Chapter 4 explores Prioritisation as the state of the IOF that is used to advise Government on the investment pipeline based on its priorities, agencies’ capability and capacity to deliver, and an in-depth view of the long-term investment horizon. It will analyse the state’s strengths in providing strong insights to data-driven decision-making, early engagement for better proposal development, and its success in positioning the DTA as a trusted advisor to the Government. It will also analyse the opportunities to bolster the role of the DTA in prioritising proposals with greater focus on feasibility and readiness to deliver.
Digital Government in Australia
Enhancing Digital Investment
Abstract
Prioritisation provides a very early assessment of the strength and strategic alignment of proposals in the investment pipeline across different government portfolios in order to provide strategic advice to Government. Its strengths lie in the insights it delivers for data-driven decision-making across government, its early engagement to support better proposals, and the way in which it has positioned DTA as a trusted advisor to Government. However, it could be improved by bolstering the role that DTA plays in prioritisation, with greater focus on feasibility and readiness to deliver.
Prioritisation is the next state of the IOF that takes place in the pre-Budget phase of a digital government investment. At this stage, the DTA works closely with the agencies on funding for digital proposals their Ministers are seeking to submit to Cabinet. The objective of the Prioritisation state is to support the Government in making more informed investment decisions based on Government priorities, agencies’ capability and capacity to deliver, and an in-depth view of the long-term investment horizon (DTA, 2023[1]). In the Prioritisation state, the DTA works with agencies to (DTA, 2024[2]):
identify a 10-year investment pipeline of digital and ICT investments for each portfolio agency.
score and rank the strongest proposals in the pipeline.
develop a clear 3-to-5-year view of the digital and ICT investments across the public administration, which would be used to advise Government on what to invest in and when.
The core function of the Prioritisation state is to determine which are the strongest digital and ICT proposals coming forward for consideration in the Budget process. Together with a ‘Moderation’ group – representing 20 portfolio and key delivery agencies – the DTA assesses both the 10-year investment pipeline and early details of any proposals that are expected to be submitted for funding in the immediate budget process. These internal and external evaluation processes are key to ensure that prioritisation is done in a way that is transparent, objective, and robust enough to build confidence in its decision-making.
To enable the prioritisation of proposals in the pipeline, the DTA and Moderation group will score and rank proposals against a set of six Digital and ICT investment prioritisation criteria mapped to the missions of the national Data and Digital Government Strategy (DDGS) (DTA, 2023[1]; Australian Government, 2024[3]). An overview of these criteria is provided in Box 4.1. Given the involvement of a broad range of stakeholders across the public administration, these criteria were developed to provide an objective and intelligible framework that could be used consistently to score and rank proposals.
The criteria also ensure that the missions of the DDGS are being carefully considered by both agencies preparing proposals and the stakeholders scoring them. If any proposals do not score well against the six criteria, the Moderation group can refer the weaker proposals back to the responsible agency to be reconsidered. To be able to progress through the next states of the IOF, the proposals are reworked until they achieve a satisfactory score against the criteria (DTA, 2023[1]).
The Prioritisation state is also responsible for producing the Digital Investment Overview (DIO), used to provide strategic advice to government on the status of digital investment proposals by portfolio. It is prepared and submitted to government for the Budget and Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) – i.e. twice-yearly – to support the Government in its decision-making throughout the Budget cycle. A valuable tool for communicating to the political leadership, it succinctly outlines the proposals by portfolio, their scoring based on the criteria, and the DTA’s recommendations on how the proposals could be improved before they are considered for funding by Government (see 4. Contestability). Further information on the DIO is provided in Box 4.2.
In terms of Prioritisation’s integration with other IOF states, the prioritisation scores and DIO become key data sources to help understand the investment pipeline, including the high-level benefits identified under the Benefits Management Policy, proposal delivery confidence, and identification of proposal weak points. As proposals move through Contestability and Assurance states, data is then fed back into the Prioritisation state to inform advice provided on future investment decisions (DTA, 2023[1]).
