All-digital governing to save billions and lift online access

A strategy to digitise government data aims to save billions of dollars and increase online access to services.

Australian Federal Justice Minister Michael Keenan.

A cabinet sub-committee will be established to secure billions of dollars in savings as part of a strategy to digitise data across all federal departments and agencies and a push to increase online access to a range of government services.

Mass data currently “hoarded” by government departments will also be made accessible to business under the digital transformation and public sector modernisation committee, to be chaired by ­Michael Keenan, the Human Services Minister and Minister Assisting the Prime ­Minister for Digital Transformation.

The technology driven savings will also include cloud-based ­travel expense management for all government departments. This alone would save more than $55 million in costs around information and communications technology, or ICT.

Mr Keenan will announce the move to a cloud-based strategy and digital integration for government in a speech to the Indonesia-Australia Digital Forum in Jakarta today, claiming the aim is to create a “24/7 government that anyone can access from anywhere”.

Mr Keenan told The Australian there were currently more than 44 million items of content on federal government sites in Australia, and more than 1200 federal government websites.

“Research shows that around 40 per cent of Australians will experience a problem accessing and using government services,” Mr Keenan said.

While Australia was ranked among the top countries for digital transformation of government, Mr Keenan said there were billions of dollars in savings still to be achieved through digitising government services, including in welfare.

“Australia has a long, rich history of innovation,” Mr Keenan will say in his speech.

“From Wi-Fi to ultrasound scanners, the application of penicillin, black box flight recorders and pacemakers. Even the platform for Google Maps was developed in a small Sydney start-up in the early 2000s. We want to apply this same innovative spirit to the delivery of government services.

“For government, digital transformation is about delivering better policies and programs and making it easier for people to do business with government.

“Transitioning to cloud technology will allow us to explore common platforms, remove the need for big upfront investments and reduce the amount of maintenance required for services to ‘keep the lights on’.”

The government is putting in place a policy to cap ICT contracts for government departments to $100m in value.

“In the public sector, we can use data to design better services based on real human behaviour,” Mr Keenan said.

“Until now, there has been no national approach to data integration across government, and the capacity to link and analyse data has been limited.

“The government should not hoard data. The vast store of information we have is a national ­resource providing enormous ­opportunity for the public and private sectors.

“For example, in Centrelink we use data analytics to look at complaints, establish patterns and then (use) that information to improve services.”