e-Government in Australia

Australia, like Canada is considered in the forefront of e-Government development and ICT usage.

Both governments having extensively deployed Land Information Systems LIS (80’s & 90’s) to integrate diverse data sets, integrate e-government services, e.g. land registration, conveyance, valuation, and the land cadastre, in order to answer spatially oriented questions that prevail on government.

Countries that have made extensive use of land information systems and spatial technologies like geographic information systems (GIS) have typically gone on to develop advanced e-government and e-services, e.g. Singapore, Canada and the USA.

However, like Switzerland, Australia has a Federal system of Government which affords a high degree of autonomy to State Governments and some Territories. This makes it difficult to implement ‘whole-of-government’ e-government initiatives.

Whilst the Federal Government manages the normal affairs of a nation, defense, foreign affairs, etc., the interlinking between Federal and State Government in the life events of Australian citizens can become highly complicated and is subject to change. For example, whilst formal authority over primary and secondary education falls to the States, in practice most of the funding comes from the Federal Government. Making any e-Government service process span more than one jurisdiction and requiring extensive interoperability.

State Government’s are responsible for the registration of Births, Deaths and Marriages, yet there is a whole-of-government requirement to use the information, e.g. for the national social security system (Welfare System), again requiring interoperability of many e-Government e-services. As a result each State and Territory has developed their own interpretation of e-government. For example, each State and Territory has a well developed portal through which the States e-Government services can be delivered. These often link through to local government and municipality web sites within the States concerned. These various federated websites are being drawn together through the main Federal Government portal www.australia.gov.au/ similar to the approach taken in the UK.

The Australian e-Government portal is currently based on a ‘life events’ design and again, like the UK e-Government portal, provides access to other important sector specific portals, e.g. the Business Entry Point www.business.gov.au.

In the Investing for Growth policy statement released in 1997, the Prime Minister (John Howard) announced a policy framework for growth and dynamism in the Australian economy in which he set a target for all Federal Agencies to have all appropriate services online by 2001. The Government Online Strategy (2000) helped guide and assist Federal Departments meet this target.

In this respect the Australian States and the Federal Government managed to complete this first phase of e-government and to put the majority of their e-Government services online by the end of 2001. In addition, take-up was comparatively good with the various e-Government services being used with the Australian’s typical enthusiasm for the early adoption of technology in all its forms.

This has provided State and Federal Governments with greater efficiency and reach; and for the users of services – greater consistency, speed of transaction and time savings and is of particular benefit to the remote communities dotted across the vast continent of Australia where access is available. However, it has further exposed the complexity of the Australian system of governments and still poses great obstacles for the provision of integrated e-Government services across government boundaries and jurisdictions.

This led to Australia being highly placed in global e-Government rankings in 2002.

In 2001 the Prime Minister set the scene for a more connected government when he spoke of:

“[living] in an increasingly complex and interdependent environment … is no doubt that, in recent years, issues have more consistently reached across traditional portfolio boundaries. This trend will continue...

...Senior Public Servants and their staff will need to find ways to minimize any limitations associated with what could be described as the ‘silo effect’. A methodology for rapid and effective integration of work units from traditional unrelated departments will need to be further refined to achieve broader government objectives” In 2002 (under the Howard Administration) the Federal Government of Australia published its e-government strategy – Better Services, Better Government - which set out to take a whole-of-government approach establishing a broad agenda for the second phase of e-government development in Australia.

