Digital project success and researcher profiles
Digital project success
This series engages researchers from academia on issues influencing the performance of digital projects. These projects play a vital role in allowing Australia to seize the opportunities presented by new technologies.
The Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) works across the Australian Government to support the successful design and delivery of digital projects. The work of the DTA includes managing the assurance system which drives good decision-making and seeks to create the conditions each project needs to succeed.
This research series is part of the DTA’s commitment to ensure the Australian Government achieves nothing less than excellence in digital project design and delivery.
Researcher profiles
Dr Julien Pollack - Associate Professor
Dr Julien Pollack is an Associate Professor with the John Grill Institute for Project Leadership and the School of Project Management
at the University of Sydney. He started as a project manager in IT, organisational change, and manufacturing projects, before moving into research.
He now explores multiple aspects of project management, with the broad aim of helping to transform the discipline into one that addresses the needs of complex and uncertain environments. This includes investigation of project teams and their productivity, project management methodology, and projects with ill-defined objectives and outcomes. His research in these areas is regularly published in the leading international project management journals and research conferences.
Dr Natalie Smith - Associate Professor
Dr Natalie Smith is an Associate Proffessor of practice with the John Grill Institute for Project Leadership. Her expertise is in the governance of digital transformation. Natalie’s PhD was on digital transformation governance, and she has since completed a research fellowship on trust in Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the Australian public sector. Her current research is on designing fit-for-purpose assurance for digital projects.
Natalie is also a non-executive director in not-for-profit Health and Community Service organisations and government. She is a member of the National AI Thinktank for Responsible AI. Previously, Natalie was a partner in Deloitte’s Risk Advisory practice, providing project assurance and supporting organisations delivering digital transformations.
Dr Wei-Ting Hong - Postdoctoral Research Associate
Dr Wei-Ting Hong is a postdoctoral research associate at the John Grill Institute for Project Leadership, the University of Sydney. His research covers digital transformation in project delivery, Natural Language Processing (NLP), prompt engineering and public transport management.
He is particularly interested in how artificial intelligence (AI) can benefit project models, concentrating on the potential of NLP and Large Language Models (LLMs). His PhD was on leveraging the power of NLP to enhance rail safety and organisational learning behaviour. Wei-Ting is also a committee member of Railway Technical Society of Australasia (RTSA), a Technical Society of Engineering Australia (EA).