes in process and how cooperatively the agencies work with each other on design matters, but in terms of decisions on fundamental design, they don't think we can read anything into that decision.

One member asked what is the timing on the Privacy Act Review items?

Treasury noted that they are not at liberty to say what the Attorney General’s timing is if they haven’t made an announcement on their timing.

Treasury noted that, in regard to the legislation, they are finishing off the consultation. It has the rules and the sectoral assessment but it also has an amendment that will clarify that the rules can definitely determine whether or not an outsource service provider (OSP) who is collecting data through the system has to be accredited or not. It does not lock it in one way or the other, it just makes it clear that it’s within the scope of the rule making power. There is also a series of genuine technical fixes, a few of them relate to the energy sector, one being about the gateway. As they worked through the gateway model, they realised that data had to flow both ways (from the gateway to the retailer and back again) and some of the restrictions in the Act about flows of data were a bit overly restrictive.  Another example of a fix was that some of the privacy safeguards accidentally referred to an ADR when it should have been an accredited person and vice versa.

Treasury noted on the OSP model the consultation also asked some questions on possible changes which were not yet included in the draft bill. The government has posed the question to stakeholders as to whether there should be regulation making powers to impose obligations directly upon OSPs. At the moment, the rules can impose obligations on ADRs about how they engage OSPs but not directly on the OSPs themselves. The consultation is closing this Friday with the aim to introduce the bill into Parliament in late November.

Treasury noted that there had been a decision to extend the CDR Inquiry by a month. This was due to COVID-19 having an impact on obtaining good quality input from - in particular in relation to stakeholders in relation to payment initiation. The report will be submitted to Government by the end of the month. They would not expect the government response this year.

One member noted that they have been reviewing the OSP draft. They noted that it is quite difficult to navigate through and where are the protections?

Treasury noted in terms of how they regulate OSPs, at the moment they regulate them in the rules completely. They are not intending for legislation to have any direct rules about how they operate, as they need to be quite flexible. OSPs cover such a broad range of potential activities. If an OSP misbehaves the ADR is responsible for their conduct and the sanctions fall upon the ADR.

The ACCC noted that, from an enforcement perspective and what applies under the rules now, DRs are responsible fully for the conduct of their OSPs and the rules are extensive in terms of conduct of an OSP that can be attributed to a DR. In extreme circumstances, the ACCC has the ability to directly pursue an OSP where they consider the OSP has been knowingly concerned in a breach of the legislation by the DR for whom they are working.

Working Group Update

A summary of the Working Groups progress since the last committee meeting was provided in the Committee Papers and was taken as read.

Data Quality Update

A further update was provided on Data Quality by Barry Thomas as follows:

The DSB noted that they have discussed data quality at a couple of meetings now and it’s fair to say that they are beginning to move into a bit more of business as usual. They have figured out how they want to approach this challenge and it reflects Treasury’s point which was made earlier that the CDR will never be finished, there’s always work needed to refine things.

The DSB noted that in the context of this group, which is primarily focused on energy, data quality is in a different place. We're not going back and learning from implementation and adjusting things, we’re identifying data quality issues relating to energy and it's much more in the context of the normal consultations we're currently undergoing to decide what the payload should be and how it should be structured. Nevertheless, it’s worth understanding how we're going to approach data quality because once we do go live with energy, this will be an ongoing activity.

The DSB noted that the largest category of activity where they’re identifying is aspects of data which can't or shouldn’t be standardised, but where more guidance should be provided. They have established the idea of “conventions” which function to clarify the standards, making them easier to understand without imposing new compliance obligations. Conventions will go through the normal processes; raising requests on GitHub and via the Support Portal. When a convention is defined, they will communicate via the Support Portal and articles will be tagged as “conventions”, which collectively over time will eventually add up to a large body of work that will provide guidance on implementation.

The DSB noted that there will be situations where the data quality issue relates back to something which can only be addressed at the rules or the designation level. These will be units of work on their own and probably involve workshops which will be done on an as-needed basis.