Fundamental to the strategy was the need to establish a shared commitment, collaboration and agreed standards between agencies (at least at the Federal level) to meet six key objectives:

1. Achieve greater efficiency and a return on investment – recognizing the need to undertake more sophisticated analysis including, Internal Rate of Return IRR, Cost Benefit Analysis CBA, and Econometric Modeling to assess broader socio-economic benefits, etc.
2. Ensure convenient access to government services and information – recognizing the importance of the online channel/s and the fact that online cannot simply be overlaid on existing service delivery channels, the need to integrate multiple service delivery channels and the need to develop more advanced discovery tools, e.g. region and life events; service types, customer and subject groups, etc.
3. Deliver e-Government services that are responsive to client needs – establishing the need to develop an interoperability framework to help agencies bundle related multi-agency services together as a single service to more closely serve customer requirements, provide the opportunity to reduce costs further and avoid duplication, e.g. supply chain management and procurement.
4. Integrate related services – establishing the need to develop a common service delivery architecture and associated governance to enable flexible and innovative design of transactional components that are scalable in size, capacity and functionality to meet constantly changing business and technical requirements (Agile). This also recognized the need to develop a coherent cross-agency investment strategy to overcome the many issues associated with financial justification for collaborative multi-agency services where the costs and benefits are not always aligned with agency investment and timeframes.
5. Build user trust and confidence – establishing the need to further develop the website standards (minimum) set out in the earlier Government Online Strategy 2000 to maximize user confidence and ease of use for ever more sophisticated government services. (Australia had made significant progress on standardizing government related metadata through its AGLS and spatial metadata initiatives).

   Other important areas of standardization identified as requiring effort were in the areas of accessibility, authentication and e-permanence.

6. Enhance closer citizen engagement – the report focused on aspects of e-democracy to engage citizens in the process of government (at least at the Federal Level) e.g. petitioning, consultation (on draft policy), voting – that is strengthening the relationship between government and its citizens (Gov 2.0).

Responsibility for coordinating whole-of-government multi-agency service collaboration across agencies (at the Federal Level) and initiating key cross-agency projects, e.g. resolving the funding and interoperability issues, was assigned to the newly formed Information Management Strategy Committee.

The IMSC being composed of Secretaries and CEOs from key departments and agencies.

Reporting to the IMSC is the Chief Information Officer (CIO) Committee responsible for organizing the development work associated with IMSC edicts, e.g. developing strategic architectures, standards and proposals for shared services. The Federal government also acted as an exemplar for State and Territory initiatives which were coordinated through the Online Council – the main forum for Federal, State and Local governments to exchange ideas and knowledge, standards, etc.

As has been seen elsewhere in the development of Australia’s e-strategies – the need to rely on a consensus between Federal and State jurisdictions remains a constant issue (inter and intra-political relationships universally proving a more difficult challenge than the relationship with citizenry, business and resolving technical issues) in the development of a truly whole-of-government approach, i.e. Federal, State and Local.

This led to the following statement by the Special Minister of State in the forward to Australia’s 2006 e-Government Strategy – Responsive Government: A New Service Agenda that concluded:

“Despite best efforts, the Australian Government’s application of information and communication technology (ICT) to enable the better delivery of services and better government administration – ‘e-Government’ – has been at times ad hoc and uncoordinated.”

The 2006 strategy is important in a number of ways – most significant is its reference to government reform:

“e-Government is about more than just applying ICT to government processes. It is about applying ICT to reform and improve government processes. Merely applying ICT to something does not make it better. But applying ICT, and reforming the accompanying business processes does.”

Although, this statement may seem trite – it is a paradigm shift in thinking that has proved very difficult to instantiate in many countries.

As a result considerable savings have been sacrificed and true benefits un-realized. Cooperation and sharing can, once established, prove a catalyst to such a paradigm shift. On the face of it, the 2006 strategy appears simplistic – the achievement of connected and responsive government by 2010, through four main activity areas:

1. Meeting user’s needs
2. Establishing connected service delivery
3. Achieving value for money, and
4. Enhancing public sector capability

However, this simplicity belies a much more substantial e-Government strategy – which crystallizes the four most important aspects (at the time) into an ambitious action plan with some enhancement of its governance arrangements.

One could consider this as a third phase in the development (or rather evolution) of Australia’s e-Government program.

