This article is written by Dr. Kate Harrington, Head of Strategic Digital Initiatives, NSW Department of Customer Service and Dr. Alan Thorogood, Senior Visiting Fellow at the University of New South Wales

  • **The problem: **Digital public services are stuck in the old ways.
  • Why it matters: Without a rethink, we run the risk of stagnation.
  • The solution: The New South Wales’ government’s plan is a template to follow

Government agencies are already delivering some excellent digital services, but the government still has much to do as a collective. Digital government is no longer a goal in itself but instead is a means to improve service impact and access, which requires a holistic and systematic approach. The public sector needs to transform internal operations as well as external services.

The NSW government spends an average of $2.5 billion each year buying Information and Communications Technology (ICT) services and products. Traditional funding approaches to ICT, the “fuel” for digital services, perpetuate a siloed approach by agencies because no single agency can or will fund another agency’s transformation.

These silos result in a service design that requires the customer to join together the government structures, rather than a cross-agency seamless solution tailored to their customer journey. Traditional approaches focus on projects, not products. Funding is for what projects can achieve within a particular financial horizon rather than the agile product management approach.

What happened?

To put the customer at the centre of service delivery and drive savings by changing digital and ICT project planning and implementation, the NSW government created a new model to fund the acceleration of whole-of-government digital transformation.

As a first step, a small proportion of agency ICT budgets transfer into a central fund. The Digital Restart Fund (DRF) was modelled on the earlier successful infrastructure restart approach and commenced with a $100 million allocation.

Through the establishment of the DRF, NSW has enabled investment in citizen-centric digital initiatives.

DRF governance drew on existing cross-agency governance structures to ensure allocations would support priority impact areas across the sector. The decision making process and oversight came from the ICT and Digital Leadership Group, Customer and Digital Council, and the Public Service Commission Advisory Board. Each of these bodies providing prioritisation for investment in their relevant DRF categories:

  • Legacy modernisation (seed funding to inform scale investment)
  • Public digital infrastructure (establishing core or common platforms to be used across multiple agencies)
  • Life journeys (services designed around events in customer lives)
  • Enabling capabilities (uplift of the sector to adopt new ways of working)

The NSW government introduced the Digital Restart Fund Act (2020) to protect this new investment approach. While the Act does not guarantee investment in the DRF, it does protect the availability of funding for the duration of implementation rather than restricting delivery to the financial year cut-off. The act also ensures the protection of citizen privacy by incorporating oversight of project design from the Information & Privacy Commission.

Across the government, 28 initiatives received funding through the first phase of DRF, including:

  • First 2000 Days Life Journey – focussed on the importance of the first 2000 days of a child's life (from conception to age 5) and what services the NSW Government provides to ensure that all children have the best possible start in life.
  • ICT Careers Pathway Tool - developed to foster growth-based careers aligned with personal aspirations. From an employer perspective, it helps improve talent mobility through less conventional horizontal and diagonal pathways and enables access to capability within the existing workforce to meet business goals.
  • NSW Digital Twin – establishment of a full four-dimensional model of the State’s physical environment, capable of recording past conditions and visualising future scenarios. The Digital Twin service helps infrastructure planning and management, integration with land use planning, data collaboration, and data sharing.
  • Digital Capability Framework – identify and define new skill sets the sector needs to develop in the digital age, and develop training resources to embed the capabilities across the sector.

The NSW economic stimulus response to support COVID-19 recovery allocated an additional $1.6 billion to the DRF, including $240 million for cybersecurity and $45 million for Smart Places Acceleration, which takes a place-based approach to connect infrastructure and services to realise the value of interconnected systems. The Financial Year 2021/2022 has seen an additional $500 million investment added to the DRF, with agencies currently submitting proposals.

The NSW government has applied an evaluation approach to agency proposals that considers the project's maturity and readiness as well as the most appropriate funding pathway. Project scoring considers customer needs, economic benefits, delivery approach, the capabilities of the delivery team, alignment with broader government priorities, sustainability and risk profile.

Main Takeaway

The DRF started as an experiment in whether an alternative funding model could accelerate digital transformation while ensuring that the government could continue to deliver value for money. Through the establishment of the DRF, NSW has enabled investment in citizen-centric digital initiatives. The lessons learned through this approach include:

  • Legislation for cross-financial year delivery is imperative to the adoption of an agile product management approach.
  • Funding better data capture and analysis helps agencies to make better decisions, faster.
  • Putting the customer at the centre of service design and integration of transparent oversight mechanisms builds public trust in digital services.
  • Prioritising and removing the reliance on legacy technology reduces costs now and mitigates longer-term risks.
  • Fostering an innovation culture empowers public sector employees to think differently about digital service delivery.

— __Dr. Kate Harrington and Dr. Alan Thorogood __

👋 You can create an article like this one! Share your thoughts with a community of public servants. Learn more.