Reducing Government Red Tape…Or Not…

Having recently moved – and changing electorates in the process – I’m going through the usual rigmarole of changing my registered address for just about everything. A pain in the butt, but a necessary evil.

Fortunately, given many government agencies share data, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) automatically finds out about your move – (in most cases) – and sends you a letter to confirm.

Or is that TWO letters to confirm?

Two letters, dated the same, arriving on the same day, and both seeking to confirm my change of address.

Well done!

Perhaps if we are going to cut red tape – as our current government claim they will do – we should perhaps not send the same thing out twice?

Does this happen for every person who moves?

Each of the two letters is also slightly different in content – which is also a bit bizarre, that two different form letters exist for this purpose.

I guess the most likely explanation is that two different agencies advised a change of address – (note that one says “Michael Wyres”, and the other says “Michael A Wyres”) – but surely in this modern age of computers, we can do some data matching to save some money on postage and administrative effort?

Maybe that’s just too hard.