Responsibility for delivering the strategy remains with the Special Minister of State, who through the newly formed Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO – established in 2004) will oversee and coordinate implementation of the strategy and track progress towards the 2010 target in consultation with the IMSC, CIOC and the States and Territories through the offices of the Online and Communications Council OCC to ensure a fully national approach.

The main difference in the governance arrangements is the extra clout afforded to the delivery vehicle AGIMO resulting from its status (Special Minister of State) and its clear link to funding (including much State funding) due to its location within the Department of Finance and Deregulation.

The 2006 e-government strategy paints, possibly for the first time, a more mature and far-reaching vision of e-enabled government reform; introducing important paradigm shifts in thinking across all four areas of action.

In each of the four areas it succeeds in establishing a practical yet radical set of actions designed to foster whole-of-government working.

Meeting user’s needs – introduces the somewhat radical notion that government will not only match private sector best practice but embed their systems and services in the natural systems being used by business.

Government services are to be widely available through participating private sector partners.

Further, government services are to be quick and convenient offering both online, voice-based and other modes of service delivery; ‘once-only’ authentication, self management of personal data, and the burden of paperwork will be dramatically reduced.

Fully functional personal accounts will be made available.

Connected service delivery – commits the government to match the private sector best practice for electronic interactions; re-engineer its business processes, removing poorly designed, redundant processes, reduce duplication and combine processes to operate in a collaborative, connected manner rather than in isolation from each other.

Processes should be able to be re-deployed quickly to other sites; government’s ability to respond to emergencies is to be enhanced through multi-agency collaboration, process integration and information sharing and multi-agency services will seamlessly track through different stages that accompany the events that influence citizens and businesses – people and private sector providers will be able to package together different services from different agencies without the need to understand the complex structure of government that underlies it.

The strategy further commits to providing a system architecture blueprint based on a Service Oriented Architecture SOA model, greater use of Open Software, Process re-engineering compliant with the Management Advisory Committee Report – Connecting Government: Whole-of-Government Responses to Australia’s Priority Challenges 2004, and the Access and Distribution Strategy for Australian Government Services report of 2006. Value for money – ICT investments are to be well planned and managed – delivering the responsiveness, agility, benefits, outcomes and value for money required of government services and are to be subject to independent Gateway Reviews.

Public sector capability – the public sector is to be recognized as an exemplar in capability development – with a virtuous circle between capability and implementation of the strategy, with each re-enforcing the other with capability and skills being enhanced as various aspects of the strategy are achieved.

Public sector skills deficiencies are to be identified and addressed in all areas – ICT skills and recruitment, ICT business practices, ICT procurement processes, knowledge management, project management and delivery and in accountability and legislative arrangements as they relate to e-service delivery.

Most importantly, it highlights the need to raise the level of information technology literacy amongst executives and senior executives – in order to understand the possibilities and approaches.

The strategy also highlights the need to extend further tele-working in the public sector to match the extensive use of tele-working in the Private Sector in Australia, full utilizing using the ICT capabilities available today.

Above all, the 2006 strategy provides a more harmonized approach to delivery of e-government that embraces technology, business and people in a dramatic (even radical) transformation of government.

In late 2007 a new (left of center) government took the reins in Australia – which coincided with the new Brown administration in the UK. Although Prime Minister Rudd is a staunch republican there is an apparent affinity (alignment) with the policy direction of the UK (at least in terms of e-government) and most particularly in terms of the new Gov 2.0 agenda.

Spending on ICT (Value for Money)Although there have been a number of previous reviews of ICT usage in the Government e.g. 2000 , 2002, as part of its commitment to ‘value for money’ just four months after taking office in December 2007, the new Rudd Administration approached the UK’s government efficiency expert Lord Gershon to review the Australian Government’s use of Information Technology for the Department of Finance and Deregulation.

The Australian ‘Gershon Review’ was completed in August 2008 and found that the Australian Public Service had weak governance at the whole-of-government level, inordinately high levels of agency autonomy (characterized by an ability to self-approve opt-ins to whole-of-government ICT arrangements), poor performance monitoring in ICT and inadequate focus on measuring benefits realization from ICT initiatives.

