The NSW Department of Planning, Housing and Infrastructure (DPHI) is transforming its digital systems and embracing AI to support reforms that aim to increase housing supply in the state.
NSW DPHI’s Nerida Mooney, on the far right, at Pega Innovate.
Speaking at Pega Innovate in Melbourne, executive director for digital and customer Nerida Mooney said the system changes were necessary in light of an overhaul of NSW planning laws, billed as the most significant reform in five decades.
The overhauled laws passed both houses of parliament last week.
“With that reform will come a requirement to transform our digital systems,” Mooney said.
“Particularly as new pathways and new workflows open up, we will have to adapt and transform really quickly.
“It will become important that digital is core to how we transform and how we implement those reforms.”
DPHI is working to a two-year feature and technology roadmap that the department said is intended to “uplift … capabilities for the NSW Planning Portal and improve processes”.
Activities under the roadmap are expected to be completed before the end of 2027.
Among work already completed, the department upgraded the Pega technology that underpins its ‘Major Projects’ and ‘NSW Planning’ portals in August, moving from version 8.6 to 24.
The Pega upgrade is one of the first core upgrades, and means DPHI can now use newer features and capabilities in the platform – notably around AI – that it was previously prevented from adopting.
In addition to core technology, inefficient processes are also in line for transformation.
“As well as a housing shortage in Australia, there is also a critical lack of skilled planners,” Mooney said.
“That is problematic because we can get as many [planning] applications into the pipeline, [but] if they can’t be assessed by a skilled planner, then we still haven’t resolved the planning crisis.”
Initially, DPHI is hoping AI can take on some repetitive but “basic admin tasks” that normally fall to planners, but isn’t a good use of their time.
This includes ensuring they only see planning applications that are ready to be assessed.
“One of the things that happens today is if you put in a planning application and the wrong are files attached, or the name’s wrong, or the scale’s wrong, a planner will look at that, assess it and then send it back to you,” Mooney said.
“Ideally, we want to intervene in that process to have only mature development applications that have met the criteria be passed through to a senior planner.
“In that way, we are using the limited resources we have in the best way possible, but we’re also creating a better experience for customers because there is nothing more frustrating than putting in an application and then finding out in a month’s time it’s unsuccessful.”
Mooney suggested another use of AI could be as decision support for the planners.
By referencing existing data in the planning portal, Mooney said that an AI could point out the prospect of an application succeeding.
It could also potentially suggest ways to enhance the application or to take a different path “that might actually lead to a better outcome”/
In this scenario, it’s envisioned that planners would have “more information that helps them make better decisions.”
Mooney said that the NSW spatial digital twin could play a bigger role in assessing whether policy changes are having a measurable impact on housing availability.
“All the information that we get from the planning portal, we will feed [into] the digital twin and use the AI models to create insights so we can actually see in real time and for the future what the policy decisions we’ve just announced are actually doing in NSW,” Mooney said.
“Have we built more houses? Are they truly in livable spaces? Are they close to transportation?
“It helps us make better policy over time because we can see the kind of things that work and how quickly they do work.”
Mooney noted that not all transformation-related activity would be months-long or a heavy lift.
She highlighted the department’s incorporation of Pega Co-Browse into a customer service operation, where the department assists applicants to get past roadblocks in the planning process.
“We had a real problem with our customer service. We had more than 7000 calls sitting on the backlog, and it was taking 36 days to get a ticket resolved – an unacceptable experience,” she said.
“In our business-as-usual call centres, how the process used to work is you would call an agent and then you’d take a photo of your screen and email it to us. Then, we’d look at it, and email back how you fix that, and then you’d move to the next step [of the planning process].”
Using Co-Browse, applicants can share their screen with the agent and get answers much sooner.
“The ability to see what customers were seeing was transformational for us,” Mooney said.
“Eighty-five (85) percent of tickets are now resolved in a single daybecause we’re able to see what the customer sees, we’re able to tell them what’s going to come next and what they need to do.”
Transformation-as-usual
While the NSW planning reforms are driving fresh transformation activity and technology investment at DPHI, Mooney said the department has worked to create a culture where transformation is no longer treated as “an event or as a program” of work.
“We have had to adopt a ‘transformation-as-BAU’ attitude, because if you treat transformation as something that happens once and you’re waiting for a big event to roll out that transformative thinking, then what you will do is as soon as that event’s over, you’ll slide back into your old ways,” she said.
“We have really had to change the way we think about transformation. It’s progressive, integrated into the culture, [and] part of good governance.”
While noting the delicate balance of pursuing transformation in government – the desire to be innovative, but also the overarching need to deliver when spending public money – Mooney was of the opinion that a certain amount of risk is unavoidable.
“We have real diligence in the way that we spend public money, but if you don’t challenge hard enough, and if you succeed every time, you’re probably not pushing that envelope quite far enough,” she said.
“I think strategically, once you get your head around that you’re going to test more, you’re going to try more, you’re going to ask more questions about the status quo, that is [something] in any transformation project that leads to better outcomes.”