Government Digital Strategy

Mr PICTON (Kaurna) (15:24): My question is to the Minister for the Public Sector. Can the minister inform the house about the development and implementation of the state government's digital strategy?

The Hon. S.E. CLOSE (Port Adelaide—Minister for Manufacturing and Innovation, Minister for Automotive Transformation, Minister for the Public Sector) (15:24): Members will be aware that we have a strategy known as SA Connected, which is the digital strategy for this government to address the changes in the world that we all have to deal with in the form of digital developments. We have a number of activities and strategies that sit within that, and I would like to bring the house up-to-date with some of those in answer to the question.

For example, we have an annual Open Data Day, where we invite industry and digital entrepreneurs to showcase their work using publicly available government datasets. The recent Unleashed awards night, which I was very delighted to be a part of, is a national celebration of open data which demonstrates what South Australians can do when we come together to share knowledge and collaborate to innovate, with our participation being the largest in the nation. So, being less than 8 per cent of the population, we had the largest participation in the GovHack, which is known in South Australia as Unleashed. We had more than 155 participants entering with 38 projects. We also had a presence in the regions.

There are many examples of standout digital initiatives available, such as the successful rollout of real-time passenger information for buses, trams and trains. For businesses, the My Invoice website has been launched so that business people can track the payment status of an invoice they have lodged with government. The yourSAy consultation website invites the community to let us know what data they want released, and to collaborate on the development of open data principles for the SA government.

The South Australian iAwards acknowledge outstanding productivity and innovation in ICT. SAPOL was recognised this year for its innovative use of ICT, winning the inaugural Premier’s iAward for its mobile fingerprint scanning solution that verifies the identification of 'persons of interest' at a crime scene.

Through the focus of SA Connected on developing mobile apps and open data, we are shifting from an e-government model that focused on updating websites to a strategy that makes government services digital by default. By continuing to open up non-sensitive government-held data, we are also giving local digital entrepreneurs the opportunity to build and commercialise their own applications. South Australia is well placed to lead the new digital agenda.

An important point of difference with other states lies in South Australia’s detailed consultations with business and communities and the way South Australia actively collaborates with the federal government, other state governments and industry on digital service delivery.

NEC Australia was recently awarded a nearly $70 million contract to manage, maintain and support the central and local data networks of all state government agencies. These services are being delivered from NEC’s recently established control centre here in Adelaide, ensuring that those jobs will stay in South Australia.

This whole-of-government arrangement will help to underpin our broader objective of delivering better ICT outcomes for all South Australians. We are also developing a cloud technology policy that focuses on providing stronger advice to agencies. This policy will underpin our ICT strategy and play a central role in our approach to digitising government services.

The policy will go out to state government agencies for consultation at the end of this month. It will then go out for industry consultation in late November. In the meantime, the Office of the Chief Information Officer will continue, as it always has, to support agencies to take advantage of the various cloud-based solutions.