South Australian government readies new IT strategy

The South Australian government is working on a new IT strategy which includes improving IT security and department collaboration.

Speaking at the Technology in Government Summit in Canberra, SA government CIO Andrew Mills told delegates that a key part of the strategy is what he called digital by default.

“When we develop things, it’s not a booklet but posted online. Some [government] services are online and we’re working towards more.”

Turning to security improvements, he said the government wants to “prepare for the unpredictable” and is spending more money on training frontline staff about threats.

“This includes awareness about social engineering because our call centre staff are there to help people and it’s very hard for them to say ‘no’ to someone when they ring up asking for information,” Mills said.

“I recently received two social engineering emails and we’re blocking 85 per cent of emails that come into our system.”

Turning to collaboration amongst government departments, he said that it operates a single email system for 80,000 staff.

“We’ve just implemented a cross government collaboration platform called the South Australian government exchange and 2000 people are using it at present,” Mills said.

Hamish Barwick travelled to Canberra as a guest of Association Communications Events

Follow Hamish Barwick on Twitter: @HamishBarwick

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