The DSB noted they have a Noting Paper which will be published in the next couple of days which summarises the review they did and they will be holding a practical workshop on data quality in early December. The workshop topic will be on fees and rates for mortgages, which is a complex issue. More data quality workshops will be held in the new year.

The ACCC noted that their enforcement and compliance team are working very closely with the DSB in this area and they are keen to understand and identify issues of potential non-compliance as opposed to areas where ambiguity in obligations needs to be resolved. The ACCC supports the conventions-based approach and in due course anticipate that their enforcement and compliance policy will take adherence to conventions into account as a factor when deciding how to deal with a non-compliance issue where the DHs have engaged in good faith with the conventions process. They understand that the regime is in a transition phase, and they’re actively engaged in the work occurring in this area.

Technical Working Group Update

A further update was provided on the Technical Working Group by James Bligh as follows:

The DSB wanted to highlight the recent publishing of version 1.5.1. In Maintenance Iteration # 4 they canvassed a range of minor tweaks and fields and one of them was the addition of a CRN type field. The change they made, however was not entirely consistent with the decision proposal approved by the Chair which was highlighted to them and they’d therefore made these changes outside of their own process. They reversed the decision and left it at the previous version 1.4.0 position rather than put something in the standards that was not fully approved. They revoked that minor decision and standards maintenance and have reopened it for consultation.

The DSB noted that this has been a good learning for them and their process. Moving forward they will have a checklist to make sure every change matches a decision which will act as a quality check before something goes out.

The DSB noted that the other thing they are looking at is revamping the way they publish standards as they have had feedback that it's quite hard to tell the differences between versions, which is understandable. They are potentially going to publish a preview of the documented next version of the standards in advance so people can review and provide feedback before they make them binding. If that works, they may build up versions incrementally in a draft environment as decisions are taken.

The Chair noted the second-tier banks have passed the October date for publishing their Product Reference Data (PRD) and a large number of second tier banks have published their PRD and relevant APIs. The DSB have developed their own demonstration product comparator tool and there are currently 53 banks whose data is available. The Chair noted that October is another important milestone in the establishment of the regime.

The ACCC noted that the enforcement and compliance team are currently undertaking an audit of endpoint availability in light of the October 1 date having passed for the non-majors ADIs to start publishing phase 1 PRD and they are currently working through that process. They have granted a number of exemptions to ADIs and details of those are available on the website. Overall compliance seems pleasing and the the ACCC is in the process of making inquiries with some ADIs.

The Chair asked if appropriate, could ACCC provide an update at the next meeting, without mentioning the names of the organizations, on the nature and types of issues they have identified in the process in general terms.

ACTION: ACCC to provide an update on the PRD compliance check for non-majors ADIs

Consumer Experience Working Group Update

A further update was provided on the CX Working Group by Michael Palmyre as follows:

The DSB noted that there has been a fair bit of work completed in the last month. The second report from the Consumer Policy Research Centre (CPRC) is currently being finalised, which covers views and experiences of consumer advocates and the community sector to provide advice on how the DSBs Standards and Guidelines might be augmented to facilitate joint account data sharing that is safe and inclusive for all consumers.

The DSB noted that there have been some really interesting things that have come out of that report and the plan is to publish that after some internal review in the next few weeks.

The DSB noted that the CX Working Group has developed a draft research brief for the next round of CX research focussing on energy. This round will look at issues that have been raised following the energy rules consultation and based on the outputs of the CX and technical workshop on retailer-held datasets.

The DSB have defined a few key areas and issues that have been raised. Based on the output they have developed a research brief and also iterated on the data clusters and permission for those and published a table which maps those data clusters and permissions to the payloads and security scope.

The DSB noted that this will be of key interest to people as it shows a real link between the payloads and security scope and also the consumer facing aspects. These will be published, after they’ve iterated and tested in research, and will be done in conjunction with the technical work for account payloads and billing data. This is in addition to the AEMO held data sets which are being considered as separate work which they are pushing ahead with.

