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What are Digital Investment Plans
DIPs are strategic planning documents that outline an agency’s digital direction and upcoming digital and ICT investments. They provide visibility of current state, future ambitions, and the initiatives that will help deliver those outcomes.
They ensure that digital investments are aligned with agency goals and whole-of-government digital priorities.
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Transition approach
The implementation of the Digital Inclusion Standard will be phased to give agencies time to plan and update their services.
- Phase 1: 1 January 2025 – New services
- Phase 2: 1 January 2026 – Existing public-facing services
The DTA will regularly review the Digital Inclusion Standard and make improvements as government service delivery and digital services mature. Improvements will be made in line with agency application and feedback.
Phase 1 – New services
From 1 January 2025, services that meet the following criteria will be required to meet the Digital Inclusion Standard:
- public or staff-facing
- owned by non-corporate Commonwealth entities
- new (including redesigned) informational and transactional services.
Phase 2 – Existing public-facing services
From 1 January 2026, services that meet the following criteria will be required to meet the Digital Inclusion Standard:
- public-facing
- owned by non-corporate Commonwealth entities
- all existing informational and transactional services.
Note: existing staff-facing services are excluded.
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Support for SROs
From 2025, Senior Responsible Officials of Australian Government digital and ICT projects are required to participate in a mandatory professional development program. The program will support these senior leaders through curated content aimed at uplifting digital and ICT project governance capabilities. More information is available on request from the DTA.
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Assurance Fee
The DTA’s role overseeing assurance for digital projects is funded through a fee applied to the largest digital projects funded by the Australian Government. This fee helps ensure the DTA can provide the support agencies and Senior Responsible Officials need to make best use of assurance in supporting successful delivery. Guidance on whether this fee will apply to your proposed project will be provided by your Agency Advice Unit (AAU) at the Department of Finance and by the DTA’s investment advisers.
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The Digital Experience Policy (DX Policy)
Excellent digital services focus on the end-user. The Digital Experience Policy ensures this by mandating four standards that prioritise usability and accessibility from the outset of digital investments. Agencies are required to demonstrate compliance with the DX Policy and any applicable standards, including during project delivery. More information on how the DTA is ensuring compliance with the DX Policy is outlined in the Digital Experience Compliance and Reporting Framework Projects which are in-scope of the DX Policy should include relevant assurance activities in their Assurance Plans which ensure digital experiences enabled through the project will meet the policy requirements. This might include requiring that DX Policy compliance be assessed as part of a solution design review and/or as part of go-live assessments
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Purpose
These checklists are for auditing and uplifting your existing public facing digital services for compliance with the Digital Experience Policy (the policy).
We recommend that agencies complete the checklists for each individual existing service, rather than at an agency level. The checklists will help understand if each service is in scope of the policy requirements.
Please note:
The language in the checklists is tailored to existing public facing digital services. It may differ from content and compliance criteria for other services.
To meet the criteria requirements, tick each of the checklist items which have been adapted for existing services.
The checklists include best practice approaches for meeting the requirements of the Digital Experience Policy. This is guidance only. Agencies may meet the requirements through other activities.
More detailed guidance on how to meet each of the criteria is available on Digital Service Standard | digital.gov.au and Digital Inclusion Standard | digital.gov.au.
Scope and applicability
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Use this checklist to determine if the policy applies to a service.
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Step 1. Is the service an existing public-facing digital service
Does the service meet all 3 requirements?
- It’s an existing service.
- It’s a public-facing service.
- The service is digital.
If yes, continue to step 2 or If no, then no further action is required.
Step 2. Is the service informational or transactional
Determine if any of the following describe your service:
- The service is informational and/or transactional service, it provides information to users, such as reports, fact sheets or videos through government agency websites, smart answers, virtual assistants, e-learning, publications, online libraries, databases and data warehouses*.
- The service is a transactional service, it leads to a change in government-held records, typically involving an exchange of information, money, licences or goods such as logging into a portal or platform, submitting a claim, registering a business, updating contact details, lodging a tax return, subscribing to newsletters, grant applications and public consultation submissions*.
If yes, continue to step 3 or If no, then no further action is required.
Step 3. Page visits or transactions per annum
Review analytics to determine if the service has more than 50,000 page visits and/or transactions per annum.
If yes, complete the checklists (and steps) to determine if the service complies. or If no, then the policy still applies, however no action is required for reporting compliance.
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No Further Action
Existing public-facing digital service
Note: If it’s a new or a replacement digital service, visit digital.gov.au/policy/digital-experience for further information.
Informational or transactional service
Note: These descriptions are a guide only. A service may still be defined as transactional and/or informational if it does not match the examples set out above.
Page visits or transactions
Reporting on compliance is only for services with more than 50,000 page visits and/or transactions per annum.
Note: the policy still applies to services with fewer than 50,000 page visits and/or transactions, though for reporting it focuses resources and compliance efforts on high-impact services. This makes sure the most widely used digital services adhere to the policy standards and smaller-scale services can operate with greater flexibility.
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No further action occurs when:
It is not an existing public-facing digital service
Note: If it’s a new or a replacement digital service, visit digital.gov.au/policy/digital-experience for further information.
It is not an informational or transactional service
Note: These descriptions are a guide only. A service may still be defined as transactional and/or informational if it does not match the examples set out above.
It does not exceed 50,000 page visits or transactions
Reporting on compliance is only for services with more than 50,000 visits and/or transactions per annum.
Note: the policy still applies to services with fewer than 50,000 page visits and/or transactions focuses resources and compliance efforts on high-impact services. This makes sure the most widely used digital services adhere to the policy standards and smaller-scale services can operate with greater flexibility.
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It is not an existing public-facing digital service
Note: If it’s a new or a replacement digital service, visit digital.gov.au/policy/digital-experience for further information.
It is not an informational or transactional service
Note: These descriptions are a guide only. A service may still be defined as transactional and/or informational if it does not match the examples set out above.
It does not exceed 50,000 page visits or transactions
Reporting on compliance is only for services with more than 50,000 visits and/or transactions per annum.
Note: the policy still applies to services with fewer than 50,000 page visits and/or transactions focuses resources and compliance efforts on high-impact services. This makes sure the most widely used digital services adhere to the policy standards and smaller-scale services can operate with greater flexibility.
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Digital Experience Policy checklists and process
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Compliance, reporting and exemption guide
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Digital Experience Policy (DX Policy) compliance, reporting and exemption information for digital government services.
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This guide contains information about:
- the Digital Experience Policy (DX Policy)
- compliance and reporting under the DX Policy
- standards that apply to existing and new or replacement digital services
- compliance processes through the Investment Oversight Framework (IOF)
- exemption types, exemption application processes and scenarios.
Connect with the digital community
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