Chapter 3 explores the Strategic Planning state and its role in understanding the investment pipeline and aligning it with the Government’s strategic and policy objectives. It will analyse the role that the Data and Digital Government Strategy and Australian Government Architecture play in giving direction to agencies, as well as the engagement with agencies to understand the investment horizon. Finally, it will analyse how the introduction of mandatory Digital Investment Plans will help to mature the state, along with opportunities for stronger linkages into workforce planning and a more evidence-based monitoring of how investments contribute to the strategy’s implementation.
Digital Government in Australia
Enhancing Digital Investment
Abstract
Strategic Planning is the state of the IOF focussed on strategic alignment, investment horizon planning, and more data-driven decision-making. With the implementation of the Data and Digital Government Strategy (DDGS), the role of the Strategic Planning state has matured with the integration of longer-term strategic planning of digital investments across government. Its strengths have been in the role that the Data and Digital Government Strategy (DDGS) and Australian Government Architecture (AGA) play in giving direction to agencies, as well as the engagement with agencies to understand the investment horizon. As the DTA looks to further develop the IOF, there is an opportunity to further mature its Strategic Planning state with the implementation of the mandatory Digital Investment plans for strong horizon planning, stronger linkages into workforce planning, and to support more evidence-based monitoring of the DDGS.
Strategic Planning is the first of the two States of the IOF that occur in the pre-budget phase. It is focussed on aligning with the Government’s strategic objectives and analysing current and future demand to enable more effective horizon-planning and data-driven decision-making (DTA, 2024[1]). The intent of this State is to help agencies “align their data and digital investments to deliver simple, seamless and interconnected government services.” (DTA, 2024[1])
It is under this State that the DTA supports the Government to define the strategic direction of digital and ICT investments, including by (DTA, 2023[2]):
working to ensure agencies are delivering on the vision and missions of the DDGS.
using the AGA to standardise approaches and build a more common view and way to articulate digital government investments
understanding the investment horizon with planned investments and key system upgrades.
identifying opportunities to share or reuse solutions.
identifying key areas of demand for the same resources or capabilities.
The DTA works with agencies during this state to identify their individual outcomes and requirements, as well as to start building a whole-of-government view of the investment pipeline, risks, opportunities. This is key to ensuring that the Australian Government’s approach to investments is cohesive. Agencies engage with the DTA under Strategic Planning to:
seek guidance on how to align with the DDGS and AGA.
identify new proposals and upgrades required to existing systems.
develop and report their Investment Plans.
There is no set timeframe during which agencies should engage with this state of the IOF – agencies can engage with the DTA years in advance of a planned investment entering the budget process (though it should be noted that is not yet standard practice and DTA is proactively working with agencies to mature their longer-term view of the investment horizon).
Strategic alignment is not just considered under only the Strategic Planning state – rather it is assessed again during the processes for the Prioritisation, Contestability, and Assurance states to ensure that agencies’ proposals remain aligned to the Government’s objectives (DTA, 2023[2]). Further, the decisions on and monitoring of digital investments that move through these States also feed back into Strategic Planning to inform future investment planning and policy development.
With the implementation of the DDGS, the Strategic Planning state has matured and become clearer in the role it plays aligning investments with the longer-term strategic planning of digital investments across government. It has benefitted from the strength of the DDGS providing a clear ‘north star’ to guide strategic planning, the AGA introducing a common language for digital investments, and in introducing effective engagement to understand agencies’ requirements and long-term investment pipelines.
DDGS as a ‘north star’ to guide digital investments
Released in 2023, the DDGS brings together – for the first time at the national government level in Australia – a combined strategic approach for how data and digital can be used to improve service delivery and decision-making by 2030. This was an important milestone for the Strategic Planning state – providing a clear ‘north star’ that the DTA could use with agencies to guide the development of their data and digitally-enabled investment proposals. As part of this state, agencies must demonstrate their alignment with the six missions of the DDGS (outlined in Box 3.1) to ensure that planning for digital and ICT investments are aligning with the Government’s strategic objectives from the start. Updated more frequently than the strategy itself, the DDGS’ Implementation Plan is key to providing timely and practical guidance and performance metrics to support agencies deliver on the DDGS in their own work. In this way, monitoring these efforts as part of the Strategic Planning state will also help to identify areas of priority or where certain strategic objectives might require additional attention (DTA, 2023[2]).
However, internal stakeholders did note that the DDGS is still early in its implementation and agencies are still working on aligning to it. Agencies that are already mature in their own strategic planning generally find it easy to align their efforts to the DDGS, while this is a challenge for less mature agencies.
The DDGS outlines the Australian Government's vision for leveraging data and digital technologies to enhance public services by 2030. It focuses on delivering simple, secure, and connected services for all people and businesses through world-class data and digital capabilities. The DDGS has 5 missions:
Delivering for All People and Business: to ensure services are inclusive, accessible, and meet the needs of people and business.
Simple and Seamless Services: to use technology, data and analytics to deliver simple, accessible services for people and business.