The DSB noted that they will be publishing a brief summary of the Retailer-held Dataset workshop shortly, but the key outputs were the energy research brief and the data customer language table.

The DSB noted for the Amending Consent Workshop, they published a CDS blog which highlighted key themes and queries that came out of the workshop, along with responses and next steps. Responses to community queries covered amending consent, concurrent consent, joint accounts in relation to consent amendments, and consent management more generally. This summary linked to the version 2 rules consultation currently underway, and contained a preliminary interim state for amending consent which will be consulted on based on the version 2 rules progression.

The DSB noted that in relation to the rules consultation that is underway, the CX team have produced some wireframes to illustrate how the proposed new rules could work in practice but these are not to be taken as compliant examples of these rules. These wireframes are produced in collaboration with the ACCC. They have also published a link to a Miro board for easy navigation.

The DSB noted in relation to the rules wireframes, they produced those with open source design assets - CAG compliant (Complaint Appeals & Grievances) and aligned to Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) design systems. These wireframes were produced quickly using those assets which they want to release publicly in the next few months.

The ACCC acknowledged the huge amount of effort that the CX team put into preparing the CX wireframes together with the ACCC rules team. It is a really helpful illustration of the proposed rules which will aid the consultation process and highlights the really close working relationship that the DSB and ACCC have.

The ACCC also noted that on the research occurring in relation to safe and inclusive data sharing with joint accounts, version 2 of the rules proposals include a rule that would enable banks to treat a joint account as though it were a singly held account to enable data sharing to occur for a person, for example whether there is a risk or financial abuse of harm. In the first version of the rules there were some provisions that were built in, but this is about taking it further and enabling banks to leverage off of the existing mechanisms they already have for domestic violence and elder abuse situations. They are keen to hear the views from committee members on this.

The ACCC noted that ‘joint accounts’ for banking are currently a ‘sector specific’ rule and most of the proposals in version 2 of the rules are cross sectoral, they are in the common part of the rules. The ACCC is conscious that some specific thinking will need to be done in the context of other sectors and to the extent to which they're joint account situations are analogous to banking. The common theme for all sectors will be providing appropriate protections for vulnerable consumers.

The Chair noted that the perspective from energy sector and users on the “joint accounts” area would be very helpful.

DSB Future Planning

James Bligh from the DSB provided an update on DSB Future Planning and how we could manage the demand for DSB work as follows:

The DSB noted that at the last meeting they presented a noting paper about a proposal on how they can manage the demand for DSB work. This was around the prioritisation of work and making sure they are on top of the amount of work that is coming down the pipeline. They also talked about the role of the Advisory Committees and them helping the DSB shape the future plan.

The DSB have received some feedback on the noting paper, which was gratefully received, and as a result they we have set up a Kanban board. This technical implementation will allow them to manage the high-level work plan for the DSB.

The DSB noted that the repository is set up in GitHub and is called “Future Plan” and its sole purpose is not to store code but to manage the future work for the DSB. The content from the Noting Paper has been put into the README including the overview of the roles and responsibilities and how it will work.

The DSB noted that the Kanban board will be used as part of their stream updates for Advisory Committee meeting going forward. If members have any advice on what the priorities should be, they can provide advice to the Chair who is the decision maker on priorities. Note that a lot of the priorities will be driven by external factors such as rules changes and designations etc.

The DSB noted that priorities in the Kanban board will be sorted quarterly with categories and a backlog column. The backlog column will be used for new items until a decision is made on which quarter the work needs to be completed in. The current quarter will be fixed, and the subsequent quarters will be more tentative etc.

The DSB noted that they also have three labels in the Kanban board that they like to apply to each item. The “blocked” (red) label indicates that they can’t progress with the item, it doesn't mean there's a problem, but something else has to happen before they can do this activity. The “maturity” (green) label is around the maturity of the problem statement and whether it is defined or whether it’s ready for them to work on. The “sector” (blue) label is a sectoral analysis about which sectors things hit, noting that a lot of the work they are doing is cross sector.

