While it’s important to have a strategic vision that is solid and stands alone, one of the reasons for releasing the draft to the public to comment on is to promote a conversation about the Government’s agenda for future use of ICT. This vision has done both and it has done them well. Shortly after the draft was released, IT opinion group Gartner released their take on the vision, coming to the conclusion that it was less innovative than they expected. Based on a blog post from Andrea Di Maio, a Gartner analyst, I think they had anticipated more Web 2.0 initiatives to be outlined in the vision. But that’s OK, in my opinion, Web 2.0 while a hot, sexy topic for the profit based sector of the IT industry, isn’t quite as relevant for the government sector. The release of the draft also prompted a lot of conversation on the actual AGIMO blog where the vision was released and the official forum for feedback. Some of the feedback were encouraging notes, amazingly there was very little unsubstantiated criticism and most of the feedback was in the form of in-depth, constructive feedback. So I think that AGIMO should congratulate themselves for promoting a conversation around how the Australian Government will use ICT in the next few years.
My Review of AGIMO’s Draft Strategic Vision
I think this is a very well constructed and rigorous document. It is pitched at the right level for a vision without attempting to anticipate the means of implementation, as a vision should. It also encompasses the current Government’s initiatives (namely the National Broadband Network) while still making adequate room for guiding the APS in improving the value it provides in serving the government of the day.
The vision is constructed around three strategic priorities: Deliver Better Services, Enagage Openly and Improve Government Operations. These in turn are decomposed into strategic actions. Holistically these priorities signal that the Australian Government is moving from its cost controlling (efficiency) perspective to a perspective of value management. The Government is also attempting to be more transparent about its policies and its intent to execute them and to engage the public as early as possible. The vision sees a consolidation of the earlier Declaration of Open Government. Finally the vision contains goals for technology-policy alignment and simplifying the access points that citizens may use to interact with the government in an online context.
This is an excerpt from the figure used within the Draft to summarise the vision.
I’m very encouraged by the shift to the value management perspective. John Thorp, arguably the founder of benefits management, has long been championing a move from evaluations based on cost to evaluations based on value. This shift is signalled by “Strategic Action Five: Investing optimally”
Government will invest optimally by targeting ICT investment to the areas that deliver the greatest value and enable a better, more effective implementation of policy decisions.
This is a much more mature approach to investment and promotes alignment with the Government’s priorities. Value is well defined by the IT Governance Institute in their ValIT framework: “value is defined as the total life-cycle benefits net of related costs, adjusted for risk and (in the case of financial value) for the time value of money.” Under this priority, programme and portfolio management will become more crucial and cloud computing options will be considered.
Improvements that Could be Made
By no means is this a perfect vision. There are a number of improvements that could be made. Some of these are cosmetic like including better quality images and capitalising the word “use” within the title to show that it’s being used as a noun and not a verb. Other improvements that could be considered are to give more thought to measures and KPIs for the success criteria of each action. By being more specific with these criteria the current baseline measures can be quantified and the Government will have a good basis for determining future areas to focus on. It wouldalso be great to see the AGIMO putting some more thought into governance of programmes of work that are large from an individual organisation perspective, but don’t meet the criteria to be forced to undergo a two-pass process or a Gateway review.
Overall this is a great document from AGIMO and I encourage you to take the time to read it for yourself and submit your own feedback.
