¶ Intro / Opening
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¶ Intro to GovTech & Leidos's Modernization Approach
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Where we speak to the public sector leaders who are driving the same thing. Join us as... Sophisticated tech projects in Australia. The technology decisions.
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Welcome to Delivery.
Cast. Cloud and AI have been talked about in government for more than a decade. The promise is compelling, more resilient services, more agility to change, better decisions, faster outcomes, and improved experiences for staff and citizens. Yet, for many agencies, turning that promise into reality comes with challenges legacy systems, security and data sovereignty requirements, skills, and the challenge of scaling beyond pilots are all common hurdles.
In this episode, LidoS Australia will explore what it really takes for government to move from ambition to delivery and the importance of understanding the unique government environment. Today with me is Kate Parr. You lead the civil digital modernization practice at Lidos. Tell me a little bit about your role, Kate, and welcome.
Thanks Corrie. So Civil is a relatively new line of business for Lidos. For those that aren't familiar with Lidos, We have a very strong history working with the defence industry in Australia. We're actually a global company. We have our roots in the US. In Australia, as I said, we work strongly with the defence industry. We've also got a a very strong intelligence practice. We've also got an air so we've got what we call airborne services, so we work with the ABF and AMSA.
And I also, as I said, lead civil. So recently we've started working with home affairs, I've got Geoscience Australia, I've got a long standing history with ATO and I also work with digital health. So as well as Intel, we now work with the Defence Health program. So we've got a very broad range of customers across the Commonwealth.
So just for my benefit, how do you define civil digital modernization? Is that slightly different from the defence work? How do you think about that, I guess, from a practice and the solutions that you're providing?
¶ Navigating Government's Unique Digital Challenges
So everything that I look after is I C T based. We only work within the Commonwealth and we support everything that the customer needs from a digital perspective. So we try not to interfere with anything that's customer facing. So civil really is uh non defense. Because we have such a strong heritage working in defence and Intel based organizations, we really wanted to broaden from within Light Offs and explore other parts of the Commonwealth. We've worked with the ATO for many years.
Um, we have a longstanding relationship with them. So moving outside of defence is something that we've been trying to tackle for a long time. And we've been really successful over the last eighteen months. As I said, we're with Geoscience Australia now, digital health. We've expanded our relationship with ATO and we're now working with Home Affairs.
Okay. So we're talking about cloud and AI journeys today. There's obviously a wave of conversations about maturity and governance and all sorts of things that are really vital to both public and private sector. A lot of the learning as sort of from Lido says, you know, with your origins in defense. Is that helping working with the civil or the non defence organisations in terms of some of that maturity? Is there an uplift that comes with that experience?
Absolutely. I think if you look at the defence context, there is an enormous environment from an ICT perspective there. And they've been grappling for years with the challenge of moving from on premise infrastructure, you know, moving from bits of tin to cloud.
And, you know, we're really privileged now to be working with the defence organisation to start moving to cloud with them. And it's a really exciting opportunity for us and our D D M, our Defence Digital Modernisation business is working with them to achieve that. And so our new relationships with customers like Home Affairs and ATO, we're starting to work with them to
take on that challenge of taking those legacy environments and take that step away from physical infrastructure and consolidate their environments and move to cloud. And I think when you start to grapple with the question of AI and move away from a physical environment into a cloud or a virtual environment.
For organizations that have a customer or citizen focus or business rhythm that civil organizations have, and I've never worked for a defence organization, which is why I lead the civil business. We have to be really mindful that they have pressures that organisations in the private sector they don't have. So you've got to be mindful like ATO has.
tax time. So we can't do things during the tax period. We've got the lead up before and after and preparation for that. So we have to work within those business rhythms and plan around that. So you can't manage a transformation or do large scale changes in that period. So your legacy change and your transformational journey takes longer. to plan and to execute because of that. And so you've got to be very careful of operating and managing around those business rhythms, if that makes sense.
Yeah, completely. And the theme of the legacy, I think a lot of government organisations, there's a lot of tech debt, there's a lot of legacy
This is...
Where are you seeing the bright spots? We talk about this a lot. It's uh ongoing enduring challenge, sometimes it it's cultural, sometimes it's budget, sometimes it's all of it. From what you can see in terms of those organizations that are actually making good headway, are there common themes? What are you seeing in terms of the building blocks for good?
I think organizations that are willing to consider at the foundational level what needs to happen first. So I think some of the smaller organizations that are looking at their data and understanding their data foundations. and willing to play in a proof of concept way and not try and do things in a huge big bang approach. So if you look at AI and you look at the future of AI and where we're going with applications, the speed of change with technology is so fast.
