The federal government currently operates in silos, with Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) chief Randall Brugeaud likening it to the way individual cities and towns design, buy, and build their own water, electricity, and mobile networks and their own infrastructure such as roads and public transport, as well as buildings.
"This makes sense for each city or town in isolation, but when they need to connect and share services or support the movement of people into neighbouring towns, it becomes more problematic," he said.
"Currently, the [Australian Public Service] is made up of a large number of cities and towns."
Speaking at his agency's own Digital Summit on Thursday, Brugeaud said while in the short term, it is simpler for each city or town to continue to operate independently, the approach is siloed, fragmented, and inefficient, and creates issues in the longer term.
"It also creates friction, frustration, and inconvenience for the people in need to access these services," he said.
Drawing the analogy back to the Australian Public Service (APS), he said with around 180 cities and towns operating at the Commonwealth level, complexity is furthered when state and territory governments, with their own cities and towns, are added to the mix.
"Many operating in perfect isolation with no visibility of what might be happening just around the corner," Brugeaud said.
"We can't possibly operate like that. We can't possibly operate in the fragmented manner in which IT and technology acquisition, procurement, and deployment have evolved over the last 25 years," Department of Home Affairs secretary Mike Pezzullo said, building on the statistician cum digital transformation chief's analogy.
"We need a rapid paradigm shift … we have to get our act together."
Pezzullo discussed how exactly the government hoped to achieve this, focusing on three elements: Cyber, data,