Gershon recommended a major program of both administrative reform, and cultural change from, a status quo where agency autonomy is an assumed part of the Australian Public Service – to be achieved through sustained leadership and drive at Ministerial and senior levels of management and measures to ensure the enablers of change (funding and suitably skilled human resources) are properly resourced.

In identifying some of the main drivers for ICT deployment in the Australian Public Sector Gershon ably showed the recursive nature of ICT – as both the catalyst for change and the impact of changes at the macro national and global level on ICT usage itself.

He cited:

His key recommendations covered the following six areas:

1. Governance – including the establishment of a Ministerial Committee on ICT responsible for the key whole-of-government ICT policies and overall strategic vision; the creation of a Secretaries’ ICT Governance Board SIGB to drive though the recommendations; and changes to the Agencies opt-out provisions such that they could only opt-out based on a genuine business need approved by the Ministerial Committee.
2. Capability – to improve agency capability to commission, manage and realize the benefits from ICT enabled initiatives through the implementation of a common methodology for assessing agency capabilities.
3. ICT Spend – included an increase in the proportion of agency ICT spend on developing new capability from an average of 23% to 30% of the total ICT spend ; reducing the ICT spend of of the 28 largest Federal Agencies (excluding Defense) by 15% p.a and smaller agencies with a 7.5% p.a. reduction; the creation of ICT review teams to help agencies achieve targets with impairing service delivery to citizens and businesses; and the re-investment of 50% of savings into improving ICT BAU.
4. Skills – included the creation of a whole-of-government ICT career structure for the Australian Public Service (APS), including training and professional development in key skills areas, e.g. SOA; develop an enlarged whole-of-government strategic ICT workforce with a commensurate reduction in the use of contractors.
5. Data Centers – included a whole-of-government approach to meeting future data center requirements over the ensuing 10-15 years.
6. Sustainable ICT – included the development of a whole-of-government sustainability plan to manage the governments ICT energy costs and carbon footprint.

In November 2008, the Rudd government accepted in full the recommendations proposed by Gershon and has subsequently gone on to identify some $540 million of savings to date. Of this they have earmarked a $55 million ICT Innovation fund (again in accord with the Gershon recommendations).

The recommendations are largely being implemented by AGIMO in its ICT Reform Program.

Interoperability (Connected Services)In terms of meeting the 2006 e-government strategies focus on ‘connected service delivery’ or whole-of-government operation the newly established AGIMO has gone on to develop a number of detailed implementation frameworks.

Most notable of these frameworks is an interoperability framework covering the business, information and technical interfaces between agencies. Thus it covers diverse aspects such as annual reporting, channel selection, e.g. for the disabled, content, e.g. branding, accessibility, etc., as well as the systems architecture, standards and tool development required for a Service Oriented Architecture SOA.

AGIMO has also published a raft of best practice checklists covering:

Collaboration across Jurisdictions In addition, the AGIMO has a National Collaboration Program Team which has developed an innovative but formal approach to the tricky area of cross-jurisdictional collaboration (Federal, State and Local) which includes guidelines, tools and templates – The National Collaboration Framework.

The framework sets out to address the fact that collaborative service agreements between agencies often failed because the rules of engagement could not be agreed and negotiations often stalled over such things as pricing, liability, indemnity, etc.

The approach provides a series of reusable agreements between Federal, State and Local jurisdictions and has five tiers:

Tier 1: Principles of Collaboration – setting out the principles/values for any initiative.

Tier 2: Statement of Intent – setting out the intent of collaborating agencies.

Tier 3: Collaborative Head Agreement – identifying re-usable parts for multiple initiatives.

Tier 4: Project Specific Agreement – relating to the project itself.

Tier 5: Collaborative Resource Kit – Guides and Templates to facilitate consistency.

Each tier deals with the five framework areas – Governance, Legal, Financial, Business Rules, and Technical Issues.