The DIO has defined several criteria and indicators that align to the missions of Australia’s DDGS, which are used to objectively score and rank digital investments proposals to determine their prioritisation in the investment pipeline. These criteria include:
Delivering for people and businesses: which considers the ease of individuals’ engagement with government (including scale of population affected and improving user experience) and efficiencies for businesses, industry and other organisations (including scope of organisations affected).
Simple and seamless services: which considers government productivity (in terms of the extent of productivity gains and alignment to business needs) and the overall alignment to the AGA.
Government for the future: which considers future readiness (in terms of alignment with digital strategies and future-ready digital and ICT tools) and alignment with government commitment.
Trusted and secure: which considers secure government systems (in terms of uplift to meet cyber policy and assessment of cyber workforce risk) and likelihood and impact of reputational risk.
Data and digital foundations: which considers enhancement of data sharing or interoperability (in terms of technical implementation and consulting with potential users), state of planning (in terms of artefacts provided and evidence of planning), and engagement with Assurance.
General prioritisation: which considers the rigour of cost estimates, benefits maturity, implementation risk, and the extent of its dependencies.
Each indicator receives a rating of ‘Nil’, ‘Basic’, ‘Moderate’, or ‘Significant’, which is then aggregated into an overall rating based on a methodology that is accompanied by internal guidance for the stakeholders.
Source: Internal document provided by the DTA.
The DIO is prepared by the DTA to provide an overview to Ministers on the status of digital investment proposals by portfolio twice a year –at the beginning of each of the Budget and MYEFO processes.
The DIO categorises proposals by investment types and whether proposals are seeking investment to either discover or test a solution, implement a new solution, or to sustain an existing solution.
The inputs into the DIO are taken from the work with agencies in the Prioritisation state but also includes inputs from Assurance for in-flight projects and considerations from the Strategic Planning and Contestability states to reflect the investment pipeline and strategic alignment.
Source: Internal document provided by the DTA
The Prioritisation state had been matured with refined tools and processes that has seen the state delivering stronger insights for data-driven decision-making across government, encouraging early engagement for better proposals being brought forward to the Contestability state, and positioning the DTA as a trusted strategic advisor to Government as part of the Budget process.
Strong insights for data-driven decision-making
By refining its process and more closely integrating with the other states of the IOF, Prioritisation provides access to quality data on relevant proposals from across the public administration in the investment pipeline. Its scoring rubric means that there is more robust data being collected in alignment with the missions of the DDGS and other important indicators around readiness.
This is considered by external and internal stakeholders to provide a depth and quality of analysis that demonstrates the value of the process to both participating agencies and to Government – with this set to improve as agencies continue to adapt to the IOF and improve the quality of the inputs provided at this state. Finally, in this way, the Prioritisation state is seen by stakeholders to be providing Government with a roadmap ahead of each Budget cycle to inform its decision-making.
Early engagement for better proposals
While external and internal stakeholders raised that additional engagement with agencies would be valuable, agencies are now generally more familiar with the DIO and the Prioritisation process. This is seen to be encouraging earlier engagement with the DTA ahead of the Budget and MYEFO cycles to help improve the proposals that are being brought forward for approval and funding. The process is seen to be transparent, clear, and repeatable, which is part of the success in maturing the Prioritisation state.
The alignment of the Prioritisation’s assessment criteria with the DDGS is also seen to be helping agencies in understanding how to implement the strategy. By having to consider how their digital or ICT proposal deliver – or how they could better align – to the missions of the DDGS, agencies have a better understanding of the expectations on them and what these missions look like in practice.
Finally, the inclusion of internal and external agencies in the prioritisation process is seen to build overall confidence in the process and its decisions. By having 20 central and delivery agencies involved in the prioritisation of proposals, it helps ensure an objective assessment and minimises the risk that agencies could view the DTA as pursuing any particular agenda through the process.
