By Lilia Guan

 

This week AGMIO released its draft of Australia's ICT strategic vision report, Gartner Government research director, Steve Bittinger (SB) answers Government News’ questions about the report and its “remarkably clear and simple structure”.

GN: What are the important points of the report?

 

SB: The report describes, at a comprehensive high level, how the overall objective of increasing productivity would be achieved by six strategic actions, which expand into 23 action programs.
It does not provide quantitative objectives, but suggests ways in which success could be measured.

 

GN: Are there any strategies government agencies can take away from the report?

 

SB: The six strategic actions are as follows (directly quoted here from the ICT Strategic Vision document are:

 

Deliver Better Services - building capability across government to use ICT in order to achieve improved services, effectiveness and efficiencies; enabling better services by using ICT to simplify and integrate government services to both people and business while maintaining necessary security and privacy.

 

Engage Openly - creating knowledge to share and manage information and knowledge to improve decision-making and drive economic growth; collaborating effectively by building better partnerships to improve the effectiveness of government consultations and service delivery.

 

Improve Government Operations - investing optimally to enable more effective implementation of policy by targeting ICT investments that deliver the greatest value; encouraging innovation so that government can harness the full potential of the digital economy and enhanced technology solutions to deliver services more efficiently and effectively.

GN: Is this document only targeted to federal agencies?

 

SB: The ICT Strategic Vision is specifically targeted at Commonwealth agencies, and it is the Commonwealth agencies that’ll ultimately be held to account for implementing the various strategies that contribute to supporting the vision.

 

GN: Where can state and local government go to find similar information?

SB: Many state and local governments already have their own ICT strategies, which inevitably will have a greater immediate influence on their own priorities.
There have been two other recently-released reports that provide more insight on the question of productivity (and agency efficiency). State and local governments interested in boosting their own productivity (as well as contributing to national productivity growth) should be aware of and leverage these other sources as well.

 

GN: Are there other documents that need to be looked to for a well rounded IT strategy?

 

SB: Government agency CIOs and other IT leaders in Australia should examine this vision in the context of other Commonwealth government policy documents.

 

This includes the Declaration of Open Government or the government's cloud computing strategy, in order to determine how the ICT Strategic Vision will affect them during the next three years.

Develop and lobby for the development of a common workplace strategy that puts their employees at the centre, building on the principles of the ICT Strategic Vision, while connecting the dots between open government, reform and ICT strategy objectives.

GN: What is the difference between this IT strategic report and others?

 

SB: In line with the Government 2.0 Taskforce recommendations and the Declaration of Open Government, the vision puts great emphasis on the participation and use of Web 2.0 to engage stakeholders inside and outside government.

 

While there are references to engagement with externally owned initiatives, it is not clear whether this would be allowed at an individual employee level, or would be limited to the institutional presence of government and its agencies on those external channels .

 

The strategic vision is remarkably silent about the central role of employees.

 

While there are references to the importance of sharing skills and knowledge, the section on collaboration mentions exclusively targeted consultation that government would conduct with constituents.

 

Engagement is seen as an institutional objective rather than a means for employees to get their job done.