Despite hiccups, NSW leads with ICT strategy

An enthusiastic reception for the latest New South Wales ICT Strategy may be a long-needed shot in the arm for the state’s technology vision, but a new review by the NSW Auditor-General suggests that many NSW agencies are still having the same problems as other state governments that are struggling to improve project execution, information security and business continuity.

The Digital+ 2016 strategy update (download here), launched by Minister for Innovation and Better Regulation Victor Dominello at a recent Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) function, updates the state’s 2012 strategy with the creation of a whole-of-government strategy that will build on the state’s work so far in reinventing itself as a customer service-driven delivery organisation.

With Service NSW now well established, key areas of the policy include open government, data sharing and analytics, a coordinated approach to cybersecurity, change to ICT procurement practices, ICT investment and the creation of policies addressing ICT skills and capabilities.

Dominello’s call for the state’s agencies to “reimagine the role of government in the digital age” was welcomed by AIIA CEO Suzanne Campbell, who said the updated policy was a natural next step in transforming the government of Australia’s most populous state.

“The shift in focus to driving innovation across all government policy signals deep recognition of the transformative impact of digital technology,” she said in a statement, highlighting Service NSW and technology procurement reform as strongly positive results of the change to date.

Yet while its long-term vision was being applauded, the devil was in the detail for NSW as an extensive Audit Office of NSW review found 19 ICT-related issues across the state’s agencies — compared with just one the year before — with importance ranging from minor to critical.

Financial systems were fingered in the audit, which noted that neither the Crown Solicitor’s Office nor the Office of Sport had disaster recovery plans in place to restore core financial systems in the event of a disaster.

NSW Treasury also attracted the glare of scrutiny, with the audit noting that the agency had not updated its disaster-recovery planning for “many years”; that three agencies were not testing their disaster-recovery planning “in accordance with the plan”; and that four agencies had no disaster recovery plan.

Review of the Premier and Cabinet portfolio found that agencies need “more timely and effective agreements” with shared service providers, recommended the creation of a centralised contract register and found that government IT processes “should be strengthened to reduce the risk of unauthorised access, security attacks, data integrity issues, data privacy breaches and identity theft”.

A review of the troubled implementation of LifeLink — an integrated administration platform intended to streamline functions through the NSW Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages — found that the system was delivered more than seven months late, cost $5.9m more than budget and lost more than $1.9m when the state was forced to provide nearly 60,000 free transactions to compensate for late delivery.

LifeLink was reset in 2010 and again in 2013 before finally being finished this year, but that didn’t stop the state from spending yet another $3.7m in FY2014–15 on fixing system issues and “clearing transaction backlogs”, the auditors found.

Despite the findings, the issues with NSW IT pale by comparison with recent audits of other states’ ICT practices. The Victorian Auditor-General’s Office, for one, ripped into that state’s agencies after its review found 462 deficiencies in IT controls across 45 public sector entities, most of which were rated as medium or high risk.

Queensland’s IT-related woes have already caused major issues in that state, and Western Australia was recently embarrassed when the WA Office of the Auditor General identified “extreme or high” issues with password management and other security practices in that state.

The Victorian findings were worrying enough to Auditor-General John Doyle that he prioritised IT-related reviews in that agency’s latest annual plan, noting “significant weaknesses in the delivery and benefit realisation of [IT] projects”.

Image courtesy Katie Lips under CC