DTA distils lessons from major digital projects to strengthen digital delivery

Major government digital projects operate in complex delivery environments. They require executive leaders to govern with confidence, balancing delivery challenges, stakeholder expectations and evolving government priorities, often over an extended period.

Lessons for Digital Leaders – Guidance for Senior Responsible Officials (SROs), draws on a detailed review of Australian Government digital project closure reports. Combining analysis of three years of lessons-learned reporting from closed digital projects with insights from experienced SROs, it identifies the practices and approaches that enabled successful project delivery and translates them into practical guidance for future projects.

The publication distils lessons from 30 completed digital projects, grouped into 10 practical themes, which include:

• Governance

• Stakeholder engagement

• Procurement

• Benefits management

• Resourcing and workforce

“The Australian Government has invested more than $9 billion in digital and ICT-enabled programs and projects,” explains Monique Carew, Acting Branch Manager of Portfolio Assurance at the DTA. 

“Applying real lessons from completed digital projects will help agencies navigate common challenges, build on successful practices and improve the delivery of future projects.”

Turning lessons into better outcomes

The themed presentation of key lessons and related insights provide practical guidance for leaders at key decision points throughout the project lifecycle. They will support assurance activities, inform significant investment decisions, strengthen supplier relationships and facilitate successful transition of project deliverables into sustainable operations.

Each theme draws on evidence from project closure reports, practitioner experience and DTA’s whole-of-government visibility of major digital projects.

“One of the strengths of the APS is our ability to learn from experience and each other. By identifying common themes across major digital projects, this publication helps turn individual project experiences into practical insights that can benefit agencies across government,” outlines Ms Carew.

By bringing together lessons from completed projects, this publication makes practical delivery insights more accessible to current and future digital leaders, helping agencies strengthen delivery and achieve better outcomes from major digital investments.

Learn more

Lessons for Digital Leaders is the third edition in the DTA's Digital Project Research Series. Through our research series, we partner with academia, government agencies and industry partners to examine the most influential factors impacting digital project performance.

To learn more about the research series, please visit digital project research series | digital.gov.au.

Up next

We are always exploring ideas for future research priorities and welcome input from agencies. If there are aspects of your role or common delivery challenges that you consider could benefit from additional support and guidance through our research series, please contact the DTA’s Leadership Programs and Integration team at lpi@dta.gov.au.