This comprehensive framework is designed to reduce duplication of effort across jurisdictions in the negotiation and maintenance of multi-agency agreements, offer shorter time-frames developing collaborative service agreements, improve consistency and hence customer experience across jurisdictions, reduce the risk of failure in politically sensitive areas such as privacy and security, and increase the focus on improving both the efficiency and effectiveness of the overall delivery of government services.

With the publication of Innovation: Powering Ideas (See Section Innovation, Research & Development), and the proactive stance of the Department of Finance and Deregulation’s AGIMO and its efforts to meet the 2006 e-government strategy and subsequent Gershon recommendations – cross jurisdictional activity has also markedly accelerated.

In August 2009 AGIMO published the National Information Sharing Strategy (NGISS) commissioned by Council of Australian Governments (COAG ) Online and Communication Council (OCC) – aimed at presenting a standardized approach to information sharing to support the delivery of government services, with the expectation that the NGISS can be used by all government portfolios at all levels of government.

Although a welcome, and much needed, contribution from COAG and purportedly predicated by The National Innovation Review, the Review of Australian Governments Use of ICT (2000 ) and sporting the new creative commons copyright notice; the strategy fails to capture the spirit prevailing in Australian Government at this time and is, as such, somewhat anachronistic – concentrating as it does on the government’s own use of information (albeit across jurisdictions) to the almost total exclusion of innovation and innovative use of government information as a national asset and public good.

This document, possibly illustrates, more than any other the cultural gap (relating to information as power versus the need to unlock information as an asset for socio-economic development and innovation) and is surprising when one considers that the Prime Minister chairs the Council. By contrast, the Federal Government through the Department of Finance and Deregulation (AGIMO is part of this Department) has moved quickly and enthusiastically to embrace Gov 2.0 as a whole-of-government initiative – fearing it was falling behind the UK and USA in this important area, although Australia has prime examples of individual agencies that have embraced the Gov.2.0 principles.

The Australian Government’s Spatial Data Access & Pricing Policy was one of the first significant countries in the world to publish and disseminate spatial data free of charge (2001). Likewise, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (like its UK equivalent the BBC) has created a pool of information made available through the Creative Commons License. Other Federal and State Agencies to have done so include the Australian Bureau of Statistics (Federal) and the NSW Public Service.

In June 2009 the Department of Finance and Deregulation established a Gov 2.0 taskforce under the chairmanship of Dr. Nicholas Gruen to explore the possibilities of Gov.2.0.

This group took an innovative approach from the start. Although not the first e-government trials the trials established by the Gov 2.0 taskforce (in conjunction with the OCC) were the first to take the form of a competition.

The competition offering major prizes for the innovative development of data mash-ups , using government data made available for the purpose under creative commons licenses (or similar). This resulted in some 82 entries – many of which were highly innovative and functional – providing valuable insight into what can be achieved by unlocking government data.

In addition, the Gov 2.0 taskforce held what it called Govhack sessions. Possibly, in the only example of its type in the world, the Australian government willingly opened up their data for people to ‘hack’ (under controlled conditions) bringing together web focused designers, developers and other experts to build web applications and mash-ups in a 24 hour period!

Again many innovative solutions (including APIs ) were developed in these sessions to inform the policy recommendations of the taskforce – which were published in December 2009.

Analysis

The Australian government’s greatest challenge is to successfully gain whole-of-government support and consistency of interpretation.

Despite the presence of peak forums for inter-jurisdictional exchange and consensus within COAG and its OCC; the somewhat anachronistic National Government Information Sharing Strategy NGISS – indicates that there is still a major obstacle to innovative government reform across the entire spectrum of Australian Government.

That said – Australian culture embraces a high level of inter-state rivalry on many fronts – sport, tourism, socio-economic development, etc., which if it could be harnessed as a force for government reform could propel Australia into the forefront of the e-Government Gov. 2.0 initiative world-wide.

