The federal government in November 2018 unveiled its digital transformation strategy, with former Minister for Human Services and Digital Transformation Michael Keenan at the time labelling the vision as “bold”.
The 48-page strategy, prepared by the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA), focused on bringing all services online by 2025 to attempt to make Australia be counted as one of the world’s top three digital governments.
The strategy is now up for a refresh.
“The settings, expectations, and the needs of businesses and individuals have frankly dramatically changed over the last 12 months,” the minister now in charge of digital transformation Stuart Robert said on Tuesday.
“We’re spending over AU$3.2 billion on digital and ICT proposals over the forward estimates to help us reach our goal of all government services being available digitally by 2025 … we’re now progressing a whole new host of approaches, strategies, and initiatives.”
Speaking as part of the DTA’s Disruption and Change Digital Summit, Robert said the agency would release a discussion paper over the coming days asking for insight on how to ensure the strategy remains relevant.
“I’ve asked the DTA to refresh the digital transformation strategy to take into account the changed world that we find ourselves in now,” he said.
“Now this strategy update will be focused on delivering the services Australians rely on as soon as possible to help those in need and to importantly, help support the nation’s economic recovery.”
“If we’re going to reap the benefits of digital transformation, for all Australians, we have to keep moving … we’re going to have to innovate and we’re going to have to get the private and the public sector together perhaps in ways they’ve not done before,” he later added.
During his presentation, Robert also took the opportunity to show that Australia had a minister with digital transformation in his portfolio before Japan did, with Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga creating the post of Minister for Digital Transformation and appointing Takuya Hirai and directing him to stand up the nation’s first digital transformation agency.
“It would be easy to feel satisfied that Australia’s a bit more ahead of the curve in how advanced we are along our transformation path, but in reality, the Japanese announcement simply reinforces that nearly every country in the OECD is lining up to accelerate their digital transformation as part of their response to the pandemic-induced recession that is currently facing the world,” Robert said.
