NSW government sets IT investment guidelines for agencies
The New South Wales government has released a policy to help its agencies make better IT investment and strategic planning decisions.
According to NSW Minister for Finance and Services Andrew Constance, the ICT Investment Policy and Guidelines (PDF) has been designed to ensure that better services are delivered to the public and to drive better value for money from the government's AU$2 billion annual investment in IT.
"It embraces a whole-of-government process to make sure agencies take full advantage of industry trends in consuming ICT 'as a service' or cloud-based delivery models for better value, flexibility, and reliability," he said.
In the guidelines, two key responsibilities have been set out for the NSW government IT board. The first is to support the transition of IT investment to be sustainable, shared, and to take a standardised approach, and the second is to ensure that investment processes support effective and efficient delivery of the government's IT objectives through early consideration of different sourcing strategies.
"The framework is designed to minimise duplication and support common approaches that promote efficiencies across government," Constance said.
"Importantly, the ICT Investment Policy and Guidelines will help ensure government-held information is managed in a consistent way to deliver better services to the community."
Constance also said the new approach will support and enable the development and delivery of more innovative and inclusive services across New South Wales.
"The NSW government will increasingly look to standardise the services we offer," he said. "The Service NSW portal 'one-stop shop' is just one example of how we are providing residents and businesses with better access to a range of government services."
Constance said the new guidelines would also help agencies take advantage of recent reforms made to the NSW ICT Strategy, which saw the introduction of 36 new actions that were implemented last September.