Credit: Supplied
The Victorian state government has laid out its plans to spend over $400 million on digital initiatives by 2025-26 in its latest Budget, with approximately $173.5 million earmarked for 2022-23.
According to the state’s Budget papers for 2022-23, the bulk of the government's spend will go towards the Department of Premier and Cabinet’s digital strategy and transformation, at $115.7 million.
Of this, $63.2 million will be given to Service Victoria to provide more digital services with “new channels for simple and fast interactions with government”, with another $23.3 million to be spent in this area in 2023-24.
The upcoming financial year will also see $4.4 million spent on whole of government data for the state government's Insights Victoria platform, the monitoring and reporting of public health and mobility trends, as well as the use of cross-portfolio data and analytics to track the rollout and progress of economic recovery initiatives.
Additionally, $600,000 is to be spent on data integration to support the government’s Early Intervention Investment Framework and $200,000 on Working With Children Check and National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) worker screening.
Meanwhile, $36 million will be given to support the State Control Centre, which is used for emergency services, with part of this to be spent on data analytics and digital infrastructure.
Education also saw a boost with a combined $28.9 million in the upcoming financial year, with $3.7 million to be used for cyber security and $25.2 million to go towards software tool upgrades for students, staff and administrators.
In 2023-24, the tool upgrade is planned to see an additional $25.7 million, followed by $26.2 million in 2024-25 and $26.7 million in 2025-26.
Victoria’s public health services will also receive $19 million in the upcoming financial year, with funding to go towards network infrastructure for patient related services, such as pathology, diagnostic imaging and patient management systems.
Additional funding will also go towards the strengthening of cyber security measures for Victorian public health services and Ambulance Victoria.
The Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages will see an additional $3.9 million this financial year and $2.5 million next financial year, the Budget papers noted, with funding to be used for the continuation of its call taking capability and the scoping and developing a front-end service as a function of Service Victoria.
In order to help courts handle the new normal following the COVID-19 pandemic, $9.1 million will be spent in 2022-23 and $1.9 million in 2023-2024 to establish an integrated MCV Service Centre to manage digital public enquiries, provide contact centre services, improve online access and automation, reduce pressure on in-person services at individual court locations and increase court throughput.
The Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages will see an additional $3.9 million this financial year and $2.5 million next financial year, the Budget papers noted, with funding to be used for the continuation of its call taking capability and the scoping and developing a front-end service as a function of Service Victoria.
The Victorian Consumer Marketplace will also receive $1 million in 2022-23 and $100,000 in 2023-24 to “harmonise processes across multiple consumer contact services” in order to reduce wait call times.
An unspecified amount of funding will be pumped into extending the digital-focused SummerTech LIVE work integrated learning program, which focuses on students gaining job ready skills and employment opportunities through the develop of technical solutions for small to medium-sized enterprises.
The state government is also introducing a third round of its Small Business Digital Adoption Program to help Victorian businesses pick up digital tools and support 300 internships as part of a new digital jobs for manufacturing stream in its Digital Jobs Program.
While the Budget papers did not provide any mention of cloud technologies, the release of the 2022-23 Budget comes six months after the Victorian state government launched a five-year digitisation strategy to prioritise cloud-based platforms and artificial intelligence (AI) programs in November last year.
According to the state's strategy document, the Victorian government said it would "design for cloud" and only invest in on-premise infrastructure if cloud is "unsuitable".
As part of an effort to "simplify operations and unlock efficiencies", the government said it planned to replace fragmented legacy systems and remove "complex processes and duplication of effort".
