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Reforms supporting success – improving benefits management capability

The Australian Government’s Benefits Management Policy for Digital and ICT-Enabled Investments requires agencies to use best practice benefits management for their digital projects. Projects must identify measurable benefits with clear baselines and targets before funding decisions are taken. The minimum policy requirements are adjusted based on project tier, but all projects must focus on securing benefits in addition to preventing cost and schedule overruns.

The DTA oversees the realisation of benefits and identifies emerging risks across digital projects. We also focus on providing advice, support and training to improve public service capabilities.

Investment in this area aims to ensure that digital projects deliver anticipated benefits to the government and Australians.

Most projects coming under central assurance oversight in the past year have been Tier 2 and Tier 3 level investments

Table note: Tier 2 average project duration is affected by 2 outlier projects, each with a duration of 35.0 years. Average duration including these 2 projects is 6.9 years.

Tier 3 projects made up the largest number of additional projects. These projects are usually lower risk and have smaller budgets, with most investing in ‘sustainment’ and ‘product/service enhancement’ rather than establishing wholly new digital capabilities. The increase in Tier 3 investments reflects ongoing efforts to move away from higher-risk large and complex projects to smaller, ‘bite-size’ projects where possible. Evidence suggests these smaller projects generally have a higher rate of success.

Large investments will still be necessary in some cases, and several have been commissioned since the last report. Strong planning and oversight are crucial to ensure new higher-risk investments do not exceed available delivery capacity. Strengthening central oversight, including digital investment planning and prioritisation, is key to balance project loads within capacity and coordinate efforts to expand capabilities of agencies and delivery partners to handle expected growth in digital investment.

Reforms supporting success – planning for the future

From the 2026–27 Budget, Commonwealth agencies will be required to develop digital and ICT investment plans. This will provide a future-focused understanding of the complexities across the government’s digital and ICT landscape and identify future need for investment in digital services.

Digital and ICT investment plans will provide short, medium and long-term views of projects. This will help to balance capacity, instil a culture of strategic digital investment planning focused on the future, improve understanding of criticality and risk, and support long-term ambitions to achieve better digital outcomes for Australians as part of the Data and Digital Government Strategy. The investment plans will also increase visibility of digital investments across agencies, enabling the trial and adoption of new technologies, greater coordination of digital enhancements, and more integrated service delivery across agencies.

The distribution of project by total budget highlights the diversity of projects underway across the Australian Government

Tier 2 and Tier 3 projects make up the bulk of all active projects under central assurance oversight

Of note, almost half of the total budget of all Tier 2 projects relates to a single, multi-decade investment, valued at $3.4 billion. This outlier project skews the average budget of Tier 2 projects ($167.8 million) and means the median budget of $45.0 million better reflects their typical size.

Flagship digital investments (Tier 1) represent 18.2% of active projects and approximately 29.6% of the total budget. Just over half of all Tier 1 projects are reporting a planned completion date between June 2025 to June 2026. Strong ongoing investment planning and prioritisation within each of these projects will be essential for Senior Responsible Officials to smoothly deliver these projects over the next 12 months.

For all tiers, experience shows that the projects most likely to deliver expected benefits on time and on budget have robust approaches to key project management disciplines including governance, risk, benefits and assurance. Strengthening approaches in these areas is a priority for the DTA in our work overseeing all the digital projects included in this report.

Improving transparency for Australians on the performance of digital projects

In recent years, the Australian Government has actively invested not just in new digital projects but in understanding what projects are underway and how they can best be supported to succeed. Transparency is an essential ingredient for good governance and this section sets out the improvements which have been made to ensure Australians know how their digital projects are performing.

Almost all Tier 1 and 2 projects now have delivery confidence assessments

Tier 1 and 2 digital projects must undertake regular delivery confidence assessments (DCAs) under the Assurance Framework for Digital and ICT Investments. DCAs indicate how likely a project is to meet its objectives at a given point in time. DCA ratings range from High to Low (see Appendix for details).

A lower DCA rating signals issues or risks that need to be addressed. However, a low rating does not necessarily mean a project will fail. Instead, it’s an early warning system that allows for timely interventions to support project teams in mitigating risks and overcoming challenges. By taking the right steps, projects can recover from lower delivery confidence ratings and go on to deliver expected outcomes for Australians on budget and on schedule.

The DTA plays a crucial role in this process. When delivery confidence decreases, we work closely with agencies to make sure they take the right measures. This involves:

• providing guidance, resources and support to project teams
• facilitating the best use of assurance processes
• promoting strategies to address issues as early as possible, when course corrections are more likely to succeed.

