As providers of services that Australian citizens rely on every day, state government technology leaders in 2024 must balance the need to improve citizen services against operating in a climate of fiscal restraint.

According to vice president and research analyst for public sector and government at Gartner, Dean Lacheca, this challenge is further compounded by two factors –the fact that many are operating systems that are well past their prime, and the need to constantly uplift their cyber defence capabilities.

"Cyber security remains an overarching trend in terms of mindset and expenditure," Lacheca said.

The modernisation imperative

The need to modernise is especially acute within healthcare, where systems outages can have life-threatening consequences.

As a veteran of digital hospital developments in Queensland, Victoria, and South Australia, Rod Sprenger has enjoyed the enviable position of building hospital IT infrastructure from the ground up, but has also witnessed numerous examples elsewhere of technology investments falling victim to cost cutting.

"As costs escalate the first thing that gets cut is the IT budget, so today, we are not funding adequately the digital health cost in hospitals," Sprenger said.

"We have a lot of hospitals that are sweating their assets for as long as they can. I see Windows Server 2000, and some with Windows NT. This is 25-year-old operating systems on frontline servers in use today."

Despite the challenge of fiscal restraint, state government departments around Australia are making progress in the battle to modernise.

At the Public Transport Authority of Western Australia, CIO Russell Taylor described a slew of projects undertaken in the past year, including updated audit and risk systems, improved remote working and HR services, and upgrades to radio systems and payment options, with data and applications next in line for enhancement.

But his greatest challenge?

Seeking refuge in the cloud

For many state departments, relief from the challenges of service improvement and cost control is being found in the cloud.

At the Department for Infrastructure and Transport in South Australia, CIO Richard Hill said cloud is being used to maximise return on investment by delivering agility, scale, and flexibility.

"Through this last year we have moved and re-platformed a significant number of our applications, improving security and performance, and have continued moving data into our data lake to deliver services for data and analytics," Hill said.

The result has been that over recent years the department's ability to build insights and improve the quality of decisions has been transformed through better access and management of data.

Hill said cloud transformation will proceed over the next 12 months as the Department seeks to take advantage of cloud native services by using container orchestrators and microservices to

create composable architecture patterns. The Department has also tapped into another technology trend - low code development to support a citizen developer strategy – as part of an overall workforce transformation program.

"The way the workforce now undertakes their roles from a technology standpoint is unrecognisable from five years ago," Hill said.

"Obviously COVID prompted a rapid adoption of tools that enable home working. However, we've since consolidated some of our department's buildings into a new office in the Adelaide CBD that, from a technology perspective, we designed to enable flexible and collaborative working.

"We are now largely digital for everything we do and have fantastic enabling technologies for collaboration, virtual meetings, and mobile working."

The cloud is also finding support at the NSW Department of Planning, Housing, and Infrastructure (DPHI), which has opted for a multi-cloud solution including a private cloud presence.

"The ongoing task for the DPHI cloud team has been managing the growth of customer data," said chief technology officer Jon Straker.

"Subsequently, the DPHI technology teams have developed a series of guiding architectural principles related to hosting and data storage, specifically around the transformation of application hosting to more “serverless” platforms.

"DPHI’s customers are now chasing highly scalable, secure, and resilient storage at the lowest possible cost with the growth being driven by the world of Big Data."

Reaching all citizens

Moving data to the cloud is of little value however if it can't be accessed, and for some government departments, geography can quickly work against them.

At the Queensland Department of Education, one of its most significant projects has been the dramatic upgrade of bandwidth to schools.

According to the Department's assistant director-general and CIO Michael O’Leary, the network has been upgraded from an average of 25 kbps per student to an average of 1.59 Mbps per student, with the goal of reaching an average of 5 Mbps per student by 2026.

One of the key enablers has been use of internet over low orbit satellite.

"This has been a real game changer for these more remote centres, allowing them more equitable access to some of the tools and services that schools in the more populated centres can access," O'Leary said.

This work has supported the deployment of a new learning management system, and upgrades to school IT infrastructure to better utilise the additional bandwidth.

AI for the people

But of all the trends on the minds of state government IT executives, none is talked about as much as AI.

At the Public Transport Authority of Western Australia, CIO Taylor said his team is looking closely at where AI will be able to support operations, such as by improving passenger experience, cybersecurity, and business optimisation.

At NSW's DPHI, AI is playing a role in the infrastructure layer, with CTO Straker reporting that AI is monitoring the storage of data relating to everything from koala populations to drone footage of sharks.

"A highly valuable use of AI within DPHI’s data storage services is applying machine learning to monitor volume workload activity plus data entropy to automatically detect ransomware infections," Straker said.

And at the SA Department for Infrastructure and Transport, CIO Richard Hill said his team has found success by applying automation to corporate processes. But his investigations of AI extend beyond its technical implications, to also consider its responsible application within government services, including its security implications.

"Currently my team are working on a roadmap for automation and AI to consider how we best take advantage of these technologies as they continue to evolve as a combined capability," Hill said.

An education in AI capabilities

The implications of AI are also being examined closely at the Queensland Department of Education.

"We will be trialling some AI-based technologies leveraging work already undertaken by the Queensland Government with their QChat solution," O'Leary said.

"We will be looking at how to support schools wishing to undertake eSports in a safe, secure, and ethical manner. This will be in partnership with our schools understanding the implications for curriculum and wellbeing."

He cautioned that the Department's desire to foster innovation within schools must always ensure that the cybersecurity and cyber safety of schools, staff, and students is paramount.

"The IT world is evolving and transforming at such a rapid pace, and we are endeavouring to keep abreast of the changes and seize opportunities to maximise their potential impacts on the delivery of quality outcomes in our schools," he said.