2021: The Great Digital Government Con

My article in InnovationAus published on 8 December 2021.

PDF of the article can be found here.

On December 3, 2021 Minister Stuart Robert unveiled the latest Australian Government Digital Strategy (GDS).

This strategy has as its vision that by 2025, Australia will be one of the top three digital governments in the world.

That’s right. A vision that’s all about a leader board ranking. A beauty contest.

What makes this goal utterly unexciting, is that it is almost verbatim from the year 2000 “Government Online Strategy”, and the year 2013 policy for “E-Government and the Digital Economy”.

The paradigm has not changed in 21 years. The targets are disappearing further into the future with withering ambition.