The DSB noted that they will circulate the Kanban link to the Advisory Committee for content review with an expectation of discussing this at the next Advisory Committee meeting within the next week.

ACTION: DSB to circulate the Kanban link to the Advisory Committee for content review

Stakeholder Engagement

A summary of stakeholder engagement including upcoming workshops, weekly meetings and maintenance iteration cycle was provided in the Committee Papers and was taken as read.

Issues raised by Members

Barry Thomas from the DSB provided an update on issues raised by members as follows:

The DSB noted that this agenda item is still a work in progress, and they will be reaching out regularly to members after each meeting looking for any issues. They have established a register of issues that have been raised to date but exactly how it works will need to be evolved. The intent is that if there is an issue where they can respond they will do so at this point in the agenda. If there is an issue that would benefit from wider discussion, it could also be discussed at this point.

The DSB noted that the issues that have been raised so far have been explored, but broadly speaking they tend to be things that they can’t respond to right now or are things that require rules or higher-level decisions.

The DSB wanted to reassert that they will be reaching out to committee members after the meeting for any issues and the broad intent is to surface the input from the committee members to make this much more an advisory body.

The Chair noted that the issues raised need to be relevant for discussion at the Advisory Committee meeting. For example, an issue that would require detailed technical discussion would be best suited for the Technical Working Group, but it might be useful to be highlighted as this meeting. Another suggestion was to discuss issues on version 2 of the Rules Framework. This is currently out for consultation and the process is run by the ACCC and is not the appropriate environment to discuss at this meeting.

The DBS is keen for feedback from members on how to improve this process.

ACCC Update

Jodi Ross from the ACCC provided a general update as follows:

The ACCC noted that in regard to version 2 of the rules, they would encourage everyone on the committee to offer their views on the rules because they are largely intended to be cross sectoral.

The ACCC noted that the rules team will be presenting at the Implementation Call next Thursday.

The ACCC noted that they recently made the amendments to the rules to allow accredited intermediaries to collect data on behalf of third party DRs with consumer consent. This is an important step in terms of encouraging greater participation in the CDR and we can expect in the coming months to see a number of DRs starting to avail themselves of these new rules.

The ACCC noted that Intuit Australia Pty Ltd and Intuit Inc. were recently accredited to participate in the CDR.

The ACCC noted that they will be publishing some technical implementation guidance for the new intermediary rules from their register team within the next week which will be available on the Zendesk portal and also be advertised in an upcoming ACCC newsletter.

The ACCC noted that in terms of CDR in energy, the framework development team have reviewed all submissions on the energy rules framework consultation paper and they are in the process of formulating policy positions on key issues with priority being given to issues that impact drafting version 3 of the rules to support gateways. The drafting work will commence shortly so they can work towards the milestone of publishing the draft rules in February. They are approaching the rules on the basis that they should be developing economy-wide rules for gateways, including the AEMO gateway, and their intent is for the rules to include binding data standards covering interactions between DHs and the gateway and between the gateway and ADRs. The rules will also require binding standards to be made on information security requirements for any gateway for CDR data.

The ACCC noted that the framework development team is working through a number of issues that were consulted on through the consultation process and they will be in a position to provide a more detailed update on these issues at the next meeting. They are working through specific issues for authentication and authorisation in the context of a gateway amongst other things.

The Chair would encourage members to join the Implementation Call next Thursday for the opportunity to hear from the rules team about the proposals.

The ACCC noted that they also have their onboarding team presenting at the Implementation Call on 15 October 2020 which may be of general interest to prospective DRs or DHs in the energy space.

Meeting Schedule

The Chair advised that the next meeting will be held remotely on Wednesday 11 November 2020 from 10am to 12:00pm.

Other Business

No other business raised.

Closing and Next Steps

The Chair thanked the Committee Members and Observers for attending the meeting.

Meeting closed at 11:40