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%.
Transparency and understanding of project performance is increasing
Efforts have focused on improving the availability and quality of DCAs. These are conducted by skilled independent assurers whenever possible to ensure an objective perspective. In this report, 80.3% of assessments were completed by independent assurers under the Assurance Framework, with 90.0% of Tier 1 projects meeting this standard. The remaining delivery confidence ratings reflect self-assessments by the relevant agency.
Change in delivery confidence ratings over 12 months
Image description
Diagram headline: 'Change in delivery confidence ratings over 12 months'.
The diagram demonstrates the variation between delivery confidence ratings over the 12-month period from February 2024 to February 2025. It is stated that transparency and understanding of project performance is increasing.
In February 2024, 3 projects had high delivery confidence, 12 had medium-high, 7 had medium, 3 had medium-low and 23 projects did not have delivery confidence ratings available.
In February 2025, 8 projects had high delivery confidence, 30 had medium-high, 14 had medium, 7 had medium-low, 2 had low and 1 project had an unavailable DCA as it experienced a delayed commencement, with a DCA to be conducted shortly.
Off80.3% 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)
Image description
Diagram headline: 'Total number and budget of projects in each delivery confidence rating category, by Tier 1 and Tier 2'
The diagram demonstrates that Tier 1 projects have:
- No projects with high delivery confidence rating
- 11 projects with Medium-High delivery confidence and a total budget of $1.5 billion
- 5 projects with Medium delivery confidence and a total budget of $1.0 billion
- 2 projects with Medium-Low delivery confidence and a total budget of $0.7 billion
- 2 projects with Low delivery confidence and a total budget of $0.5 billion
- No projects had an Unavailable delivery confidence
Tier 2 projects have:
- 8 projects with High delivery confidence and a total budget of $0.5 billion
- 19 projects with Medium-High delivery confidence and a total budget of $5.3 billion, $3.4 billion of this comprising the Resourcing Australia’s Prosperity (RAP) Initiative project, with the remaining 18 projects comprising $2.0 billion.
- 9 projects with Medium delivery confidence and a total budget of $0.6 billion
- 5 projects with Medium-Low delivery confidence and a total budget of $0.6 billion
- No projects had a Low delivery confidence
- 1 project had an Unavailable delivery confidence with a total budget of $18.9 million.
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.
Case study: Tax and super
Australian Taxation Office: Creating secure data centres
At a glance
ato.gov.au
$369.7 million investment
Summary
The ATO Data Centre Transformation delivered modern, resilient and secure data centres that keep pace with technology, demand and community expectations, while keeping data secure.
The ATO undertook this once-in-a-generation infrastructure and data centre modernisation program to align with government directives and ensure the ongoing security and integrity of critical data stores.
The importance and complexity of the ATO’s role in the Australian economy means it must provide digital experiences and services that make it easy for the community to engage while also safeguarding taxpayer data.
This complex project overcame many challenges. Many data centre migrations of this size and complexity fail, leaving the organisation in a hybrid state with significant technical debt. The success of the ATO data centre program was largely due to the collective drive and commitment to overcome technical issues.
The outcome was to deliver the most significant technology transformation for the ATO in 30 years.
"As the Australian Government’s principal revenue collection agency, data underpins everything we do. Our data stores are growing every year, so keeping our systems safe and protecting the personal information entrusted to us by taxpayers is paramount."
Michael Rowell
ATO Deputy Commissioner and Senior Responsible Official
The outcomes delivered directly contributed to or created business benefits for the ATO and the broader community. These include fewer service interruptions so clients can access ATO services when they need to with greater confidence, as well as reduced national security risk for sensitive data.
Note: This project is not featured in this report as it closed before the start of public reporting in 2024. This project is, however, enabling delivery of current ATO projects and is included as an example for this reason.
OffNearly two thirds of the Tier 1 and 2 projects are on track
| Total projects (Tier 1 and 2) | 62 |
| Number with High or Medium-High delivery confidence | 38 |
| Percentage with High or Medium-High delivery confidence | 61.3% |
| Total budget with High or Medium-High delivery confidence | $7.3 billion |
| Note: High or Medium-High delivery confidence indicates projects are on track to deliver agreed outcomes. | |
Common success factors among projects rated High or Medium-High are:
- experienced staff on the project team
- effective governance models keeping pace with the needs of the project
- mature approaches to risk and issue management
- effective partnering and collaboration between agencies and delivery partners.