Government for the Future: to respond to emerging priorities and modernise investment approaches to deliver secure, ethical and modern data and digital technologies.
Trusted and Secure: to deliver services which are trusted, transparent and ethical, and support people’s choices when engaging with public services.
Data and Digital Foundations: to establish strong foundations for data and digital capabilities to support ongoing innovation and improvement.
The DDGS is supported by an Implementation Plan that describes the actions to deliver the strategy (which can be regularly updated), and a Metrics Framework to measure the progress of the strategy’s implementation with defined outcomes, metrics, and baselines for each mission.
AGA for common language for digital investments
The AGA provides a common language for digital investments through a defined hierarchy of domains, capabilities, policies, standards and designs, guiding agencies on how, at a technical level, to align with government objectives (see Box 3.2). The AGA also provides a means to track and measure investments against a defined architecture. For agencies, the AGA offers clear guidance on delivering capabilities, supporting government strategies, identifying reuse opportunities and investment gaps, and managing risks. For industry, it clarifies government expectations and provides insight into digital priorities.
By consulting AGA in the Strategic Planning state, agencies can use the architecture to inform and strengthen their investment proposals, as well as providing opportunities to identify existing solutions that can be reused or duplicated for more cost-effective and collaborative investments. This was echoed by external stakeholders who highlighted that the DTA is using the AGA to prompt agencies to consider why a new solution is needed when there is an alternative that exists elsewhere that can be leveraged instead.
However, this is only possible if agencies engage with the AGA genuinely – rather than as a ‘tick box’ exercise. Internal stakeholders suggested that additional guidance on how to align with the AGA could be useful in helping agencies map digital service needs, digital technologies, and digital product types in their proposals. In doing so, the AGA could better integrate into the IOF to drive its implementation across government, encouraging a more consistent and coherent approach to digital investments.
The AGA is a framework that brings together a collection of digital artefacts and guidance to help users align with the government's digital direction. The AGA provides a structured approach to understanding and implementing digital and ICT capabilities, ensuring consistency, interoperability, and value for money. It includes policies, standards, designs, and strategies, guiding agencies in making informed investments. To help agencies navigate the AGA, the DTA has defined a set of underpinning domains and capabilities:
Effective engagement to understand pipeline and requirements
Finally, external and internal stakeholders highlighted that a strength has also been the way in which engagement under Strategic Planning has matured to more effectively understand the investment pipeline and future requirements. This has helped to build buy-in for the IOF and awareness of its policies, standards, and requirements. This is important for improving compliance across portfolios and the quality of inputs to be provided across the states of the IOF. Through the engagement in this state, the DTA works together with agencies to foster longer-term planning, data-driven decision-making, and shared success for Australia’s digital investments. However, there is a view that this could have greater focus on the risk posed by legacy systems that are requiring upgrades or replacement.
As the DTA looks to further develop the IOF, there is an opportunity to further mature its Strategic Planning state with the implementation of mandatory Digital Investment plans for robust horizon planning, stronger workforce planning linkages, and to support more evidence-based monitoring of investments’ contribution to the delivery of the DDGS.
Digital Investment Plans for stronger horizon planning
The DTA has already taken steps to bolster the Strategic Planning state with the recent introduction of mandatory Digital Investment Plans for stronger horizon planning and better funding decisions (Pearce, 2024[8]). An overview of the DIP is provided in Box 3.3 below:
Digital Investment Planning (DIP) captures the short, medium, and long-term goals, initiatives, and outcomes for each agency’s digital investment horizon. It also aligns digital investments with the strategic priorities, business needs and user expectations of the agency. The DIP includes sections that agencies will complete to outline the required inputs on:
Agency overview, including its mission and key digital services.
Digital outlook, with a clear vision statement in alignment with the DDGS.
Current systems, including the type of system, its purpose, criticality to core business functions, dependencies, expected end-of-life, and planned upgrades or replacements.
Planning, including the agency’s digital roadmap that outlines the digital initiatives, new systems or major upgrades across the short, medium and long-term digital horizon.
Enablers, around workforce, external assets and dependencies, key vendors, and whole-of-government objectives, strategies, policies, frameworks, standards and schemes.
Risks, focused on operational risks (to the agency and the impact on critical systems if risks are realised) and technology risks (including considerations for legacy systems and technical debt, cybersecurity, and the impact if risks are realised).
Source: (DTA, 2025[9])
It is understood that the value to Government and agencies is to feed inputs from individual agency investment plans into a biannual Integrated Digital Investment Plan insights report at the Prioritisation state, helping identify opportunities for reuse or shared investment, high demand pressure points, gaps in workforce capability planning, and key systems that will need to be replaced or upgraded. This will facilitate better visibility of investments and cross-agency opportunities and strengthened prioritisation of digital investments over the medium to long term, supporting better fiscal management of key government assets.
Mandatory long-term agency planning highlights a forward-thinking approach to mitigating risks and aligning broader digital strategies. These plans will also help improve agency capacity, capability, and compliance with the IOF minimising the risk of unplanned or rushed downstream investments. Therefore, the DTA should continue efforts to bolster the Strategic Planning state with the implementation of mandatory DIPs for stronger horizon planning and better funding decisions.
