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Digital transformation in government, the ‘uberisation’ of jobs and industries, and the importance of placing citizens at the heart of government operations, were the main areas of focus for Vivek Kundra, Executive Vice President, Salesforce, and former United States Chief Information Officer during his visit to Australia last week.

Vivek and the local team met with key figures in government who are pushing Australia’s innovation agenda including Victor Dominello, NSW Minister for Innovation & Better Regulation; Jason Clare, Shadow Minister for Communications; Ed Husic, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Digital Innovation; Wyatt Roy, Assistant Minister for Innovation; Annastacia Palaszczuk, Queensland Premier and members of her Cabinet.

In an interview with The Australian, Vivek said “This really is a race to the top; every country is now recognising that the future is going to be technology-based.”

“Technology is a force that enables people without a voice to have a voice and that’s what excites me most … It enables equality; where there was a concentration of power before and decisions being made behind closed doors, technology gives everybody more power to have a say in their future.”

While addressing a joint press conference with the Queensland Premier, Vivek said “What’s so exciting about Queensland is there is this embrace around the mega shift we are seeing in Information technology, around big data, analytics, internet cloud, social, mobile, and of course robotics which are going to transform pretty much every part of the economy.”

Earlier this year, Deloitte produced the Digital Government Transformation : Unlocking the Benefits of Digitising Customer Transactions report which found Australians undertake more than 800 million transactions with government agencies each year, with around 40% still completed using traditional (non-digital) channels.

If this figure could be reduced to 20% over a ten-year period, Deloitte Access Economics estimates productivity, efficiency and other benefits to government worth around $17.9 billion (in real terms), along with savings in time, convenience and out-of-pocket costs to citizens worth a further $8.7 billion.

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