Digital Review

The Digital Review delivered a baseline measurement of digital capability across the APS.

As announced by the Hon Stuart Robert MP, Minister for Employment, Workforce, Skills, Small and Family Business, in his speech to the Australian Information Industry Association on 3 December 2021. View the full Digital Review or see a summary of the findings below.

Summary of the Digital Review

In response to a recommendation from the Our Public Service, Our Future, Independent Review of the Australian Public Service led by David Thodey AO (the Thodey Review), the Digital Review was commissioned to catalogue, audit and assess agency digital and ICT maturity and capability.

The Digital Review surveyed 20 agencies, accounting for over 80% of government expenditure and collected upwards of 74,000 data points. It documented more than 350 critical systems, 75 critical data sets, 70 internal digital and ICT policies and strategies, 125 contracted vendors and alliances, and 65 shared platforms and services.

In providing a baseline of digital capability, the Digital Review has identified areas where the Australian Government is ahead of other organisations. This includes some, but not all, aspects of the 5 pillars of digital capability investigated by the Digital Review, such as:

• developing strategic alliances and partnerships to build capability
• change, supplier, and project management capabilities
• policy, particularly in developing technology strategies
• implementing effective processes and controls supporting the sustainment of digital and ICT capabilities
• acknowledging the value of data and service integration to the development of a single view of a stakeholder, although achieving this single view is a work in progress for many agencies.

The Digital Review has also identified areas of relative weakness, including areas which would benefit from greater focus to help achieve the 2025 goal such as:

• legacy technologies and technical debt-constraining transformation
• inconsistency of agency practices for collecting, managing, and reporting information about their digital and ICT estates
• inconsistency in tracking benefits realisation for investments
• insufficient resourcing and investment to ensure effective delivery and sustainment of capability, and limited whole-of-government coordination to enable focused intervention to fill gaps
• lack of a consistent and interoperable approach across government to manage the delivery and sustainment of digital and ICT capabilities
• gaps in SES leadership knowledge and experience on how to cultivate and embed transformation change
• inadequate platforms to support cross-agency collaboration, data and information sharing, and digital and ICT capability delivery.