Over the last year, the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) has busily researched, consulted and co-designed the new Digital Experience Policy, with experts and practitioners from across government, industry and peak bodies.

Now available to explore on digital.gov.au, the policy will mandate standards for how government designs and delivers its digital services, meets user expectations and needs, and measures performance for continuous improvement.

Chris Fechner, CEO of the DTA, said the policy introduces important, common criteria for government agencies who deliver digital services.

'The Digital Experience Policy aims to elevate and humanise digital interactions, ensuring every touchpoint with government is seamless and meaningful for all people and businesses,' said Mr Fechner.

The policy's goals are further supported by the introduction of 3 new standards, alongside the recently refreshed Digital Service Standard.

The Digital Inclusion Standard ensures the people who need government’s services most aren’t left behind. 

The Digital Access Standard promotes reuse to ensure services are easy to discover and seamless to access. 

Finally, the Digital Performance Standard requires agencies to monitor, report and improve the quality of their digital services.

The purpose of a digital experience policy

Over the last decade, the range of digital services offered by the Australian Government have expanded into a complex network of over 600 active government websites. This creates, at times, an inconsistent or confusing experience for users.

We are renewing focus on ensuring government's digital services are more cohesive and inclusive.

The Digital Experience Policy sets out to standardise how government agencies approach the design and delivery of their digital services. It addresses many recommendations from the myGov User Audit and is a significant early outcome of the Data and Digital Government Strategy's 2030 vision to ‘deliver simple, secure and connected public services for all people and business’. 

To develop both the policy and its family of standards, the DTA drew upon extensive research into best practices, design principles, accessibility and inclusion strategies, and measurement approaches. Co-design activities included user research, workshops with the Australian Public Service, industry and peak bodies, and a measurement pilot. 

Putting the policy to work

The Digital Experience Policy comes into effect from 1 January 2025, while each standard has its own phased implementation to help agencies apply them. You can explore the details at digital.gov.au/experiencepolicy.

The policy and standards are valuable tools which will help agencies align to the Data and Digital Government Strategy. The good news is that much of their criteria can be fulfilled by applying careful consideration at the start of a project and adopting a robust service design process.

Some of those actions include:

• setting goals and measurable outcomes early
• considering whether or not a new service is needed
• consulting a diverse range of impacted stakeholders
• giving consideration to the users of the service
• building for interoperability and reuse
• writing content to comply with the Australian Government Style Manual
• measuring performance to improve service quality

The best way to make sure your digital service complies with the policy is to become familiar with its advice and take advantage of the accompanying digital toolkit, all of which can be found at digital.gov.au/experiencepolicy.