Queensland's plan for personalised digital services

The Queensland government has unveiled its first whole-of-government digital strategy to position the state at the forefront of personalised digital service delivery.

Minister for Innovation, Science and the Digital Economy Leeanne Enoch launched the Digital 1st strategy at an Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) event in Brisbane this morning.

The strategy focuses on improving government service delivery by ensuring digital services are increasingly personalised and integrated, as the state moves to adopt a government-as-a-platform approach to digital infrastructure.

“We want to avoid developing isolated, standalone solutions,” the strategy states.

“Ideally, we want our digital services throughout to be seamless, joined-up and personalised – marrying greater user experience to extensible back-end systems, infrastructure and communication channels.”

The number of Queensland government services offered online has grown from 40 to more than 500 in the last three years.

The strategy points to the state's online service for seniors to apply for concessions, and its portal for parents to access information about their child’s attendances and school reports, as examples of where it has already made it easier for citizens to keep track of their interactions with government.

The government hopes to use and expand existing platform components like the My Account personalised services dashboard - which provides access to “reminders, alerts, relevant information and services and the ability to track the progress of their interactions across government” - and QGov identity brokerage service as the foundation for the future delivery of services.

Future services would also be capable of pulling information from “across agencies, tiers of government and organisations from outside government”, the strategy states. 

But the strategy highlights the need to avoid waterfall methodologies – or “big bang, big release, big spend” – for projects by knowing “when to build, when to buy or when to use open source”.

The government has already replaced or upgraded 85 percent of its core systems and infrastructure identified as being at-risk, and developed plans to mitigate risks on the remaining platforms in the interim, it says.

It plans to introduce an intelligent automation proof-of-concept for back office services, extend trials of humanoid robots in transport and education service centres, and use machine learning to extract insight from the state’s data collections.

The government will also build on a number of changes made to ICT procurement practices this year by reviewing the SME ICT participation policy to encourage the use of “home-grown digital solutions”, and creating a guide for department to work with start-ups.

It will also introduce a digital marketplace and review the ICT mega-category framework to create incentives for new procurement processes.

The government plans to leverage the Data61 programming unit established in Brisbane earlier this year and its data analytics office to help agencies understand future trends, risks and scenarios.

It has committed to regularly review and update the strategy to keep its initiatives current, and report on its achievements. 

The government said it would also soon release its first open data policy statement and action plan.