Corporate Plan 2021–22

This DTA Corporate Plan 2021–22 covers the period 2021–22 to 2024–25, as required under paragraph 35 (1)(b) of the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013.

Foreword from the Chief Executive Officer

The ongoing health and economic challenges created by COVID-19 have seen the Australian Government respond in unprecedented terms: in the speed, scale and scope of its support. Protecting the livelihoods of all Australians throughout the pandemic has required governments across all levels to be more connected and digital solutions and technological innovations have been employed to overcome past barriers and deliver support more effectively than ever before.

Although COVID-19 has accelerated the digital journey for many of us, the Australian Government has embarked on an ambitious plan to build on this transition. As part of its Digital Economy Strategy, the government is seeking to further embed digital technology and solutions to deliver a modern and digital economy to drive Australia's future prosperity. The government will have a central role in shaping this journey through: the digital investments it makes and the regulations it puts in place to support growth and prosperity; how it builds capabilities through its support of emerging technologies; and how it leads ambitions through collaboration and strategic investments across the economy.

The Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) will play a leading role in the plan.

To help deliver on its ambition, the government has implemented significant changes to strengthen the DTA’s mandate. The DTA has changed from a focus on delivering digital and ICT projects to being a trusted advisor to government on strategic planning, investment, contestability and assurance. As the government’s Chief Digital Advisor from 1 July 2021, the DTA is responsible for providing strategic and policy leadership on whole-of-government and shared information and communications technology (ICT) investments and digital service delivery. The DTA will continue to manage whole-of-government digital procurement to simplify processes for government agencies, reduce costs and generate reuse opportunities across government. We will also continue to lead the development, delivery and monitoring of whole-of-government strategies, policies and standards. 

The repositioning of the DTA within the Prime Minister's portfolio will provide greater visibility across the policy process, supporting the DTA to lead whole-of-government advice on the prioritisation of digital and ICT-enabled investments, including making recommendations to prioritise between contested proposals. Our position within a central agency will accelerate our efforts to identify opportunities for reuse and increased interoperability across government to further improve the way in which services are delivered. The DTA will also remain engaged throughout a project's entire life cycle, including assuring a project's benefits remain on track. This is an opportunity for the DTA to accelerate digital transformation by ensuring the digital and ICT strategies, policies and standards are aligned throughout the entire policy process.

As part of this new mandate, some delivery functions will move from the DTA to relevant departments, while key investment oversight and assurance functions will relocate into DTA from the Department of Finance. We are restructuring our workforce, resources and capability to align with this new strategic leadership role, and as the year progresses, we will assess lessons learned and continue to refine and embed our new ways of operating.

Our work will be informed by insights from our 2021 Digital Review and assessment of government digital and ICT investments over the past 5 years, as well as our ongoing cooperation with stakeholders across government, industry and academia.

The 2021–22 financial year marks a key turning point for the DTA and a significant vote of confidence in the DTA's ability to take on this strategic leadership role.

Our Corporate Plan 2021–22 sets a pathway for how we are reorganising the way we operate and how we can most effectively support the Minister for Employment, Workforce, Skills, Small and Family Business, the Prime Minister and the Cabinet.

As the Acting Chief Executive Officer, I feel privileged to be able to lead this change and reposition the DTA to support the government to achieve its vision for Australia to be a leading digital economy and society by 2030 and drive the government's digital transformation that delivers benefits to all Australians.

Peter Alexander
Acting Chief Executive Officer
Digital Transformation Agency

Introduction

Statement of preparation

I, Peter Alexander, as the accountable authority of the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA), present the 2021–22 DTA corporate plan, which covers the period 2021–22 to 2024–25, as required under paragraph 35 (1)(b) of the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability Act 2013 (PGPA Act).

Peter Alexander
Acting Chief Executive Officer
26 August 2021

Mission

Driving and securing the Australian Government’s investment in Australia’s digital future.

Purpose

Provide strategic and policy leadership and investment advice and oversight to drive government digital transformation that delivers benefits to all Australians.

Priorities

To achieve our purpose, we will focus on 2 strategic priority areas over the next 4 years:

1. Direction setting

• We are a trusted advisor on digital and ICT investment decisions.
• We drive strategic whole-of-government digital policy and advice.

2. Implementation oversight

• We ensure alignment to digital strategies and priorities.
• We simplify digital procurement to reduce costs and increase reuse.

We will review our performance and achievements against the key activities identified for each priority area in the annual performance statement published in our annual report.

Operating context

The Australian Government is committed to delivering world-leading digital services that make it easy for people and businesses to deal with government. The Government's ambitious agenda includes Australia becoming one of the top 3 digital governments in the world by 2025, and becoming a leading digital economy by 2030, for the benefit of all Australians, and having the foundations to retain this position into the future.

