Services Australia is to carry out a giant overhaul of its entire IT architecture over 10 years following a comprehensive review.
The agency has mustered a nine-person taskforce – which includes CIDO Charles McHardie, Defence CIO Chris Crozier, other agency executives and an undisclosed external advisor – to develop a 10-year ICT architecture strategy and plan by June 2025.
A document, released just before Christmas under freedom of information and sighted by iTnews, shows that the year-long review of Services Australia’s IT landscape and “long-term ICT architecture strategy” came out of an external review of the agency’s “budget efficiency”.
This has been further contextualised by a capability review [pdf], released yesterday, which lauded the forthcoming architecture strategy as an important step towards modernising systems at Services Australia.
While the agency is meeting key targets around digital systems availability and self-service, the capability review identified a broad need for IT modernisation.
It counselled against future large-scale modernisation programs, which were “costly, high risk and can take years to implement”, and favoured progressive modernisation “using new software architectures and cloud infrastructure”.
“While some re-platforming may still be required, significant architectural improvements can be achieved progressively, continually delivering new functionality,” the capability review said.
If Services Australia carries out a progressive uplift, it can continue to run its legacy systems in parallel with new solutions, ensuring it “maintains agility to keep pace with emerging technology”.
The capability review also noted that any uplift should take note of “important lessons” from recent uplifts to other systems, such as the seven-year welfare payments infrastructure transformation (WPIT).
Such an uplift would also need to occur “hand-in-hand” with other agencies that rely on Services Australia’s IT systems through shared-services arrangements. It would also require the agency to secure ongoing funding.
Clunky
The capability review found dissatisfaction among the agency’s employees and external stakeholders with IT systems.
Some 62 percent of staff polled for the capability review “identified that ICT was an area the agency should be focusing on to improve in the future.”
“This was the most selected of the 27 options for this question in the survey,” the capability review stated.
“Legacy systems have done the job for many years but are now increasingly impeding the agency and its staff from moving forward to find further efficiencies and innovations to deliver its programs and services.”
In particular, it was noted that while technology is currently meeting staff’s “essential needs”, they are “frustrated’ by having to use multiple systems to deliver services to customers”.
External stakeholders, meanwhile, referred to the systems as “clunky”, “monolithic” and having “lots of sticky tape on [them]”.
One internal stakeholder also noted the number of “disaggregated systems that don’t talk to one another and a number of implementations where intended benefits were not realised”.
Keeping pace
The architecture review also comes as Services Australia attempts to improve its front-end experience for customers, including digital service availability and a “tell us once” principle.
Part of this, according to the capability review, means “ensuring automation and emerging technology such as AI are enablers for employee productivity and improved services”.
New technology will also play a key role in Services Australia’s ‘customer 360-degree strategy and service model’, which aims to provide “an easy-to-use digital ‘front door’” for users.
“It is too early to assess the success of this initiative, but the review sees it as a positive step towards developing a more coordinated agency-wide approach to customer-centred services including digital services,” the capability review added.