Additionally, reforms to Federal Government funding for States and Territories has rationalized the number of Specific Purpose Payments to the States from over 90 to five with specific themes that address national objectives and providing an additional $7.1 billion over five years:

This may well provide the added incentive for States to be more proactive and forward thinking in meeting whole-of-government objectives and may provide the federal government with the necessary funding carrot for its e-service strategies.

Further, each SPP is associated with a National Agreement that contains the objectives, outcomes, outputs and performance indicators, and clarifies the roles and responsibilities that will guide the Commonwealth and States in the delivery of services across the relevant sectors.

COAG agreed to six new National Agreements – National Healthcare Agreement, National Education Agreement, National Agreement for Skills and Workforce Development, National Disability Agreement, National Affordable Housing Agreement, and the National Indigenous Reform Agreement.

Like the UK, the Australian government has also committed to providing universal access to all of Australia with high speed broadband access of 100 Mbs to 90% and the remainder to at least 10 Mbs - a fundamental tenet for successful e-Government service adoption and take-up.

The size of the country makes this a huge task – estimated to take 8 years and naturally crosses multiple jurisdictions. In 2009 the Australian government established the National Broadband Network Company NBN with a 51% stake by government and the remainder by the private sector and went out to tender for the first tranche ($4.7 billion of a $43 billion) of an 8 year roll-out of a national FTTH network.

However, the tender was abandoned in April on the basis of unacceptable bids amongst cries of ‘foul play’ – leading to a full audit of the tender process by the Australian National Audit Office ANAO. Findings Analysis

One of Australia’s key strength is the high level of innovative spatial development undertaken by the government (both State and Federal) since the 70’s. In addition, Australia has a long history of taking-up new technologies in the public, private and third sectors.

Its approach to Gov 2.0 sets it apart from most countries, including to some extent the UK, in that it is heavily empirical, e.g. Mashup Australia www.mashupaustralia.org/ and www.govhack.org/, although it is supported by CSIRO. The competitions showed the potential for entirely new e-Government services provided by the government or independent of government.

Australia benefits (from an infrastructure development perspective) from a high level of urbanization (though its cities cover very large geographical areas), however, the enormous physical size of Australia (and desert interior) still makes achieving universal access to high-speed broadband a major hurdle to overcome as does the fragmented and highly competitive telecom sector in Australia (still largely dominated by the Telstra owned infrastructure).

The intention is for NBN to develop and own the initial infrastructure (independent of Telstra, who are already seen as have a monopoly in the last mile copper connections) and for the government to sell off its stake in 5 years.

Difficulties with the tendering process (see previous section) and the fact that the ANAO is not due to report until mid 2010 could delay moving forward on this important program.

However, in the meantime Tasmania (home to the TIGER e-Government trials) has moved ahead with the commissioning of its NBN network through NBN Tasmania – a subsidiary of NBN Pty Limited. The cooperation of the States and Territories is important to establishing a new truly national high speed network and it is perhaps surprising that the SPP funding mechanism wasn’t used to help lubricate jurisdictional compliance.

The clear opportunity for Australia is to create a whole-of-government approach to e-Government and implement it – however, the States have always exercised their autonomy over infrastructure and socio-economic development since the inauguration of the Commonwealth of States (6) in 1901. Although trend is not destiny – it remains to be seen whether cooperation will be higher in terms of whole-of-government e-Government initiatives.

Despite this, Australia’s population is growing through high levels of immigration – each State is in itself a major regional socio-economic entity , which may justify an independent interpretation of the future of e-government in each State and emphasize the need for a more pragmatic approach to cross border transfer of information – similar to the EU.

Gov 2.0 is being enthusiastically pursued by left of center governments around the world, e.g. Rudd (Australia), Brown (UK) and Obama (US) as part of their e-Government agendas and the radical reform of government along more socially inclusive lines – a change of administration in any of these countries (not least in Australia) could threaten further expansion of this aspect of government reform.

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