Environment

Our operating environment is complex and fluid, with technological change creating constant opportunities to rethink how decisions about digital and ICT investment are made, and how government services are designed and delivered. Digital disruption, increased demand and the global pandemic have accelerated digital adoption by consumers, with the government responding to make many more services available online.

Digital has been integral to the Australian Government's response to COVID-19. This has highlighted what is possible and emphasised the importance of prioritising digital isolation to meet the needs and expectations of Australians, and support our economic recovery.

The path forward requires high levels of coordination and collaboration across government and industry. We will continue to work effectively across government and industry to understand the operating environment, identify opportunities for improvement, set directions and standards, and provide strategic leadership to deliver the government's digital transformation agenda.

Capability

We are a small executive agency, and our people have skills in whole-of-government digital policy, strategy, architecture and capability, as well as data privacy, security and transparency. Our workforce planning helps us build a responsive future agency workforce aligning with our purpose, operating context, risks and anticipated changes in our operating environment and technology.

Risk oversight and management

Our work practices and regular, open and transparent communication with stakeholders enables us to quickly identify, understand and respond risk.

We manage risk in line with our Enterprise Risk Framework, the AS/NZS 31000:2018 Risk management – Guidelines, as well as the Commonwealth Risk Management Guidelines.

We have efficient and effective controls in place to anticipate and manage risk and drive organisational performance. We actively manage risks continually across our organisation with oversight provided at our Executive Board meetings. We encourage staff to engage with risk appropriately.

Our strategic risks and mitigating strategies are summarised below.

STRATEGIC RISK	MITIGATING STRATEGIES
We are unable to provide advice, insights and assurance on whole-of-government digital and ICT investments.	Adequately resourced Digital Investment team informed by high quality and relevant policy guidance.
We are unable to lead whole-of-government strategies and policies to drive the government's agenda.	Formal and informal stakeholder engagement including forums such as the Secretaries Digital Committee.
We are unable to deliver on our funded priorities.	Executive Board oversight of branch business planning and budgets.
We are unable to enlist the support of our stakeholders to achieve shared outcomes.	Engagement strategy that incorporates industry, state/territory, citizen and Commonwealth stakeholders.
We are unable to attract, retain and develop our people.	Workforce Plan Attraction and Retention Strategy Flexible and remote working

Cooperation

We work most closely with Australian Government agencies. We also work with state, territory and international governments, advisory and oversight bodies as well as industry and academia, and people who use government services.

We cooperate effectively with our stakeholders across government and industry to understand the operating environment, identify challenges and opportunities for improvement, and provide trusted advice to government.

Performance

We have identified several key activities for our strategic priority areas and developed initial performance measures to assess our performance in achieving our purpose.

As we embed the recent changes to our mandate and functions, we will mature our performance measures into a robust performance measurement framework to reflect more fully our output, quality and efficiency, and impact.

With the shift in our focus to a more strategic and advisory role, and away from delivery, we recognise the benefit (impact) will often delivered by other agencies.

We have therefore identified DTA's contribution in the following performance measures.

As we refine how we measure our performance, we will update our plan accordingly.

 

Key activities

	2021–22	2022–23	2023–24	2024–25
1.1 Provide strategic and policy leadership on whole-of-government and shared ICT investments and digital service delivery:
• provide ongoing, high-quality advice on digital/ICT direction, standards, policy and strategic settings	✓	✓	✓	✓
• share insights with government from reviews of current digital and ICT capability and maturity, the efficacy of investment over the past 5 years, and audit of data holdings (Note – reviews completed biennially)	✓		✓
• refresh and monitor progress of Digital Transformation Strategy	✓	✓	✓	✓
• complete digital identity legislation, frameworks and strategy	✓	✓
• provide oversight and assure on myGov enhancements	✓	✓	✓	✓
• contribute to cyber hubs pilot to strengthen defences against threats to government IT	✓
• advise on building digital and ICT capability across the Australian Public Service (APS).	✓	✓	✓	✓
1.2 Develop, deliver and monitor whole-of-government strategies, policies and standards for digital and ICT investments, including ICT procurement:
• provide architecture advice to government for incoming proposals and programs	✓	✓	✓	✓
• embed and refine whole-of-government architecture	✓	✓	✓	✓
• design contestability standards for assessing and evaluating digital and ICT proposals	✓
• provide an ongoing whole-of-government, risk-based view of data and hosting arrangements	✓	✓	✓	✓
• develop and maintain hosting framework	✓	✓	✓	✓
• develop and maintain reuse policy with interventions across the investment life cycle.	✓