Reforms supporting success – preparing senior leaders to lead digital projects successfully
Senior Responsible Officials for digital projects have a key role in ensuring these projects succeed in delivering expected benefits on schedule and on budget. To support these officials, a mandatory program is starting early this year to ensure they are equipped to confidently lead digital projects successfully. This program includes a simulation of a digital project across its life with a focus on building capability in assurance, benefits management, governance, project remediation, and commercial acumen. Following final trials, the program will be available through the Australian Public Service Academy and mandated for all leaders of the major digital projects included in this report.
While most projects are on-track, some projects are reporting lower levels of delivery confidence
| Total projects (Tier 1 and 2) | 62 |
| Number with Medium or Lower delivery confidence | 23 |
| Percentage of total projects with Medium or lower delivery confidence | 37.1% |
| Total budget of projects with Medium or lower delivery confidence | $3.5 billion |
| Tier 1 projects with Medium or lower delivery confidence | 45.0% |
| Tier 2 projects with Medium or lower delivery confidence | 33.3% |
As this table shows, a higher proportion of Tier 1 projects (45.0%) are reporting a delivery confidence of Medium or lower compared with Tier 2 projects (33.3%), likely reflecting the added risks and complexities inherent to these projects.
Common themes among projects rated Medium or lower are:
- dependencies on changes to, or introduction of, new legislation
- the complex nature of the technological solutions being implemented – including where integration of systems across organisations and even jurisdictions is required to achieve outcomes
- where digital transformation is occurring alongside major organisational changes, or at a pace the organisation is struggling to sustain (for example, due to multiple concurrent digital projects putting pressure on an agency’s enterprise capability)
- challenges attracting and retaining staff with the required skills including in digital disciplines such as cyber security, as well as in project/program management disciplines such as benefits, change, risk, budget management and integrated scheduling.
Projects reporting lower levels of delivery confidence are generally challenged by more than one of these themes. As noted in the July 2023 Review of the Modernising Business Registers Program, ‘the difficulty of effectively implementing a digital and ICT transformation project increases exponentially with each additional layer of complexity’ (Treasury 2023 p. 338).
Reforms supporting success – reducing risk through robust assurance and governance
Parallel development of legislation and digital capabilities can lead to significant delivery risks, including budget overruns, delays and, in extreme cases, project failures. Sometimes urgent factors make this concurrent work necessary, but where this occurs the associated risk must be managed carefully.
For high-risk digital projects, robust assurance and governance are crucial. The DTA seeks to mitigate risk by adding central funding and governance controls. An example is recommending the government quarantine part or all project funding, releasing it upon successful early discovery work and other proof points that indicate likely successful delivery.
Some continuing projects are reporting delivery difficulties
Note: One project reporting a high delivery confidence in February 2024 is no longer reported since being reclassified from a Tier 2 to a Tier 3. This project now falls outside the scope for inclusion of delivery confidence information.
Image description
Headline: Some continuing projects are reporting delivery difficulties
Subheading: Change in delivery confidence of projects which were included in the February 2024 report
Sankey chart depicting the flow of delivery confidence ratings for projects continuing under oversight from February 2024, indicating starting delivery confidence ratings, to their delivery confidence ratings in February 2025, with numbers of projects and total budgets ascribed to each delivery confidence category.
High delivery confidence: 1 project with a total budget of $39.6 million had high delivery confidence in February 2024, did not report delivery confidence in February 2025.
Medium-High delivery confidence: 10 projects with a total budget of $2.0 billion had medium-high delivery confidence in February 2024. In February 2025 this stayed at medium-high delivery confidence for 5 of these projects, reduced to medium delivery confidence for 3 of these projects and dropped to medium-low delivery confidence for 2 of these projects.
Medium delivery confidence: 5 projects with a total budget of $0.5 billion had a medium delivery confidence in February 2024. In February 2025 this remained at medium delivery confidence for 3 of these projects, with 2 reducing to medium-low delivery confidence.
Medium-Low delivery confidence: 1 project with a total budget of $0.2 billion had medium-low delivery confidence in February 2024, reducing to low delivery confidence in February 2025.
Not reported delivery confidence: 17 projects with a total budget of $1.1 billion did not report delivery confidence in February 2024. In February 2025, 3 of these projects reported high delivery confidence, 8 reported medium-high, 3 reported medium, 1 reported medium-low, 1 reported low delivery confidence and 1 continued to not report delivery confidence.
In February 2024, 1 project had high delivery confidence, 10 had medium-high delivery confidence, 5 had medium delivery confidence, 1 had medium-low delivery confidence and 17 did not report delivery confidence.
In February 2025, 3 projects had high delivery confidence, 13 had medium-high delivery confidence, 9 had medium delivery confidence, 5 had medium-low delivery confidence, 2 had low delivery confidence and 2 did not report delivery confidence.
