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Putting People at the Centre - Introduction

Putting People at the Centre establishes a new direction to guide the Government over the next three to five years. At its centre are improvements that can be made to the way that the Government serves Victorians and the way that it operates as a single, coordinated organisation.

It seeks to capitalise on the substantial technological foundations that have already been laid and, in particular, to identify areas where there are opportunities for better sharing of resources, for improving the integration of services, and for more cooperation and coordination between different delivery agencies.

This will mean better access and more choice to Victorians in their interactions with the Victorian Government. In some cases it will remove the need to deal with an agency of government altogether by creation of a more convenient alternative.

Some of the groundwork for these improvements is attributable to the development of online services over the last five years. Victorian citizens now enjoy more online services from government than the citizens of other jurisdictions a significant proportion of which combine resources or information from different agencies.

This growth has been supported by an enthusiastic and sustained campaign right across government. And the Government has built an international reputation as a leader in providing services electronically and using e-commerce.

To illustrate, by the end of 2001:

• there were a total of 69,000 brochures, tenders, forms, transactions and other services publicly available online; and
• 96% of projects to put services online had been completed.

Importantly, research has shown that 31% of Australians access Government services online.

The Government Online Program also saw the creation of online channels and "life events" that arranged information to help users find what they were looking for. In the case of channels, services were arranged to reflect common patterns of activity. The seven channels created to date are:

• Business - www.business.channel.vic.gov.au
• Clinicians Health - www.clinicians.vic.gov.au
• Education - www.education.vic.gov.au
• Land - www.land.vic.gov.au
• Legal - www.legalonline.vic.gov.au
• Tourism - www.visitvictoria.com.au

For life events, services are collected according to a significant event, such as moving house, turning 18 or getting married. The core of this program is the recognition that, from the citizen's point of view, it does not matter from which government agency a service or piece of information originates. What is more important is that the citizen gets access to the service quickly and seamlessly. The low cost of recombining services means that new services can be added to existing channels, life events and other transaction packages whenever they are needed.

The online gateway www.vic.gov.au links to all government sites. The Business Licensing Information Service brings licensing information together in a consolidated report from across all levels of government.

While it is important to continue to build on this online services agenda, these developments are occurring in increasingly mature space and it is time to take a fresh look at what new gains can be made from more effective use of technology across a broader span of the Government's activities. It is also time to consider new ways of working within government to respond better to Victorians' needs.

Putting People at the Centre is a vision - it is not intended to describe the things that the Government will do to get there. These things are being addressed by the Government separately and will be built into an implementation strategy now under development.

A range of initiatives will be used to implement the vision of Putting People at the Centre. Some of these are already under way and others are being scoped and assessed for feasibility. There will be short-term pilots and others that will take several years to complete. The shift to
eGovernment requires a balanced mix of experimental projects and long-term initiatives.

An ongoing, two-way communication program will be required to keep the community informed about new service offerings as they are developed and to keep the Government informed about what citizens want.

This communication will be a critical driver for future changes to the operations of the Government, reflecting an ongoing commitment to effective consultation. It will ground much of the work undertaken to deliver tangible benefits under each of the four eGovernment pillars of

• substantially improving support and services to citizens;
• providing better community engagement and more effective democracy;
• using innovation in finding new opportunities; and
• creating a framework for ongoing reform within government.

Last updated: 20 October 2011

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