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First established as the Digital Transformation Office in 2015, the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) has a long history of overseeing Australia’s digital transformation initiatives.
In its latest iteration, DTA has evolved into an advisor to government, according to its Chief Executive Officer Chris Fechner.
“We think about things like: is the government making the best decisions about where it invests in digital, given that it represents about 10 per cent of the total budget?
“We look at things like: how does emerging technology have an impact on the way that we provide services, both internally and externally to government, and how do we safely and effectively adopt those technologies,” he says to GovInsider.
Investment oversight
To better optimise and track the state’s digital investments, DTA has been heavily involved in the establishment of Australia’s Investment Oversight Framework (IOF) since May, says Fechner.
The IOF is an end-to-end framework providing a way for the government to manage digital investments.
The framework encompasses six states across the entire project lifecycle from strategic planning and budgeting to sourcing and implementation.
“We look at how things work collectively. How efficient and effective is the government in delivering digital. and how well are proposals are considered, set up, delivered and then operated,” he adds.
The framework has recently been independently reviewed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) against their best practice models for internet governance.
Australia was recognised as one of only five governments worldwide that have a fully enabled lifecycle approach to digital government, he notes.
“[The framework] is lending us to a better quality of investments, given the amount of money that government invests in digital every year [amounting to] about 10 per cent of the budget,” he says.
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Justifying budgets
One major challenge threatening to inhibit governments’ digital transformation efforts involves justifying the budgets needed and demonstrating the potential returns on investment, Fechner notes.
“Often you hear nothing about the hundreds and thousands of small successes in digital, but you hear a lot about the few failures. So, we have this issue about reputation.
“If I give you $100 million, do I get $100 million plus in value out of it? And the DTA works very hard at looking at how we justify the benefits against the expense,” he says.
He notes the challenge of getting investments from governments in “invisible areas” like upgrades to networks, cybersecurity, corporate systems, records management, information management.
“But [these areas] underpin absolutely every aspect of government policy making, service delivery and operations,” he explains.
AI adoption
Alongside the IOF, Fechner adds that artificial intelligence (AI) will have a powerful role to play in both driving efficiencies within the federal government to help reduce deficits, and improving productivity across the economy.
Having established the foundations of responsible AI, DTA will now focus on exploring how to accelerate its adoption within government, Fechner says.
Apart from releasing a policy on responsible use of AI in government last year, DTA also published two other associated standards about transparency and holding officials accountable.
The agency has also done a lot of work on training to ensure the Australian Public Service has at least a fundamental understanding about how generative AI (GenAI) can work within government workflows, and has developed an assurance framework to evaluate the risks involved.
“We ran a task force [assembled from] across government for 18 months when we got the policies out,” he says.
“Now, we’ve updated our structure so that we’ve got an AI branch that’s looking at accelerating that adoption and how we can really work with industry, academia, and other governments to make sure that we can really embrace the benefits that AI, especially GenAI.”
Another focus for the AI branch is managing risks such as the degrees of distrust citizens have about the government’s use of AI technologies.
“Driving the adoption of AI is a collaboration that we’re working on right now. We see literally hundreds of potential use cases coming through government all the time.
“And in fact, the work we’re doing with the OECD, we’ve actually started to generate a global use case repository for government acts for government use cases,” Fechner says.
Last year, DTA coordinated the Australian Government’s trials of a GenAI service and published its findings on its website.
Digital identity
Another focus area for DTA is also integrating its national digital identity into the broader ecosystem.
The agency currently manages the development, piloting and adoption of national digital identity, and has helped establish the legal basis for Australia’s digital identity framework.
“Digital identity is one of those fundamentals for a digital economy for people to be safe, secure, and effective, and for government services to be deployed efficiently through the digital channel, as well as making sure that people have got trust and confidence in those ecosystems so that they can work,” Fechner says.
Key priorities
Beyond frameworks and budgets, Fechner points to the increasing intersection of digital technologies and whole-of-government approaches.
For example, DTA advises the Minister of Finance on issues like international collaboration.
Through its ongoing partnerships the OECD, Five Eyes partners and Southeast Asian governments, Fechner reiterates that the importance of regional strengthening.
“We look at how they’re working and how we can share and collaborate on both uplifting the government capabilities in all countries, especially our Southeast Asian neighbours, but also how we’re getting the best information about where we need to go as a country.”
The DTA also plays a significant role in connecting government to the digital industry.
This includes overseeing most of the non-defence related digital sourcing within the government where the agency has single seller agreements with major vendors such as Microsoft, IBM and AWS, and makes recommendations to government about where to direct technology investments.
The DTA’s priorities for the next five years will involve continuing to forecast digital strategy based on emerging technology trends, ensuring the Australian government is in a position to embrace AI and the benefits it can bring, and continuing to refine the Investment Oversight Framework, Fechner says.
“The [framework] is just going to be central to how our government thinks about how much it needs to invest, in what classes it needs to invest, and how we actually consider what value we got from those investments,” he adds.