I have a strong interest in digital transformation with 30 years experience working in financial services leading large scale and complex transformation programs that lead to better outcomes for customers.

I’m looking forward to bringing my skills and experience — and my passion — to this role to help to improve services to benefit all Australians and work with my colleagues across government.

I’ve spent the past couple of weeks on a pathway of discovery about what the DTA is working on and where things are at.

There’s still plenty of listening and learning for me to do but I would like to take this opportunity to highlight some of the important work the DTA has been doing across its oversight, policy and delivery roles, and some of our priorities going forward.

Last week we completed the machinery-of-government process to move across new functions to the DTA from the Department of Finance.

This completes the establishment of the new DTA with the expanded set of roles and responsibilities agreed by the government in October 2016.

The government has also announced in the 2017-18 budget, that it will invest an additional $70.1 million over four years to drive the second stage of the digital transformation agenda.

This will support our work on shared government platforms, a new cybersecurity function, digital capability building across the public service and continued work on GovPass — our digital identity program.

This gives the DTA the funding and remit to deliver on the government’s digital transformation ambitions.

I would like to update the committee on some of the DTA’s more recent achievements since it was created seven months ago.

In terms of our oversight and advisory role, the DTA has provided extensive advice to government, departments and agencies on ICT projects through the 2017-18 Budget process.

This has been influential in reshaping projects to ensure they align with the government’s digital transformation agenda.

The new Digital Investment Management Office is in the process of undertaking a comprehensive review of government ICT projects.

It will give the government an overview of the costs, benefits, risks and status of all ICT projects and programs worth more than $10 million. This will form the baseline for continuing oversight of the government’s ICT portfolio.

We expect to report to government on the initial review findings by mid year.

In terms of our policy role, we have taken on responsibility for the ICT procurement review, which is on track to be delivered to the government by mid year.

We’ve also been doing user research and analysing business needs across government, in consultation with agencies, industry and key policy stakeholders for our work on a secure cloud strategy for government.

We expect to release the strategy later this year.

In terms of the DTA’s delivery work, the Digital Marketplace is continuing to grow and now has nearly 500 buyers, about 250 sellers and 133 contract opportunities on the site.

And small-to-medium enterprises are benefiting, having picked up 82 percent of the $15.3 million worth of contracts, to date.

We’re continuing to work with government agencies and private sector organisations on our GovPass program.

Our next phase of work on this project includes testing the technology we’ve been developing with selected users, and continuing to consult with our government and private sector stakeholders, including on privacy matters.

Last weekend we released a new look and feel for myGov. This is through our partnership work with the Department of Human Services.

We’ve made a number of improvements to the site, guided by our user research.

And we’ll be doing more user research over the coming weeks to see how this has changed the user experience. This will drive future updates to myGov.

This is a brief summary of some of what’s been achieved this year and what our next phase of work entails.

I would like to thank the committee for giving me this opportunity to provide my opening statement and welcome your questions.

I’d also like to thank Nerida O’Loughlin for her leadership during this transition.

And I ask that you give me some allowance for my first appearance at estimates and permit me to defer questions to my senior executive.