Performance measures – direction setting

Performance measure for 1.1 and 1.2	Targets 2021–22
Quality of DTA's strategic and policy leadership demonstrably supports the setting of the direction for whole-of-government major digital and ICT projects	No target*
DTA contributions: • we provide timely and useful insights that inform whole-of-government digital and ICT decisions, strategy and policy • we provide well-informed leadership and quality advice on standards, policy and strategy settings for government digital transformation • our advice, standards and frameworks enhance the effectiveness and sustainability of major digital and ICT projects.
Data source: DTA records, project proposals reviewed, strategy and policy developed Methodology: DTA analysis and stakeholder feedback

* We are developing an appropriate methodology for assessing targets. We will update our corporate plan in 6 months. This will include setting appropriate targets (qualitative and quantitative) where reasonably practicable.

 

 

Key activities

	2021–22	2022–23	2023–24	2024–25
2.1 Provide advice to the Minister on whole-of-government and shared digital and ICT investment proposals:
• establish the investment prioritisation framework and inform investment advice to government	✓	✓	✓	✓
• report on digital and ICT project and portfolio performance.	✓	✓	✓	✓
2.2 Manage strategic coordination and oversight functions for digital and ICT investment across the project life cycle, including providing advice on whole-of-government reuse opportunities:
• manage the ICT investment approval process for major digital and ICT investment proposals	✓	✓	✓	✓
• analyse high-priority and 'at-risk' projects to support whole-of-government oversight	✓	✓	✓	✓
• implement contestability standards for assessing and evaluating digital and ICT proposals	✓
• design assurance framework incorporating criteria to implement a risk-based triage approach to assurance	✓	✓	✓	✓
• work in partnership with the Secretaries' Digital Committee, Digital Leadership Committee and CIO Forum to ensure strong support for digital and ICT governance.	✓	✓	✓	✓
2.3 Manage whole-of-government digital procurement to simplify processes for government agencies, reduce costs and generate reuse opportunities:
• complete sourcing review	✓
• manage whole-of-government digital and ICT sourcing deals	✓	✓	✓	✓
• manage and refresh digital and ICT marketplaces and panels.	✓	✓	✓	✓

Performance measures – implementation oversight

Performance measure for 2.1, 2.2 and 2.3	Targets 2021–22
Parliament and agencies have confidence in the quality of advice, coordination and assurance we provide. We complete specific projects within identified timeframes.		No target*
DTA contributions: • we provide timely and useful analysis and advice to inform, prioritise and improve whole-of-government and shared digital and ICT investment • we effectively manage the ICT investment approval process and check compliance with standards, policy and strategic settings • we provide timely and useful digital procurement advice and effectively manage marketplaces, panels and whole-of-government sourcing arrangements.
Data source: DTA records, project proposals reviewed, strategy and policy developed Methodology: DTA analysis and stakeholder feedback

* We are developing an appropriate methodology for assessing targets. We will update our corporate plan in 6 months. This will include setting appropriate targets (qualitative and quantitative) where reasonably practicable.

Appendix A: Machinery of government changes

Following our move to the Prime Minister and Cabinet portfolio in April 2021, several changes were agreed by the Prime Minister to align the DTA with our new mandate.

These changes will enable us to focus on our core policy responsibilities regarding ICT and digital strategy, investment and assurance across the APS.

The machinery of government changes effective 5 July 2021 are:

• ICT Investment Approval Process – from the Department of Finance to DTA
• Whole of Government Procurement of Major Office Machines – from the Department of Finance to DTA
• Digital Identity (integrated delivery management) – from DTA to Services Australia and the Australian Taxation Office
• myGov Enhancement (integrated delivery management) – from DTA to Services Australia
• australia.gov.au – from DTA to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (determining content), and Services Australia (delivery)
• Government Domain Names – from DTA to the Department of Finance
• National Map – from DTA to Geoscience Australia
• data.gov.au – from DTA to the Australian Bureau of Statistics
• COVIDSafe app – from DTA to the Department of Health
• Australian Government Style Manual – from DTA to the Australian Public Service Commission
• Digital Profession – from DTA to the Australian Public Service Commission.

Machinery of government changes take time to implement and finalise. We intend to report back to the Prime Minister on our progress against all changes by mid-September 2021.

Appendix B: Table of requirements

The corporate plan has been prepared in accordance with the requirements of:

• subsection 35(1) of the PGPA Act; and
• the PGPA Rule 2014.

This table details the requirements met by the DTA's corporate plan and the page reference(s) for each requirement.

Requirement

Introduction - Statement of preparation - the reporting period for which the plan is prepared - the reporting periods covered by the plan

Purpose

Key activities

Operating context - Environment - Capability - Risk oversight and management - Cooperation

Performance