Delivering Australian Government Services: Access and Distribution Strategy
Foreword
Accessing government services and information should be as easy as possible. It shouldn’t be time consuming, complicated or require a comprehensive understanding of different responsibilities of departments, agencies or jurisdictions. Research has shown that this is not what citizens expect from government. Integrated, seamlessly delivered services are the order of the day.
To meet public expectations, government agencies can no longer behave as autonomous entities. Responding effectively to citizens’ needs and public policy issues requires agencies to collaborate. The Access and Distribution Strategy provides Australian Government agencies with a road map to working together to improve service delivery. In recognition that agencies face unique service delivery challenges, the Strategy provides strategic direction and conceptual frameworks to assist agencies to map against the E-Government Strategy for the Australian Government.
The Department of Finance and Administration, through the Australian Government Information Management Office, has been working closely with other agencies to develop and test tools that improve agencies’ ability to work together, such as the whole-of-government Service Delivery Principles and the Australian Government Interoperability Framework.
Released with this Strategy are two supporting resources: Managing Multiple Channels (a guide for the strategic assessment and development of service delivery channels) and the Service Delivery Capability Model (a guide for mapping an agency’s capability to deliver multi-agency, multi-channel and citizen-centric services). Implementation of the Strategy will also be supported through the development and delivery of training programs.
This is the era of government agencies working together and sharing responsibility for improving service delivery. The Access and Distribution Strategy provides a solid platform for government to engage with other service providers – community and business groups – to continue to improve its ability to effectively deliver on citizens needs.
I commend the Access and Distribution Strategy to all government agencies as essential reading to equip them to more effectively meet the service delivery expectations of Australians.
The Hon Gary Nairn MP
Special Minister of State
Executive Summary
The Access and Distribution Strategy describes the whole of government service delivery vision and provides the conceptual and practical tools to enable integrated multi-channel service delivery. While the strategy promotes whole of government transformation, it also advocates that agencies assess and improve their current capability to deliver services. The enablers promoted by the strategy have been developed to facilitate a move from ‘agency-centricity’ to ‘customer-centricity’.
The strategy is supported by resources and tools that describe in more detail the processes for putting the strategy into practice. Released with this document are two of those resources: Managing Multiple Channels (a guide for the strategic assessment and development of service delivery channels) and the Service Delivery Capability Model (a guide for mapping an agency’s capability to deliver multi-agency, multi-channel and customer-centric services).
Contact for information on this page: nsip@finance.gov.au