Transform Government Through Training

Dr Lesley Seebeck

Dr Lesley Seebeck asks "Government tech is hard. If not the DTA, then what?". From several decades doing digital transformation in and for the federal government I became skeptical of grand strategies. Government tech is something you need to learn to do, partly with formal training, and partly on the job. One thing the Digital Transformation Agency (DTA) could be tasked to do to help is extend its current low level training programs, to higher levels of expertise. 

As a career public servant I was initially trained by the ABS as a database designer, and programmer. But that was not the end of it, I received specialist training in design and project management throughout my career. 

Canberra Start-up Business Boomerang,
map by Tom Worthington (Own work) [CC BY 3.0], via Google Maps

DTA's Canberra office is located in what I have dubbed the "Start-up Business Boomerang". This is a strip of land between the ANU, and the center of Canberra. It is home to the Canberra Innovation network, and dozens of small startup tech companies. I suggest the DTA could fruitfully engage with this ecosystem, and use it to help train APS technologists in how to be innovative.