According to the United Nations, Australia ranks fifth out of 193 countries for e-governance – behind Denmark, Korea, Estonia and Finland.
Despite this global endorsement, John Glenn, managing director of KIAH, said his experience with Australia’s approach to digital government leaves room for improvement – and a lot of it.
“MyGov in particular is digital smoke and mirrors,” he told The Mandarin. “It’s little more than a collection of access points to separate services that you have to register and log into separately, with little information passing between. The concept of the individual having a single identity across government – and entering your address and phone number just once – is still a target.”
With decades of experience in supporting improved delivery of public services, Glenn discussed where the challenges lie, and the simple approaches that will make Australia worthy of its ranking.
Here is the interview, edited for length and clarity.
What is your experience with Australia’s approach to digital transformation and digital government?
Australia’s Digital Government Strategy was first launched in 2018 and is owned by the Digital Transformation Agency. It’s a wonderful document and well written. It beautifully presents the objective – to enable our population to deal with government anywhere, anytime, on any device and for any service. A single accessible entry point that is personalised, stable, secure, reliable and anticipates the needs of every user.
That must have been an adjective laden workshop.
Since its establishment in 2016, the Digital Transformation Agency has yet to find its stride – in its short history it has flitted between ministers, departments, changing roles, and multiple CEOs. It does look as if leadership and transformation might be an unpopular opportunity.
On their achievement, it’s tough to tell, other than anecdotally, how well they are actually doing – which is not warming. We should be able to tell their trajectory, what they have achieved, with hard measures from their annual report.
Unfortunately, like so many departmental and agency annual reports, it is high on rhetoric and low on actual measures. Filled with well-presented weasel words that make you feel good but are light on substance.
I’ll give you an example. A success measure is that digital platforms, technologies, and services reduce costs and duplication. It is marked as achieved, with a lovely green tick. We are provided with the evidence that there are more than 2.73 million digital identities in 2021, 1.44 million more than in 2020. Australia’s population in 2021 was 25.8 million people in Australia, and 14.5 million were employed.
How many digital identities should there be? What’s the target? When? You need commitment to an outcome with hard measures to understand effectiveness. I do think that if we spend this much money on these efforts, some decent measurement, rather than obscuration, is deserved. This, of course is, the incongruity. One of the advantages of digital transformation is the access to data and measurement. Here we are without data or measurement from the DTA.
To be fair, there are pockets of excellence. Federally, the Australian Tax Office seems to be a standout. At a state level, New South Wales has a vocal and interested advocate in the Minister for Finance, Services and Property, Victor Dominello. He is changing their online success one app at a time.
Even then, transformation is prosaic. Transformation ought to be more than the simple digitisation of services, though that would be a great start.
Why does Australia rank highly on digital government by the United Nations?
The UN’s E-Government Development Index is the average of three separate indices: a human capital index that looks at education and schooling levels and for which we rate 1, a telecommunications infrastructure index that looks at the reach of mobile and fixed network services to individuals and households for which we rate 0.88, and an online service index which looks at online government services and for which we rate 0.95.
The human capital and telecommunications indices are rated by third parties. The online service index is self-rated through a questionnaire. If the answer to the question ‘do we have single point of entry to government services?’ is ‘yes, because we have MyGov’, it becomes self-evident why we rate so highly.
But there are some alternate views.
The World Bank’s Digital Adoption Index measures increasing productivity for business, expanding opportunities for accessing welfare, and increasing accountability and efficiency of government services. The World Bank specifically measures the extent of online public services, digitalisation of core administrative systems and the presence of a digital identity.
In their 2016 assessment, Australia was rated as 33rd across all categories and 74th in the delivery of government services. I acknowledge that there have been four years between the World Bank assessment and the UN’s in which Australia might have improved markedly – but there is significant dissonance between the UN and World Bank views.
A recent Harvard Business Review article shows Australia being in the top 20% of countries with a high digital evolution just putting us in the company of the rest of the developed and developing world. But they also show us as being stalled on digital momentum.
Slowing momentum might be a considered a strategic approach if it was done deliberately to ensure digital growth was both sustainable and inclusive. Given the World Bank’s rating, I don’t see deliberately slowing growth as a major strategic consideration.
How can Australia improve on its transformation agenda?
There is no argument that better e-government will improve community participation, increase transparency, and improve access to services at reduced costs. It is a good thing. Search digital transformation and you will get a bevy of amazing slide decks from consulting companies, all remarkably similar. Yet with all that advice and the hundreds of millions of dollars spent with those companies, you can’t feel warm about the progress.
As Professor Peter Shergold, former secretary for the Department of Prime Minister & Cabinet, discusses in the foreword to Are we there yet? The digital transformation of Government and the Public Service in Australia, there is a wide gulf between rhetoric and reality: an awful lot of talking and too little walking.
The book is worth a read, if only to test your thinking on what Digital Transformation ought to deliver. We are not there yet as we aren’t even sure of where we are going.
Most contemporary approaches focus on digital and technology transformation – an essential precursor to transformation but not the end game. With pervasive connectivity and increasing literacy transformation ought to be driving greater transparency and citizen participation. It doesn’t even look that we have started on that journey.
Of course, it’s not really in the public sector’s interest for real transformation to happen at a speed.
How can Australia improve on digital governance?
Here are just three things that will make a difference: know where you are going and measure progress, don’t boil the ocean, and find an advocate.
As Lewis Carroll said, ‘if you don’t know where you are going, any path will get you there.’ Government too needs to work out where it is going and put some measures in place, so progress can be tracked. Setting a target such as all government forms being completed and returned online by 2021 or 50% of all citizens interacting with government having a digital identity are clear, measurable targets where success or failure can be self-evident.
While you need the overarching goal to be clear and bold, you don’t need big projects to reach it. You can get there with hundreds of small ones. You can boil the ocean, but one bucket at a time.
Currently there is no shortage of examples of departments embarking on projects that do not contribute to or align with broader objectives. There is too much system implementation not enough transformation, or too many with excuses on why it’s hard, delivering activity without effect.
We need fewer grandiose and expensive programs supported by obfuscating reports on the level of activity. We need a stretched, realistic and achievable vision with measurable progress along a pathway, and accountable performance in achieving change.
Someone has to own transformation and drive it, demanding outcomes not activity. Transformation of any form needs a dogged, influential leader with the courage, persistence and influence to drive forward a step at a time. It doesn’t have to be a politician, but it could be. We don’t need more of the same.
With all the money spent, for all the slide decks, and for all the transformation managers we seem to have so little transformation. Maybe it is time for a change of approach.
