Published on the 04/08/2016 | Written by Beverley Head
Digital Transformation Office unveils report card for government services…
Just after its one year anniversary the DTO has unveiled an early version of its Performance Dashboard, intended to provide Government and citizens with transparency about the quality of services that they are receiving. It’s a nice idea – but at this stage the dashboard features just three services.
One of the three is the all-important myGov service – essentially the portal to Federal Government online services. The other two are the Australian Citizenship appointment booking service and the Hobby or Business tool dashboard.
At a time when the Government is copping flak over the performance of the Australian Bureau of Statistics regarding the looming census and related privacy concerns, and the Tax Office’s ability to deal with online tax reporting which is being sorely tested, the Performance Dashboard has focused initially on low hanging fruit.
In the long term however – as more agencies sign up to the service and provide data – it will provide an idea of how well the Government is performing, and where additional resources need to be applied.
Government departments are now required to report on four key performance indicators about their digital services, namely user satisfaction, digital takeup, completion rates and cost per transaction. Over time it should be possible to track improvements and also benchmark agencies against one another, and eventually against international peers.
Already there are some interesting insights from just the three services. The myGov dashboard for example notes that there are now 9.3 million myGov accounts, with most users accessing Centrelink ATO and Medicare services from the portal. Meanwhile Chrome, Safari and Mozilla are the three most popular internet browsers used to access the service.
DTO chief Paul Shetler, commenting on the progress of the organisation in its first year, nominated the Performance Dashboard as one of the important outputs from those 12 months along with the digital service standard, a prototype of GOV.AU, an early version of the digital marketplace which is intended to smooth the way for private enterprise to work with government, and the transition of some services to the government cloud.
It has also set up delivery hubs in Canberra and Sydney that can work alongside Government departments to scope and craft new digital services, and signed a memorandum of understanding with the UK’s Government Digital Service to underpin collaboration efforts.
