SA govt unveils four-year vision for IT

The South Australian government has unveiled a new IT strategy detailing a program of work that will concentrate on ensuring public servants have the right internal systems to improve service delivery.

The Department of Premier and Cabinet quietly released the four-year strategy [pdf] on Friday, promising to embrace “innovative new technologies” wherever possible to deliver better government-wide digital services to citizens.

“We will invest in ICT infrastructure to drive better services for individuals and businesses, and to enable more informed decision-making by government,” the strategy states.

The strategy plans for these services – which will focus on addressing real issues and delivering real benefits in the first instance – to be shaped by hybrid and multi-cloud environments and new approaches to service delivery.

It is also quick to point out that “robust leadership” will be at the heart of new ICT services after DPC’s former chief information officer was dismissed over fraud and deception charges.

But for a strategy with such grand ambitions, the 13-page documents is light on detail when it comes to how to get there.

Most of the priorities also appear geared at internal government changes, some of which will herald big changes such as a centralised Wide Area Networks for all government sites, instead of outward focused services.

The strategy places significant emphasis on the need to adopt integrated digital workforce collaboration solutions to drive “efficiency, greater staff satisfaction and better outcomes”.

This will see voice and data networks modernised, a unified communication solution for agencies standardised and a government-wide email archive solution created to “eliminate duplication”.

It plans to have adopted a hybrid messaging model including Microsoft Office 365 and bespoke mailboxes by December this year, and complete the market approach for unified communications, core voice communications and interoperability solutions by next June.

An online marketplace that increases viability of available government services will similarly be created by the end of 2021 to limit duplication across the public sector.

Improving access to “the right data” is another priority that will see the government focus on introducing technology that allows it to make informed decisions so to provide citizens with seamless services.

This will involve ensuring secure information sharing between state government agencies and with industry, including modernising centralised network capabilities by December 2020 to ensure they are “robust, reliable and secure”.

The government will assess the viability of a as-a-service network assets ownership and capital layout by next June, before exploring the introducing of a software defined approach for network design by the end of 2019.

It will also deliver an identity framework that permits “government agencies to be responsible for their own identity access management by federating user credentials” by June 2019,  

Under the seamless service delivery arm of the strategy, the government plans to assess a centralised hybid WAN proof of concept by next month to understand its viability for extension across all government sites in the state by December 2021.

The strategy will also see the government apply ‘cloud right’ thinking for the adoption of private and public cloud services to better assess the benefits of the technology, as part of its move to “a modern architecture focusing on the dynamic delivery of data”.