Positioned DTA as a trusted advisor to the Government
Finally, internal stakeholders raised that the greatest strength of the Prioritisation state is the value the Government places on the DIO and the way in which it has positioned the DTA as a more trusted advisor on digital and ICT investments. The DIO offers a consistent output very early in the Budget cycle that provides rich insight into the investment pipeline, with a clear overview of proposals across portfolios, indication of portfolios at risk, and the strategic themes that are being observed by the DTA. External stakeholders, however, highlighted that the DIO and other advice from the DTA could be integrated in a more meaningful way into the workflows of decision-making bodies, such as the Secretaries Digital and Data Committee (SDDC); of particular relevance given the cross-government risks identified around issues such as legacy technology systems.
However, the DIO scoring does demonstrate to the Government the ways in which agencies are considering and aligning to their strategic objectives and policy priorities. This is considered to be providing vital intel to decision-makers in a way that is timely and actionable, which has the strong support of the Minister of Finance and become a key input into ERC considerations. Further, the DTA has bipartisation political support for its advice and the role it plays in ensuring the appropriate use of public resources. This is seen to provide long-term security for the IOF.
As the DTA looks to further develop the IOF, there is an opportunity to further mature its Prioritisation state by bolstering the role that the DTA plays in prioritising investment proposals and developing a greater focus on feasibility and readiness when evaluating proposals.
Bolstering the role of the DTA in prioritisation
There is a view amongst internal stakeholders that there is a need to bolster the role of Prioritisation in deciding which proposals are prioritised in a particular Budget cycle – based on the view that the process is currently ‘all carrot, no stick’. To add additional value to the process, the DTA could use the processes at this state to consider which proposals are less important or not seen to be delivering value to Australians, and then to instead refer these proposals to future Budget cycles.
There is also a need to work with Strategic Planning on the need to factor in the risk of legacy ICT systems that need to be upgraded or replaced. Early identification of these systems will ensure that sufficient planning can be undertaken to assess risks and fully-understand any dependencies on them, to secure sufficient funding to replace them, and to identify where there may be common needs across agencies that could be met through a common or shared solution that would be more cost-effective to deliver together and at the same time. External stakeholders reiterated strongly the need for the DTA to lead on a long-term approach to addressing the risk of these systems across government.
However, stakeholders raised that there are two main challenges to this. First, that it would require a clear mandate from Government for the DTA to do this as part of the Budget process. Second, digital and ICT proposals are not always standalone proposals, but other a subset or enabler of a broader policy proposal, which introduces greater complexity as the digital or ICT component cannot be considered separately to this.
At a minimum, external stakeholders raised that the DTA should use the DIO reporting to show the level of legacy risk being carried across portfolios, the longevity of this risk, and how it is being addressed over time. This could then be used by decision-makers – including via the SDDC – to develop a long-term plan to replace and upgrade these systems with a ‘whole-of-system’ view that also considers the opportunity for shared investment, demands on the market to deliver, and potential impacts to government and end users if certain systems are not upgraded or replaced in time.
Greater focus on feasibility and readiness
While the existing prioritisation assessment includes elements of an agency’s capacity to deliver, there is a view that there needs to be greater focus or weighting given to feasibility and readiness, including past performance for previous investments as an indicator of likely future performance issues which would introduce greater integration of data from the Assurance state, as well as maturity of the portfolio in delivering investments, experience in delivering domains and capabilities, and workforce requirements. Internal stakeholders also raised that there is also value seen in encouraging longer-term planning and roadmaps driven by an enterprise architecture. Therefore, the DTA could apply greater weighting in prioritising proposals based on feasibility and readiness to deliver, based on the past performance, delivery maturity, and a defined enterprise architecture.
References
[3] Australian Government (2024), Strategy, https://www.dataanddigital.gov.au/strategy.
[2] DTA (2024), Prioritisation, https://www.dta.gov.au/advice/digital-and-ict-investments/prioritisation.
[1] DTA (2023), Helping the Australian Government to consider the right digital and ICT-enabled investments, https://www.dta.gov.au/blogs/helping-australian-government-consider-right-digital-and-ict-enabled-investments.