Wednesday, 23 May 2012
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Citizen Engagement, Connected Government, Digital Inclusion, E-Government, Government Cloud, Policy
Queensland GCIO makes tough calls on policy
Professor Peter Grant, Queensland’s Government Chief Information Officer (GCIO), says the state’s ICT strategy will support responsible government. His current role involves fine-tuning Queensland’s whole-of-government ICT direction.
This whole-of-government approach is the first of its kind in Australia, according to Queensland’s minister for technology and communication, Simon Finn.
“This new role will have a mandate to make the tough calls on Queensland’s ICT policy development. It will have enough clout to drive change, innovation, and develop strong ICT infrastructure.”
Professor Grant says his latest challenge is to embrace innovation, avoid duplication and deliver citizen-centric services.
Queensland’s CEO-style model of ICT governance differs from GCIOs in other states. “In the past, we were linked to another agency; now we stand as a single group, supported by over 100 staff.”
This model incorporates a hands-on approach to ICT project implementation, at the same time, ensuring multiple agencies are not all doing the same thing.
Agencies need informed and timely decisions about ICT procurement, while delivering value-for-money from technology upgrades, he observes.
Professor Grant’s current role places an emphasis on governance, while ensuring that high-profile technology projects work for agencies. Governance is critical to the success of policy reforms.
Professor Grant’s current role sees a separation from the Queensland Government’s service delivery area.
He does not see his latest role as a revisit of earlier government jobs – but rather building on long-standing government and industry skills and capabilities.
He previously held GCIO roles within the Queensland government during 2005-2008; among these, with the Department of Public Works, Queensland Health and the Department of Main Roads and Transport.
Among recent innovations, Queensland agencies are expanding the use of cloud services. These services incorporate infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS), and more recently, software-as-a-service (SaaS).
“The big advantage of the cloud is that it can be on a server that we can readily access,” he says.
A cloud platform enables agencies to use the amount of data storage as and when needed without the overheads.
Professor Grant says that for Queensland “broadband is a given.” The state government is fast-tracking investments in high-speed, fast-access communications under a 4-year rollout.
Broadband communications will support peer-to-peer collaboration, digital literacy, emergency management and government service delivery.
On the healthcare front, Queensland is expanding its web-based browser-access services to include clinicians and other medical practitioners.
This browser-interface replaces paper-based records, enabling clinicians to analyse discharge summaries and other patient-care data from their desktops.
Following recent devastating floods and cyclones, Queensland is building its emergency management and disaster recovery information-sharing capabilities.
This effort is supported by a command-and-control centre that connects teams through news feeds, webcam conversations, and real-time downloads of changing weather patterns.
This centre is opening up 24-hour communications between weather tracking agencies, emergency management staff, first-responder teams, police, ambulance and hospital staff, and communities in affected areas.
In relation to IT skills development, Queensland’s graduate training program includes an “ICT’s Most-Wanted” initiative, says Professor Grant.
This initiative builds on project management, business analysis and enterprise architecture capabilities.
Each year, a recruitment drive narrows the search for talent to 30-50 candidates from more than 500 applicants. Finalists can enrol in a university training program. They are later assigned to government agencies at competitive salaries.
Since 2007, this program has escalated graduate training, in partnership with educational institutions and the industry.
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2 Comments
On 20 February 2012 mike wrote:
Qld is not different from other States the Giovernance model applied is very similar and once again focuses on the things buereaucrats are good at governance and policy. For once lets have a real implementation strategy that wiill really improve how ICT supports citizens and the business. The biggest initiative noted is Cloud Computing well I have news for Professor Grant everyone is doing this and has been for the last 10 years. The reality is that until actual responsibility and authority is devolved to a central group to achieve change very little happens. Qld is not alone here virtually every state from trhe Federal Government to NSW is in the same position. Shuffling paper and the deck chairs does not constitute innocation.
On 29 February 2012 Dr Steve Hodgkinson wrote:
The big danger for Queensland at this point is the hubris of the whole-of-government CIO. Vivek Kundra's visit to Australia a few weeks ago was a breath of fresh air, as I discuss in my article on Ovum's Straight Talk:
http://ovum.com/2012/02/23/visionary-government-executives-need-to-rediscover-their-ict-mojo/
In recent years the government ICT dialogue has become dominated by whole-of-government win-lose arm-wrestling between agencies in the pursuit of economies of scale and standardization in the ICT plumbing. The Gershon Review of federal government ICT spending and a number of similar reviews in state governments have turned ICT into a problem rather than an opportunity, a cost to be minimized rather than an enabler of transformation to be leveraged and driven hard. In addition, too many of the resulting whole-of-government procurement and shared services strategies and major ICT projects have either been total failures or have yielded disappointing results.
The result has been that ministers and senior agency executives have tended to “run for cover” on ICT strategy, seeing little political capital or promotion prospects in being associated with a high-risk, high-maintenance, expensive, “problem child”.
Kundra’s visit, with his focus on service delivery outcomes, capitalist economy cloud-sourcing strategies, and the need to use sunlight as a disinfectant for moribund procurement and management practices, is a timely reminder of the need to focus on the bigger picture and on the need for speed and action. It is time for Australian governments to wake up from their preoccupation with inward-looking “socialist economy” thinking on ICT.
ICT is an essential catalyst for innovation in 21st century government, not a scarce resource to be rationed and centrally controlled. Visionary executives need to seize the reins of ICT procurement from the hands of process-bound bureaucrats. They could then start driving policy and service delivery innovation by sourcing modern ICT services from a dynamic and efficient “capitalist economy” ICT market available on tap from a cloud near you.