Vic Govt looks to ICT industry to help boost productivity

The Victorian Government is making headway on its plan to work more closely with industry, preparing to announce a partnership with a major company in what Victorian Technology Advocate Grantley Mailes says will be the first commercial use of open data in the State.

Speaking at today’s AIIA Australia 3.0 event, Mailes, who was appointed to the newly created advocacy role in March, said the Government is seeking to become more innovative in the way it delivers services.

The State Government released a fifty-point plan in February to overhaul the way ICT is procured, and Mailes today cited the Government’s new eServices register as an example of improved process.

He revealed the register, which was launched in July, had taken just 9 weeks to develop at a cost of $50,000, compared to an earlier procurement system that had taken around 12 months and $1.2 million to build.

“So industry involvement, and thinking differently about the way we want to invest in projects has paid dividends for us,” Mailes said.

He added that the government was well on its way to releasing the 1000 data sets it had committed to release from agencies via its open data portal by September.

Another project on the agenda, Mailes said, was a feasibility study investigating business process standardisation, including for procurement, in order to boost productivity.