Why every public servant now needs to be an 'IT person'

Surf's up — it’s time to ride the wave of the latest management fad! For some, digital government might appear to be just that, but they would be wrong.

For some, digital government is no more than a new spin on the old e-government story. Some may even assume that if they just keep their head down long enough, this latest wave of change will wash over, so they can go on with business as usual.

But digital government is a growing world trend and it is not about to go away. It is a logical consequence of fundamental changes in what the community has come to expect from contemporary government.

Like it or not, community attitudes have changed. In other industry sectors, these changes have already driven a substantial shift in the way people buy and consume goods and services.

Online shopping has transformed the competitive landscape of retail and entertainment. ­Mobile apps are disrupting highly regulated industries such as taxis and transport. Banking has already changed substantially, and there are many more changes to come as new players compete for mobile payments. It is unreasonable to expect the government sector to be immune from such fundamental market forces.

A number of standout agencies are already driving innovation and change, but many agencies are still slogging away as internal commodity service providers.

Digital government will require more substantial change than just inserting the word “digital” into existing project descriptions and job titles. Community attitudes have changed. Smartphone take-up in the Australian community is already more than 80 per cent, and mobile devices are being used for increasingly complex interactions.

Consumers are no longer content to put up with ineffective services, even if they are delivered online. In some extreme situations, citizens have worked out how to game the system to get around what they may see as an ineffective government service.

The challenge now is to channel all that latent ingenuity into new digital services, rather than deny their existence.

Every enterprise must become a digital enterprise. Those old artificial boundaries between the business and IT hardly make sense. There was a time when an executive could claim “I’m not an IT person”, while confidently expecting sage nods of agreement. Now everybody is an IT person.

Kevin Noonan is Ovum’s public sector technology research director

This piece was first published on The Australian.