VIDEO: Tom Burton talks with Kerry Purcell, the Managing Director for IBM Australia and New Zealand, about what government can learn from big business on digital transformation.
Tom: Just talking then about the lessons or learnings from the commercial world, we’ve seen big companies like Telstra, Westpac and others really make this transformation journey, from your own observations what are the learnings that we can pull from that back to government? What can government leaders learn from those environments?
Kerry: I think there are two or three things. One is it has to be led from the top, and we’ve seen that in Australian blue chip companies. We see it in some government agencies, and so having a champion at the top is probably one critical ingredient.
The other ingredient is building an environment that enables, in a more open way both the government agencies to work together and work with the private sector, will be the second thing. So building an open environment, which I think the Digital Transmission Office, working in collaboration with the state initiative is already underway. That will be a catalyst to that.
The third one is really the technology enablement. Demanding solutions rather than point products and having this fragmented, slice and dice solutions, give me one solution to take that addresses healthcare and I mean the big H of healthcare, social services, department of health or anything to do with medical health claims for example. Building those ecosystems that will have clear, clearly designed and well thought out business solutions.
Tom: So don’t see digital just as a website, but see it much more as an industrial change exercise.”
Kerry: Yeah, that scalable, that can address the scope across states and across federal, but can scale to the Australian population.
Tom: Finally, Kerry we’ve got a lot of agencies well advanced but we got a long list to still study hard in that journey. Have you got any tips or observations for agencies that are starting on this journey, how can they accelerate their progress into the space?
Kerry: Well I think the first thing to do is look at your strategy around systems of engagement. How are you engaging with citizens today? And then figuring out what is the road map, this comes back to the design thinking. What is the road map that gets me to this outcome? Where are you today? Just as we all do with in our own business, where are we today? Where do we want to be and where are we today? And what are those steps we need to take? And building that around the citizens, around the customer or the citizen.
In our business we are really passionate about that, I’m really passionate about that. So you can’t just talk about it. You have to be seen to be doing it, making changes for the customer, being seen to be much more agile. But firstly, focusing on the design thinking that says “Here’s the end game. Here’s where we are today and here’s the road map.” And building that sort of agile thinking into everything around that citizen experience.
Tom: Thank you very much, Kerry.
Kerry: Great. Thanks Tom, it’s been great. Thank you.