Ultimately, this collaborative effort aims to enhance the likelihood of successful project delivery, ensuring that investments provide expected benefits to Australians and businesses.

Since the introduction of the Australian Government’s Digital and ICT Investment Oversight Framework in November 2021, there has been a concerted focus on increasing understanding of how digital projects are performing, as well as the conditions that need to exist to best support their success.

In the last report in February 2024, 52.1% of Tier 1 and 2 projects included a delivery confidence assessment. In February 2025, this has increased to 98.4%.

80.3% independent assessments

In this report, 80.3% of assessments were completed by independent assurers under the Assurance Framework, with 90.0% for Tier 1 projects meeting this standard. This independence is key to ensuring often complex and challenging digital projects receive the expert, objective advice they need to succeed.

Reforms supporting success – Bringing objectivity and rigour to assessing delivery confidence

Delivery confidence assessments are vital for directing effort and support to where it is most needed to ensure the success of all the Australian Government’s digital projects. Therefore, these assessments must be objective and rigorous.

In 2024, the University of Sydney’s John Grill Institute of Project Leadership worked in collaboration with the DTA to prepare best practice guidance on assessing the delivery confidence of digital projects. This guidance identifies the factors that are most significant in the success and failure of digital projects, and sets out how they should be considered when forming an assessment.

This section sets out how digital projects are performing. Digital projects present unique challenges and the reforms set out in previous sections are playing a key role in ensuring the conditions exist for each and every project included in this report to succeed.

How the Australian Government’s digital projects are performing

This section sets out how digital projects are performing. Digital projects present unique challenges and the reforms set out in previous sections are playing a key role in ensuring the conditions exist for each and every project included in this report to succeed.

Projects worth $7.3 billion of total budget are on-track

Consistent DCAs for major digital projects provide an overview of each project’s performance, spotlighting where support is needed most. This transparency also aids in reforms aimed at creating optimal conditions for digital projects to succeed and enhance public services and people’s lives.

Across the 2 years of reporting, the DCAs show many projects in the portfolio are on track to deliver agreed outcomes. This reflects the easing of technology supply disruptions related to the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing investment in strengthening how the Australian Government designs and delivers its digital projects.

Total number and budget of projects in each delivery confidence rating category (Tier 1 and Tier 2)

Changes in delivery confidence

New major digital projects are generally starting off well with more than three-quarters reporting High or Medium-High delivery confidence.

The government’s digital projects are being delivered against a backdrop of rapid and continuous technological change. This dynamic environment is reflected in the changes in delivery confidence ratings over the past year as projects move through different stages in their development.

Understanding overall changes in delivery confidence to target engagement and reforms

Most (75.9%) of the 29 Tier 1 and 2 projects entering oversight since February 2024 report a High or Medium-High delivery confidence. These projects commonly report factors contributing to their delivery confidence rating at the start as: establishing effective governance early; having well-prepared documentation and artefacts; and ensuring experienced and capable personnel were ready.

This is an early sign that investment to strengthen digital project design processes is increasing overall delivery confidence. Projects often start with lower levels of delivery confidence, but the recent emphasis on ensuring mature planning is in place before projects start appears to be paying dividends, with more than three-quarters of these new projects entering oversight reporting High or Medium-High confidence. This contrasts with the United Kingdom where ‘it is not unusual for projects to be rated as Red earlier in their lifecycle, when scope, benefits, costs and delivery methods are still being explored’ (Infrastructure and Projects Authority 2024 p.13).

Reforms supporting success – partnering with industry to deliver digital projects

Recognising the crucial role of technology vendors in delivering the Australian Government’s ambitions for digital transformation, the Digital and ICT Investment Oversight Framework includes ‘sourcing’ as an area of focus. As part of this, the DTA coordinates marketplaces and agreements designed to enable agencies to easily access technology goods and services to support their digital projects. In 2023–24, the Australian Government sourced more than $6.4 billion of digital products and services from industry via these marketplaces and agreements. By accessing these arrangements through the BuyICT platform, agencies benefited from the Australian Government’s collective buying power and strengthened terms and conditions.

The DTA’s latest ICT labour hire and professional services panel, the Digital Marketplace Panel 2, adopts the APS Career Pathfinder dataset and Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA) to classify ICT labour hire opportunities. The classification of roles and greater panel pricing transparency provides clearer signals for in-demand skills, their costs and potential shortages that will inform delivery capacity and confidence in digital projects. The top in-demand digital and ICT skills sourced by the APS include software engineer, solution architect and business analyst.