Greetings from the Australian Computer Society Canberra Branch where Miguel Carrasco is speaking on "Accelerating the digital government transformation": http://www.acs.org.au/networking-and-events/events/upcoming-events/event-details?eveID=50322038132250
The Prime Minister and Minister for Communications announced the "Australian Government Digital Transformation Office" (DTO) on 23 January 2015 "... so that government services can be delivered digitally from start to finish and better serve the needs of citizens and businesses ... The DTO will operate more like a start-up than a traditional government agency, focussing on end-user needs in developing digital services.": https://www.pm.gov.au/media/2015-01-23/establishment-digital-transformation-office Miguel Carrasco commented that the Australian Communications Minister is "enamored" with the UK Government approach to digital services. This, I suggest is not new, with the former Australian Government Chief Information Officer (AGCIO), Ann Steward, having spent some time as Director e-Government in the UK Cabinet Office. The DTO has issued a draft Digital Service Standard, based on the UK Government standard: https://www.dto.gov.au/standard Miguel described the setting up a DTO as acting as a "beacon for talent", but said they did not have more than six months to produce results. He claimed that the start-up talent needed was not in Canberra. Unfortunately he did not acknowledge the work of the ACT Government funded Canberra Innovation Network (CBRIN) which is fostering startups in Canberra. I just came from CBRIN, where former Senator, Kate Lundy, chair of the startup company Welcomer, has launched of a new product which could be used by government agencies, as well as corporations: http://www.welcomer.me/ In my view, new and existing professionals can be trained to undertake start-up functions. The ANU is doing this with their TechLauncher program (I have a team of students working on an education product): http://cs.anu.edu.au/TechLauncher/project540954.html Also the ACS runs a 12 week on-line course "New Technology Alignment" on how to identify such transformations in organizations (I am tutoring the course and the students are up to week 8 at present): http://www.acs.org.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0009/56538/Subject-outline_New-Technology-Alignment-Jan-2015.pdf One aspect of DTO is the question of how it will work with the shared service functions in government. ps: At the moment I am designing an innovation course specially tailored for Canberra and will be discussing it in "Innovations in teaching innovation" at CSIRO ICT Centre on the ANU campus, 4pm, 27 April 2015: http://cecs.anu.edu.au/seminars/more/SID/3629 -- Tom Worthington FACS CP, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150 The Higher Education Whisperer http://blog.highereducationwhisperer.com/ PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au Liability limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation Adjunct Senior Lecturer, Research School of Computer Science, Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/ _______________________________________________ Link mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.anu.edu.au/mailman/listinfo/link