Stronger linkages into workforce planning
Another area to further develop in the Strategic Planning state is to link it more strongly with stronger strategic workforce planning. The Australian Government recently released the APS Data, Digital and Cyber Workforce Plan 2025-30, which aims to support a more coordinated approach to attract, develop and retain digital skills and talent across the public sector. It considers the demand and gaps for key resources, skills, and capabilities that will be required to successfully deliver these digital and ICT investments. This is important also when it comes to the prioritisation of investments, particularly where there is high demand for the same resources.
As part of analysing the digital landscape, external and internal stakeholders raised that it will also be necessary for the Australian Government to understand the connections between supply chain (how vendors’ products and services help to deliver a functional government digital system), and demand chain (how government digital systems meet the digital service needs of the users) of digital capabilities. It was raised that there are examples within agencies where common demand for the same resources or capabilities at the same time was already posing delivery risks for agency projects. The DTA could therefore build on the strategic workforce planning under the Data, Digital and Cyber Workforce plan by including these supply chain connections to provide a full picture of the digital ecosystem and where the private sector could be used to supplement public sector capability in the short-to-medium term while the Government invests in building internal capability in the longer-term.
Canada’s Directive on Digital Talent seeks to strengthen workforce planning by emphasising the role of data collection and interdepartmental coordination to create a holistic view of current and planned digital talent needs. It sets out mandatory requirements to report digital talent needs, sourcing decisions, and development activities to the Office of the Chief Information Officer of Canada (OCIO).
The Directive aligns talent planning with investment objectives by requiring departments to participate in annual planning and reporting exercises. Data collected through these processes is aggregated and analysed to generate business intelligence at both the department and administration-wide level to inform strategic recruitment, training, and executive talent management.
The Directive also provides practical guidance on sourcing, including when to outsource or contract talent, as well as how best to use existing tools and job streams. It aims to improve hiring speed and quality, as well as to introduce mechanisms to coordinate upskilling opportunities and professional development, encouraging departments to treat the digital and ICT workforce as a cohesive community.
Evidence-based monitoring of investments’ contribution to the delivery of the DDGS
There is opportunity for the Strategic Planning state to help deliver more evidence-based monitoring of how Australia’s digital and ICT investments are contributing to the missions of the DDGS. Internal stakeholders raised that there could be additional efforts to track the investments under the IOF as part of the delivery of the DDGS, including how these investments are delivering against the outcomes of the DDGS’ missions in a tangible way.
By doing so, the DTA could help demonstrate the integration of strategic planning across the IOF – including via the BMP outlined in Chapter 2 – and the value that the DDGS delivers to the lives of citizens and businesses. There could be value in also including this reporting in the project dashboard recommended in Chapter 2 to have greater visibility and to encourage greater consideration of the impacts of these digital and ICT investments.
The DTA could therefore explore how to deliver more evidence-based monitoring of investments’ contribution to the delivery of the DDGS to track the investments under the IOF as part of the delivery of the strategy, mapping back to the original intent of how they were intended to deliver on its strategic missions.
References
[5] Australian Government (2025), Implementation plan, https://www.dataanddigital.gov.au/plan.
[6] Australian Government (2024), Australian Government Architecture, https://architecture.digital.gov.au/.
[7] Australian Government (2024), Australian Government Architecture Domain and Capability Model, https://architecture.digital.gov.au/sites/default/files/2024-09/AGA_Domain_and_Capability_Model_v2.0.0.pdf.
[3] Australian Government (2024), Overview: Data and Digital Government Strategy, https://www.dataanddigital.gov.au/sites/default/files/2024-03/Data%20and%20Digital%20Strategy%20Overview%20v1.0.pdf.
[4] Australian Government (2023), Metrics Framework, https://www.dataanddigital.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-12/Data%20and%20Digital%20Metrics%20Framework%20v1.0.pdf.
[9] DTA (2025), Digital Investment Plan (DIP) Guidebook, Australian Government, Canberra.
[1] DTA (2024), Strategic Planning, https://www.dta.gov.au/advice/digital-and-ict-investments/strategic-planning.
[2] DTA (2023), Delivering a single vision for digital, https://www.dta.gov.au/blogs/delivering-single-vision-digital.
[12] Government of Canada (2025), Directive on Digital Talent: Learn more about how the Government of Canada is strengthening the talent base of the GC digital community, https://talent.canada.ca/en/directive-on-digital-talent.
[10] Government of Canada (2023), Directive on Digital Talent, https://www.tbs-sct.canada.ca/pol/doc-eng.aspx?id=32749.
[11] Government of Canada (2024b), The Government of Canada Digital Talent Strategy, https://www.canada.ca/en/government/system/digital-government/digital-talent-strategy.html.
[8] Pearce, C. (2024), Departments’ multimillion-dollar tech platforms ’bypassing’ govt review, THe Canberra Times, https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8839211/government-tech-funding-lacks-digital-framework-alignment/.