NSW clarifies future digital strategy

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Transparent procurement choices are influenced by mobility, cyber-security planning, open data, and cloud-data centre integration.

The NSW government is laying the groundwork for digital engagement under moves to create a more open, transparent and tech-savvy administration. The state’s Digital + 2016 strategy reinforces support for open data, cloud and data centre integration, mobile apps, and staying sharp to cyber-security challenges.

This year’s digital strategy reframes a new approach to innovation, according to the Minister for Innovation and Better Regulation, Victor Dominello. The state’s digital roadmap sees a broader outreach with industry, the research sector, and communities.

Among the timelines, 70 per cent of government transactions will go online by 2019. Digital licenses and personalised online customer services are being fast-tracked.

Open government

Focus on transparency and collaboration requires agencies to publish their open data plans. Later this year, agencies are expected to start publishing their open government initiatives. 

The mantra of open government is complemented by highly-interactive customer dashboards and more direct community engagement using social media and mobile apps.

Moves are underway to consolidate a register of data assets and information-sharing across and between agencies. This intra-government initiative is led by the Data Analytics Centre (DAC). Over the next two years, published open data reports become available in machine-readable format. There’re planned integration points between OpenGov NSW, Data NSW, and the Digital State Archive.

The state’s open data initiated is supported by the Data Sharing (Government Sector) Bill 2015 that was passed by the NSW Parliament. This proposed reform streamlines data sharing across agencies and supports the work of the NSW Data Analytics Centre.

A revamped customer dashboard enables agencies to measure and report on customer engagement and the performance benchmarks involving access and information-sharing arrangements. 

The goal is to promote a “culture of accountability” and sharing information. This taps into fully-integrated snapshots of real-time data in an inter-connected environment.

Cyber-security

The state’s cyber-security strategy takes a “risk-management” approach to protecting assets and infrastructure. Closer state-federal collaboration is on the cards, together with forward-planning around disaster recovery.

Under privacy guidelines, government-held data will be protected using the right classifications, labelling arrangements and an acknowledgement of international standards.

Transparent procurement

There’s a “redesign” of NSW’s procurement strategy. The focus is on probity and accreditation. This foreshadows publishing procurement data in the open domain. Suppliers are able to contest procurement decisions, where more clarity is sought by the industry.

Procurement decisions leverage existing contracts and engaging non-government organisations. A fully-contestable supply market leverages consumption-based or as-a-service purchasing models.

Cloud and data centre integration

By 2017, more agencies are expected to finalise their full-scale migration to GovDC. This is NSW’s first data centre and cloud environment that’s designed specifically to meet the needs of public sector organisations. 

So far, agencies have migrated their on-premise ERP and human capital management data centres to the two dedicated government-run data centres. 

Services offered by the government data centres leverage the more cost-effective as-a-service and on-demand models. These are managed either through the GovDC Marketplace or GovDC sites.