2017: Promise of Digital Government Diverted by Tech Screw-Ups
From 2017.
Author: Joanne Gray. Australian Financial Review Boss, 9 March, 2017
I was interviewed for this article and my comments are below.
In my opinion, Australia didn’t think big enough.
Australia doesn’t study success and how it is achieved, concentrating instead on studying failure, which reinforces risk aversion.
The Australian government is the biggest organisation in the country and needs a system-wide transformation strategy.
Marie Johnson, head of the Centre for Digital Business, says digital strategy should be embedded in every part of government and the DTO’s approach was too narrow.
Instead of slavishly copying the British model, Australia should look elsewhere, for example to the Ontario government, whose digital agenda is an economic agenda that cuts across bureaucratic boundaries.
“The approach by Ontario is quite different to what many governments have done – where typically digital is a list of projects and an agency by agency digital strategy,” she says.
Another problem, she says, is that Australia doesn’t study success and how it is achieved, concentrating instead on studying failure, which reinforces risk aversion.