OffOf the 17 continuing Tier 1 and 2 projects that reported delivery confidence in February 2024, 11 projects either maintained or dropped in delivery confidence to Medium or lower in February 2025. These projects are routinely managing 3 or more delivery challenges that affected their assessments. Common trends include: financial pressures; scope complexities; resourcing constraints; tight schedules; technical issues; and a need to improve project management maturity.
While the goal is to see DCAs improving over time, it is common for delivery issues to worsen before they improve, especially when complex technical issues are involved. Some projects reporting lower DCAs are depending on the successful delivery of other projects as part of a wider reform program. While they have been closely monitoring delivery, setbacks in other projects can result in these projects being delayed, as key components required to stay on track become unavailable when needed.
Reforms supporting success – using new ways of collecting data to enable timely support and course corrections
In July 2024, the DTA began a Project Data Reporting Standard (PDRS) trial. The trial is testing a new approach to enable more seamless and timely central tracking of project performance across the Australian Government, using ‘natural systems’.
Using ‘natural systems’ means project data is collected from internal reporting projects are preparing for their governance boards, rather than requiring agencies to prepare specific reporting for central tracking purposes.
This approach is:
- improving the quality of reporting and advice the DTA can provide to stakeholders across the Australian Government – including by enabling data to be collected more frequently
- supporting decision-making by ensuring digital governance boards consistently have the minimum necessary information required to enable good decisions (a condition of the trial is that a minimum set of information must be provided to the board)
- improving the experience of agencies providing data to the DTA in our oversight role.
The trial is enabling more timely and effective central oversight of digital projects, helping ensure support can be provided where it needed most and at the earliest stage when the chance of charting a course back to green is greatest.
References
- Infrastructure and Projects Authority, 2024, IPA_Annual_Report_2023-24, accessed 21 February 2024.
- The Australian Government Treasury, 2023, Independent Review into Modernising Business Registers, accessed 21 February 2024.
Image description
Diagram headline: 'delivery confidence of closed projects'.
The diagram notes that a total of 13 projects with a combined total budget of $1.7 billion left assurance oversight.
High delivery confidence – 5 projects with a total budget of $0.3.
Medium-High delivery confidence – 5 projects with a total budget of $1.0 billion.
Medium delivery confidence – 2 projects with a total budget of $0.3B.
Not reported delivery confidence – 1 project with a total budget of $0.1B.
Off
Case study: Safety of Australians
Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC): National Anti-Scam Centre safeguards consumers from scams
At a glance
Tier 2
$80 million investment
nasc.gov.au
Benefits (to date)
Stronger anti-scam collaboration
5,000 scam websites taken down
$31 million in losses likely prevented
Summary
The National Anti-Scam Centre (NASC) is uniting industry and government to make Australia a harder target for scammers.
Australians have lost billions of dollars to scams. In 2022, over 500,000 reported scams caused losses of $3.1 billion. In 2023, reported losses decreased to $2.74 billion but this amount, along with the emotional and psychological harms caused by scams, remains too high. The Australian Government established the National Anti-Scam Centre in mid-2023 to make Australia a harder target for scammers. The Centre combines global insights and domestic collaboration across government, law enforcement, consumer organisations and industry to promote stronger awareness and prevention of scams, and directly disrupt scam activity.
The Australian Government invested $80 million to set up the NASC to:
- facilitate sharing of actionable scam intelligence with government and industry partners
- directly disrupt scammers and scam attempts
- coordinate fusion cells (time-limited public-private taskforces) and scam disruption across government, law enforcement and industry
- alert, educate, and inform the public on scam trends and protection measures
- collate, identify and publish trends in scam data.
Data sharing partnership takes down scam websites
The NASC and Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) are partnering on automated data sharing through an Application Programming Interface (API). Consumers report scams to the NASC, which collates and identifies scam data to be shared directly with ASIC. Scam websites verified as malicious through this process are referred to a takedown service.
This partnership has already taken down more than 5,000 malicious scam websites. Based on the average financial loss per scam website, this prevented Australians potentially losing $31 million to scammers.
The NASC is building on this work by developing similar API- based and other data sharing partnerships with financial institutions, digital platforms, law enforcement agencies and telecommunications providers.
"Partnership between and across government and industry is at the heart of the NASC’s mission. We can only succeed in making Australia a harder target for scammers through effective collaboration. ASIC also recognised this, and together we have built a partnership that has already stopped Australians losing potentially millions of dollars to investment scams. It is precisely this kind of impactful work the NASC is progressing, to deliver the positive community outcomes Australians expect – and need – from us."
