InnovationAus - Digital proposals reaching Cabinet without DTA review

Almost 40 per cent of federal government technology projects are progressing to Cabinet for sign-off without being reviewed by the agency tasked with overseeing digital investment.

As the government looks to step up project assurance, new data shows that just 61 per cent of digital investments proposals were reviewed by the Digital Transformation Agency before this year’s Budget.

And around 10 per cent of projects were still to complete the review process designed to ensure they align with Cabinet-agreed digital policies and standards by June 30 – almost seven weeks later.

The result, contained in the DTA’s annual report, is well short of the 100 per cent of projects the agency holds itself to, but represents an improvement on last year, when it reviewed only 49 per cent of projects.

The DTA put the improvement down to “increased awareness of the DTA’s role in assessing digital proposals” by agencies, which are also engaging earlier so that assessments can be completed ahead of government consideration.

Under the Digital Capability Assessment Process (DCAP), agencies are required to provide evidence that new digital proposals being brought forward for Cabinet sign-off align with whole-of-government digital and ICT policies.

The process is part of the broader Digital and ICT Investment Oversight Framework (IOF), which was introduced to increase strategic planning, prioritisation, contestability and delivery assurance.

But “many proposals did not fully satisfy the requirements”, the DTA said without elaborating. It is no longer required to report the number of projects closely aligned after a change in performance reporting metrics.

In 2022-23, only 30 per cent of digital proposals were assessed as “strongly aligned” with the policies and standards that make up the DCAP, well below its target of 70 per cent.

The Opposition is planning to grill the agency over the result at Senate Estimates on Tuesday, with shadow minister for government services and the digital economy Paul Fletcher describing it as dismal.

Opposition senators will also critique the DTA’s decision to no longer benchmark Australia’s digital government maturity against that of other nations from this financial year.

It comes as Australia slips to eighth in the United Nations global ranking of ‘e-governments’, behind the Denmark, Estonia, Singapore, South Korea, Iceland, Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom.

“The UN’s latest international benchmark, the worst result for Australia in over a decade, shows how poorly Katy Gallagher and Bill Shorten have managed digital government,” Mr Fletcher said of the survey, released in September.

The decision to scrap the KPI comes less than a year after the Albanese government abandoned the former government goal of Australian becoming one of the top three digital governments in the world by 2025.

A DTA spokesperson told InnovationAus.com last month that the metric was removed following a review but that it still tracks the government’s maturity and performance rankings through reports like the OECD Digital Government Index.

Australia placed fifth out of 38 countries in the OECD index earlier this year, placing it above Estonia and close to that of other advanced economies like Norway and the United Kingdom.