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Registration Terms and Conditions

Purpose

This guide outlines what you need to know when registering for the Digital Governance Program (DGP) for Senior Responsible Officials (SROs). It covers key details about attendance, payment, and what happens if your plans change.

By confirming your registration, you’re agreeing to these terms. If anything is unclear or you’d like to discuss your situation, please contact the Leadership Programs and Integration team at lpi@dta.gov.au.

Registration & Payment Terms

In-person delivery: The DGP is designed as a hands-on, immersive experience, including digital project governance board simulations. Attendance is in-person in Canberra over two full days. Travel and accommodation costs are the responsibility of your agency.
Registration Cost: The cost to attend is $3,900 per participant for all 2025 sessions. GST is not applicable unless your attendance is funded by a non-Government entity, in which case 10% GST will be added.
Invoicing: Your agency will be invoiced after you attend. If you have a cost centre or purchase order number to include, or if you’d prefer the invoice go directly to your agency’s finance team, just email us at lpi@dta.gov.au.
Changing Your Program Date, Cancelling, or Nominating a Replacement
We understand that plans can change. We aim to be flexible while maintaining the quality of the program experience for all participants.
Because the program is delivered to a small cohort, fixed costs—such as venue hire, facilitator fees, catering, staff travel, and other logistics—are shared across a limited number of attendees. We do not maintain a waitlist, so the likelihood of filling a spot vacated close to the program date is low. As a result, rescheduling or cancellation close to the program date incurs a fee to help cover these costs.

Rescheduling or Cancelling

If you need to reschedule or cancel your attendance and provide 21 or more calendar days’ notice, no fee will apply and no invoice will be issued.
If you need to reschedule or cancel within 21 days of your program start date, please email lpi@dta.gov.au as soon as possible.
If you reschedule within 21 days of your program start date, you will still be invoiced the full $3,900, and we will apply the appropriate credit to your next program date. If you cancel within 21 days of your program’s start date (e.g. due to leaving your agency), your agency will be invoiced only for the applicable fee based on your notice period.
The same fee and conditions apply for both rescheduling and cancellation within 21 days:
Notice Period Before First Day of Program Fee Applied Credit Toward Future Program Invoice Issued
21+ days N/A N/A No
14–20 days $1,000 $2,900 Yes
7–13 days $2,000 $1,900 Yes
Less than 7 days $3,900 $0 Yes

Notice Period Before First Day of Program	Fee Applied	Credit Toward Future Program	Invoice Issued
21+ days	N/A	N/A	No
14–20 days	$1,000	$2,900	Yes
7–13 days	$2,000	$1,900	Yes
Less than 7 days	$3,900	$0	Yes

Nominating a Replacement

Instead of rescheduling or cancelling and incurring the associated fee, you may instead nominate a suitable replacement to attend in your place. Please email us at lpi@dta.gov.au at least 7 days before the start of the program. Please note that no substitutions within 7 days of the program start date will be permitted. Your replacement must also meet the program’s eligibility criteria. Please note that onboarding support (such as a pre-meeting with the facilitator) may not be available to your replacement.

Other Conditions

In the unlikely event that the DTA needs to reschedule the program, we’ll notify all confirmed and registered attendees as soon as possible. We’ll work with you to find a new date that suits your schedule. While we regret any additional costs this may cause, please note that the DTA is not responsible for covering these costs.
Photos and videos may be taken during the program and used in future marketing materials. If you prefer not to be photographed or have your image used in this way, please let us know in advance by emailing lpi@dta.gov.au.

Assurance research series: 01

Use existing standards as your baseline: Comply with legislation and standards to ensure your service uses best practice and meets the expectations for government services. Consider any specific legislation or policies relevant to your service as well as the Disability Discrimination Act (1992), the latest version of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) and should consider the government’s Style Manual.
Offer content in alternate formats: Offer content in different mediums (such as text, images and audio) and segment long documents or tutorials into chunks. Provide human-validated multilingual support for critical information. Evaluate your service with users who depend on assistive technology, integrate their feedback and resolve pain-points through design.
Consider different platforms: Prior to launch, comprehensively test your service across devices and platforms your users will access it through. Anticipate how content will appear on different devices in your designs and assess whether platform-specific interfaces either support or fail to meet accessibility standards.
Design for affordability and connectivity: Design and develop your service to use as little bandwidth and data as possible. Where it suits the service, make it cache for offline access or offer downloadable, print-friendly versions of critical content.
Use accessible language: Use plain language in both your content and user interface to ensure your service is usable by all. Replace niche terminology or jargon with widely understood terms. Always adhere to the government’s Style Manual and plain language guidance.

Guidance for agencies and independent assurers.

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).

Background and purpose

The Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) engages across the digital project lifecycle to support, advise and coordinate the government’s digital and ICT-enabled investments via the six states of the Investment Oversight Framework (IOF).

State 4 (Assurance) of the IOF aims to provide assurance to government that approved digital projects are on-track to deliver expected outcomes and benefits – including by ensuring projects plan for and implement fit-for-purpose assurance activities to support good decision-making throughout delivery.

The DTA engaged the John Grill Institute for Project Leadership at The University of Sydney to contribute to a research series aimed at eliciting best practice guidance to maximise the rate of digital project success.

As the first topic in this series, this paper and the guidance within supports independent assurers tasked with assurance activities that review and assign Delivery Confidence Assessment (DCA) ratings for digital projects.

The primary purpose is to help improve the consistency and understanding of DCA ratings for digital projects.

Specifically, this publication is intended to:

Address the unique challenges and issues faced by digital projects.
Outline inputs and focus areas that assurance reviewers could use to determine DCA ratings.
Provide general tolerance levels for each rating category.
Uplift capability and understanding of DCA ratings for the people who use them, including Senior Responsible Owners (SROs) and steering committees.

The primary audience for this guidance consists of:

Departments and agencies (agencies) and Independent Assurance Providers (IAPs) engaged by agencies.
Senior Responsible Officials (SROs) within agencies who are accountable for digital projects.
Governance Boards and Steering Committees overseeing digital projects.
Central agencies of the government (such as the DTA) who rely on DCAs to form advice to government.