Sarah Proudfoot, Senior Responsible Official
First fusion cell targets investment scams
In a complementary and important aspect of this partnership, the first NASC fusion cell focused on the profiles and practices of investment scams, and how best to disrupt them. This led to positive support and evidence for several measures, including pursuing website takedowns for investment scams.
Work to improve reporting and disruption
The NASC is also developing new tools and connecting reporting systems to make it easier for people to report scams. This will allow the NASC to quickly disrupt criminals and deter other scammers from using similar methods, so no other Australians fall victim to their practices.
OffChallenges and lessons learned
Projects that closed since February 2024 generally reported underspends. Those that went over budget reported issues including initial scoping not accounting for the full complexity of required work.
Some projects faced challenges in their ability to deliver against their original schedule due to delays getting bills introduced to Parliament, delays with equipment supply related to the COVID-19 pandemic, post-release issues that needed to be addressed, and additional enhancements that needed to be delivered to achieve expected outcomes.
Common lessons learned include:
- allocating sufficient time to early planning pre- implementation (preparation) stages, including ensuring a deep understanding of current state processes
- developing collaborative working relationships between stakeholders during scoping, delivery planning and decision-making – including efficient knowledge transfer and upskilling as needed
- defining project scope in as much detail as possible, to avoid confusion in deliverables and align project outcomes with stakeholder expectations
- enhancing financial management and budget control – including to enable tracking of earned value during implementation.
‘Lessons learned’ are often thought of as emerging from failures – but lessons from successful projects can be just as valuable. The DTA is systematically working to ensure project closure processes capture these lessons to ensure future projects have the best chance of success.
The importance of closure reports
Formal closure of a project is more than just the project finishing. Driving improved project performance over time requires careful consideration of how active projects have performed, and how what has been learned should change the way projects are designed and delivered in future. Strengthened central oversight has this ‘system learning’ at its centre with the DTA ensuring lessons aren’t just identified but rather systematically learned across all major digital projects through real change which makes the difference.
Project closure reports play a vital role in this ‘system learning’ and, as closure reports have varied in quality, a closure reporting standard has been developed to ensure consistency and maximise the value of these reports.
Reforms supporting success – improving project closure reports
To formally close a project, agencies must provide a project closure report to all key stakeholders. However, some reports have included extensive information, requiring more resources than necessary, while others have not included enough information to accurately assess the project’s performance.
As a result, the DTA developed the Closure Reporting Standard for Digital and ICT-enabled projects. The standard provides a minimum and consistent set of information for reports based on 7 criteria – scope, schedule, budget, assurance, benefits realisation, transition arrangements, and lessons learned. By standardising closure reporting, the DTA is promoting best practice and providing the necessary information to evaluate completed projects and inform future investments.
The DTA is drawing on expertise from across the APS and working with the Australian Taxation Office to develop templates to support implementation of the standard.
Case study: Education and employment
Department of Employment and Workplace Relations: Improving data management for apprenticeships
At a glance
Tier 2
adms.australianapprenticeships.gov.au
$39 million investment
Summary
The Apprenticeships Data Management System (ADMS) project streamlined apprenticeship programs, reduced the administrative burden for employers and apprentices, and improved data for decision-making.
The ADMS project was funded as part of the Skills Package in the October 2020 Budget. It aimed to replace an outdated system developed over 20 years ago that was no longer suitable for its intended purpose.
The old system created administrative burdens and operational inefficiencies that affected apprenticeship programs. Replacing it was necessary to make the program more efficient, provide better data for government decision-making, and reduce administrative tasks for employers and apprentices when claiming federal incentives.
This was achieved by implementing a modern ICT system that enhanced engagement with apprentices and employers and streamlined processes for providers to focus more on advisory services.
The project also improved cyber security, introduced consistent governance processes, and strengthened stakeholder relationships. These changes enable future projects to be set up faster and with lower delivery risk.
Overcoming challenges to delivery outcomes
The ADMS project encountered challenges due to pandemic-related adjustments, new subsidy schemes, policy changes, fragmented service delivery and integrating with 8 different state ICT systems. Nevertheless, ADMS was completed in 2024 on schedule and under budget, while exceeding the anticipated benefits.
ADMS enables governments to use better data to create sector-specific policies, improves experiences for apprentices and employers, and optimises services from support providers. This leads to more apprenticeship completions and greater visibility of the apprenticeship journey through data. In turn this benefits all Australians through financial savings, faster policy decisions and implementation, and flow-on benefits to areas like housing policy.
Off"The way that the system has been designed, I think it’s fantastic, it’s modern and it’s very easy to use. The way that’s been built is great."
"The speed of the system is really good. Lodging claims is just very quick and efficient, which is really nice."
"Moving forward, it will make our system, our processes a lot quicker."
ADMS providers