Federal Government Agency​

Challenge

A federal government agency identified and demonstrated use cases where Cloud capabilities could transform the ability of the Agency to quickly meet the needs of government.  However, the services were built in largely the same manner as existing IT services. It was recognised that if the Agency wished to have the new capabilities replace existing on-premise capabilities the platform itself would need to evolve both in terms of Consumer Experience but also delivery approach from the initial, tactical approach that had been used so far.

Approach

DigiRen approached the problem in three stages:

1. The ‘Consumer Experience’ of using the new capabilities was documented. This tracked the interactions a user would have from having no knowledge of the platform, through to being on-boarded and using the service, to no longer needing the service and being off-boarded. DigiRen looked to understand what improvements could be made to the user experience that would make the platform a more attractive environment to use. Key to this approach was the use of the ‘Crossing the Chasm’ model of product development that looks to understand different sections of the potential user base and understand different requirements and expectations.  A range of improvements were then documented and proposed in response, such as improved knowledge management, self-service capabilities and data import capabilities.
2. The Operating Model the Agency used to deliver the platform was analysed to understand what constraints this placed on the development and consumption of the platform. This involved looking at both team structures, responsibilities, development approaches and adoption of modern ways of working such as Agile. The traditional operating model in place resulted in high levels of manual SME delivery. This worked well in the early stages of the platform development which     required high levels of collaboration and ‘tribal knowledge’, however it would not allow the platform to scale beyond a limited number of initial use cases and users. DigiRen provided guidance and recommendations for new structures, roles and workflows, in particular, a range of business management functions (‘Cloud Business Office’) to optimise the model. This new Operating Model was designed to ensure the platform evolved to a much more responsive and consumer-focused state.
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3. Finally, these recommendations were translated into a request for additional funding for the next stage of development. DigiRen supported the development of a New Policy Proposal (NPP) submission for the 2024 financial year.  This included supporting the costing and documentation for the requested investment.

Outcomes

This work helped define the forward roadmap and vision for the new platform and supported the process of obtaining Commonwealth Government funding for the next stage of development.

The Agency technology leadership were taken on the journey of understanding the requirement for ‘Product-led’ thinking for their platform, creating standardised capabilities upon which products and services can be built. To drive further adoption beyond initial tactical use cases the product-led thinking supports continuous improvement in terms of features, functions and performance. Ongoing product management provides a critical set of capabilities to do this. DigiRen created the documentation required for the Agency technology leadership to understand the support this significant change in thinking about the nature of their technology delivery.

Secondly, the Agency were provided with an improved sense of how their People – organisation, capability, motivation - could impact the adoption of the platform. The Agency recognised that the existing structure used to deliver IT could not provide the agility or scale that the organisation would need in the future. The Agency does however, have a highly educated on technically literate workforce. The DigiRen work showed how both organisational changes and capability uplifts could transform the ability of central teams to deliver the platform and business teams to build and support their own workloads.

Finally, the work was able to help the Agency obtain the investment and funding needed to support ongoing development of the platform. The NPP submission was approved in July 2023, and the new phase 2 program commenced later in the same year. An entire project stream – ‘Industrialisation’ – was committed to developing and introducing the new capabilities recommended in the DigiRen work.

Ethical Behaviour

The Agency wanted to ‘democratise’ the use of technology in the wider environment whilst retaining the governance controls that should be used to protect privacy. This meant looking beyond the initial cadre of technologically savvy users, but instead considering all the users in the environment and what they would require.

The DigiRen work challenged the Agency to think holistically around the users in their environment and avoid excluding tranches of their workforce whilst also maintaining the required controls to ensure corporate standards were met.

Sustainability

The DigiRen work aimed to move the Agency capabilities from loosely-linked, short-term ‘Project’ capabilities to a more strategic capability. The platform needed to adopt much greater levels of automation, repeatability and consumer experience than was currently included. This would allow the organisation to sustain the platform with much lower reliance on individual people and higher reliance on code.

The adoption of a Cloud-based platform would have a range of improved environment impacts as existing, inefficient, on-premises platforms could be retired as migration to Cloud picked up in response to the new capabilities.