AI is going to be breaking things up into small pieces and applications are no longer going to be large monolithic things. And I won't, you know, talk about specific applications, but large platforms. We're not going there anymore. It's going to be little bits like a grab bag of mixed lollies. So if you think about where you want to take your technology and your organization, you've got to think about small, nimble, agile.
So think about your foundation pieces and your data is the foundation. Then you need to understand your security framework, your platform itself, how you actually want to manage and secure your data framework and your platform, how you're going to break it up. where you want to take that then is sort of the underlying design and knowing that framework and foundation can allow you to start to play.
in a proof of concept way. And small organizations like I was listening to somebody from D VA who are doing some fantastic things with their data scientists with their data in a proof of concept way to understand and shape how they're using their data to get some great inroads to be more efficient and effective and support people on the front line using AI and automation in small proof of concept. So I think if you look at it in bite sized chunks you can make very fast inroads.
¶ Cultural Shifts, Security, and Strategic Delivery
And are the skills there? There's a probably a generation of people that have been managing those big projects. They're attuned to the big style projects that go on for a long time we're talking about agility, focus, testing, proof of concept. Lots of kind of very small wins to manage that change. What does the skills profile look like? Are those people there?
Yes, I think they are. What it is is a mindset shift. So everybody has the skills to use data to play with data to manage information and think about this. It's about changing the way you think about the information. And I always think about IT, technology, all of these things. It this is a cultural mindset shift. And everyone thinks that something like AI
these changes that we see in a marketplace are going to reduce the numbers of people working in IT or the numbers of people working anywhere. I've never seen any IT change reduce the numbers of people working anywhere. It just changes the way people are working. So we've just got to think about how we empower our people to adjust and change the way they work, help them change, think about things differently, and empower a cultural change and a mindset shift.
Okay. There's a lot of conversation about sovereignty to I think I've heard the word four times and it's ten thirty AM this morning.
Oh lucky you.
We're talking about data sovereignty, we're talking about IRAP, classified environments. You mentioned earlier like the layer of security, but really with the customers that you're working with, this is right at the top of mind of particularly with AI, is what data needs to be secured and treated in a different way. Where are you finding those discussions?
moving too fast in terms of understanding the classified nature of certain data pieces where there's this promise of AI on the other side. What's going on in that world?
I don't think people are moving too fast. I think you have to understand that to go anywhere. So before you start moving, it's sort of you know, we're going back to that conversation of security by design. Before you start, you have to know what your security requirements are.
And I'm sure there's security people out there going, Yay, somebody's actually saying the right thing You know, seriously, you have to understand your risk appetite. You have to understand what are the requirements of your organisation in terms of the how you share data. What are your citizen and communities expectations on the way you manage their information? If you're a Commonwealth organization, you know, the ATO has requirements around privacy.
Home Affairs has requirements around the data they manage and the way they manage risk at the border. So before they design and do anything, they have to look at the way they manage their data and design accordingly. Everybody has to do that. So it doesn't matter how fast you want to move, we have to start at the beginning and the way we design it, we do that. And that's
Lidos will bring to the table is an understanding of the Commonwealth has these requirements and controls. And sorry, I have to throw that in there. Sorry, I'm from LIDOS.
It's good context that that is also what you bring is an understanding that you're learning from other customers that may have been down a certain road. Hang on, we need to look at it through this lens, you may not have seen it in this way. You're bringing that experience as well.
It's the bread and butter of working within the Commonwealth. You have essential aid, you have mandatory compliance, you have regulatory controls, you have data sovereignty. Everything has to be I wrapped. Follow the sun support models don't necessarily work for most Commonwealth organizations if you want support and sustainment that's twenty four by seven. It's just the basics we have to work within these frameworks.
What lessons can be drawn from the national scale programs that already operate under the highest security and reliability constraints? Like are there other lessons we've talked about, bite sized pieces, Proof of concept. Are there any other kind of big pictures advice or lessons that you can share?
Proof of concepts, bite-sized pieces, all of those things are great, but don't take technology and run around looking for a problem to solve. Make sure that there is an appetite within your business to use it first. AI isn't the answer to everything. Sometimes it can be a simple business process change. Sometimes it could be the way you're using the data. Sometimes it's a cultural shift. Make sure that there is a business appetite for this first.
I think that's really good advice, just even running around looking for a problem as opposed to being really clear on what you're trying to solve.
Absolutely.
I think that's a great place to leave it. Thank you so much, Kate Parr, who runs Civil Digital Modernization at LIDOS. Thank you for joining Delivery.
A Gub Tech Podcast. My pleasure. Thank you for having me.
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