Digital techs all the right boxes

BRAD HOWARTH
FEBRUARY 5, 2019
Victor Dominello is proud of his driver’s licence. Not the fact that he has one, but that the licence is in the form of an app on his mobile phone.
The NSW government began its trial of digital driver’s licences in Dubbo and Sydney’s eastern beachside suburbs in 2018, ahead of a broader rollout in 2019. For Dominello, NSW’s Minister for Finance, Services and Property, it is a high-visibility example of digital technology he believes will revolutionise interaction between the government and the public.
“Transformation means managing in real time for the citizens, with an immediacy we’ve never seen before,” he says. “It changes lives quicker than anything else I can think of inside government.”
Not all initiatives are as technically sophisticated as the digital ­licence. Dominello says NSW has also enjoyed a great response to its FuelCheck app, which provides consumers with real-time information on fuel pricing.
“If we can harness all this information in real time and then give it back to a citizen so they can make informed choices, that has got to be good, not just for the citizen but for our economy, because that drives further competition and further innovation,” he says.
Across Australia today, numerous federal, state and local government agencies are working on creating the digital apps and services of tomorrow.
According to Ellen Derrick, the national leader for public sector and public policy at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, these efforts don’t always need to be government-led.
“There is a really large opportunity for government to curate the environment and the ecosystem and make the interactions between the public, private sector, NGOs, and higher education come together,” Derrick says.
“Government can’t solve all of the service-delivery challenges on their own, so it’s working through what that ecosystem needs to come together to deliver the really broad set of services that the public requires.”
Critical to this process is data, something that governments have plenty of but which has often been inaccessible.
“Understanding citizen data and the opportunity and potential for that to improve service delivery is where we really see the opportunity for the public sector,” Derrick says.
Freeing up that data responsibly for public benefit is a key role for Deb Anton, Australia’s interim National Data Commissioner. Her work builds on the vision outlined in the federal government’s 2015 Public Data Policy Statement, which asserted its commitment to open data and exhorted public agencies to make that information available under appropriate conditions.
Anton is driving development of a data sharing-and-release framework, which aims to break down barriers that prevent efficient use and reuse of public data.
“We need to lean into that but in a way that maintains trust and privacy and deals with the concerns citizens have,” she says.
Anton says numerous projects already demonstrate the power of data sharing, such as one at CSIRO’s Data61 that is investigating the link between powerlines and the spread of bushfires.
“A lot of what’s possible here is as a result of advances in technology and analytics, so government needs to partner to use that to good effect,” Anton says.
The head of business development and commercialisation at Data61’s government and stakeholder relations team, Cheryl ­George, says the research group is working on projects that use data to create improved government services, from streamlining processes such as applying to open a cafe through to the creation of a spatial-mapping platform integrating 10,000 open-data sets from all layers of government.
“Our focus is on how we can deliver genuine impact for the community,” George says.
Another area of intense activity relates to the creation of a road map for the nation’s use of artificial intelligence. “There is an opportunity around a proactive government stance on the use of AI,” she says. “We’re working on an ethics framework to provide some shared principles on how the government and community think about the use of AI in government-service delivery and platforms.
“But definitely a part of what we’re talking about here is how you build out those next generation of services where they will interact with things like machine learning, and how do you make sure they are built from the start with ethics in mind.”
‘The Singapore government is famed for its use of technology to deliver electronic services to citizens’
There are governments elsewhere that have already moved further ahead, such as Singapore.
Chia Wee Boon has worked on numerous digital projects for the Singapore government in his role as CEO at NCS Group, including its digital national tax system. He says many lessons have been learnt regarding the factors that make for a successful digital government service delivery.
“The Singapore government is famed for its use of technology to deliver electronic services to citizens,” Chia says. “Digital systems and the use of digital technologies are meant to serve human beings, so if you get this wrong, downstream there will obviously potentially be a negative impact.”
Chia says citizen engagement is also important in driving the adoption of digital government services.
“You cannot assume that you put something online and people will go to it like bees to honey,” Chia says. “So there needs to be effort in change management, to educate users both new and old to a new way of doing things.”
Ultimately, Chia says the digital journey for government is one that never ends, but this is no reason for any agency not to start sooner rather than later.
“There will always be a first step, and then constant enhancements along the way,” Chia says. “But the most important thing is the recognition that something needs to be done.”