The AGA plays an essential role in supporting agencies as they plan and deliver the government’s future digital and ICT investments. It is implemented through close integration with the Investment Oversight Framework (IOF).
Agencies preparing new proposals should contact the DTA at investment@dta.gov.au at the earliest opportunity to seek advice on meeting the Government’s digital and ICT policies, as described at Digital and ICT investments.
In every state of the IOF, the AGA provides:
- architectural guidance that agencies must or should adhere to when developing and implementing digital and ICT solutions
- a common language of business capabilities to improve government’s ability to collaborate and streamline digital service delivery
- economies of scale by enabling shared services across Government
- mechanisms for strategic use of emerging technologies to better manage core Government functions.
Strategic Planning
Defines the Government’s digital and ICT-enabled investment portfolio, it’s future objectives and identifies capability gaps.
The AGA promotes the agreed objectives of government’s digital agenda and aligns this with its digital policy environment. It also helps guide agencies toward achieving these objectives.
The AGA will further facilitate input into strategic planning. By drawing on information from other states of the IOF to inform where digital investment has resulted in progressive changes to the digital and ICT landscape through:
- reduced duplication
- closing key capability gaps
- addressing critical systems risk.
This feedback cycle will ensure that strategic objectives remain current to focus efforts toward the highest value areas in a changing digital and ICT landscape.
Prioritisation
Prioritises the digital and ICT-enabled investments across government by producing a pipeline against a pre-determined set of criteria
The AGA supports the prioritisation of the investment pipeline for individual Budget cycles by providing structured guidance on risk, duplication, and capability gaps across government. In particular, the AGA provides insights on:
- duplication of existing ICT assets across the digital landscape
- duplication of investments within known proposals
- potential uplift of proposals in support of improved cross-agency coordination and interoperability.
These insights will further assist the identification of priority investments that will best address advancing whole of government (WofG) digital capability.
The AGA also supports the development and maintenance of a prioritised 10-year investment pipeline view, by:
- providing sequencing input on migration of legacy assets to identified WofG standards or reusable designs
- informing advice on which agencies are best placed to co-design new proposals to maximise future reuse.
Contestability
Ensures proposals are robust and meet whole-of-government digital standards prior to government consideration
The AGA acts as a consolidated and concise digital policy suite that clearly articulates the requirements for digital investments, as well as standards and designs to facilitate better reuse across the Commonwealth. It provides a succinct representation of what is expected of digital investments, why these expectations exist and how requirements should be met. It also supports a transparent baseline from which the DTA is able to offer clear advice to government on the suitability of proposed digital investments.
The AGA will be informed by feedback from the Contestability process, particularly through:
- exemptions to existing policies and standards
- the identification of new and emerging areas of investment, where additional guidance and guardrails are required.
Assurance
Provides assurance to the Government that investments are on-track to deliver expected benefits
The AGA provides clear requirements that help identify projects at risk of diverging from strategic outcomes, integration or WofG interoperability.
These requirements:
- strategy
- policy
- standards
guide what investment proposals must deliver against, during implementation, to ensure benefits are then realised.
The AGA policy will also provide a mechanism for the Secretaries Digital Committee to take an active role in identifying and mitigating risks through the exemption request process, and a lever to drive greater WofG collaboration and coordination through assurance.
Sourcing
Ensures Government obtains the best value for money from digital and ICT-enabled investments
The AGA provides an approach for agencies to leverage established procurement pathways for digital investments that ensure standardisation and reuse. This includes coordinated procurements and shared services arrangements. It also enables visibility of best practices that increase efficiencies in completing sourcing arrangements.
The AGA will also be informed by the usage of these pathways, which offer insights into the availability of private sector resourcing that will drive better sequencing and prioritisation of digital investments.
Operations
Is a direct feedback loop of the successes and areas to improve the AGA and the content that guides agency investments in digital
The AGA will continue to be developed as a contributory architecture. The DTA will be the steward for agencies and industry as they contribute best practice approaches in delivering digital initiatives; informed by operations and real world usage.