Senior IT officials in Australia are unsatisfied with the levels of connectivity that their agencies have achieved, and with the broader economic impact that their organisations are having, an exclusive FutureGov report has found.

The report - ‘Government Connectivity, Citizen Engagement and Economic Impact in Asia Pacific’ - was commissioned by Cisco Systems, and surveyed over 100 selected senior officials across Australia, Malaysia, India and Singapore.

Officials were asked to rate the importance of connectivity to their organisation, and also to rate their current level of it. Australian officials gave connectivity a 93% score for importance, but 72.3% for the level of connectedness their organisation has achieved. Relatively speaking, officials in Australia were the most critical when they scored their level of connectedness, with India (76%), Malaysia (78.8%) and Singapore (84%) giving themselves higher scores for their achievements in this area.

Australian officials noted that this area is of key interest to their agencies, and that there are barriers that need to be overcome. “The issues that matter most to me are access to government services via mobile devices and interconnected government systems that enable one stop shops for citizens,” one senior official said.

Another added: “How do you break down the silos limiting inter-connectivity between departmental agency systems and processes?”

The survey also asked officials to rate the importance of economic impact to their agency, and the level of economic impact that their organisation is having. Australian officials gave a score of 81% to the importance of having an economic impact - higher than the regional average of 77.3% - but rated their current level of economic impact at 64.8% - lower than the regional average of 65.6%.

Asked why he believes that Australian officials expressed the greatest regional concern about connectivity and economic impact, Andrew Thomson, Cisco’s Director of Public Sector Strategy, said: “Australians recognize that the global economy, and their place in it are changing. There is increased expectation that new technology will open up new means of driving jobs, economic growth and development.”

He continued: “As one of the most developed economies in the world, we are seeing Australia take the lead in the transition to cloud and app-based services. This is increasingly evident across government departments, but also has seemingly increased the appetite for fully transactional service delivery at all levels and across all types of services.”

Responding to officials’ concerns about breaking down silos, he said: “Within government and between departments we see new connectivity tools improving efficiencies and driving greater inter-departmental co-operation. With the advent of more cloud and big-data information sources coming online, I would expect that Australia will take the lead in developing new policy approaches that - up to now - have been too difficult to implement using existing silo-based systems.”

Australian officials favoured connectivity tools that connect information over those that connect people, the survey found. Asked why he thinks this is the case, Thomson said: “Australian government is data driven. A strong adherence to driving results and looking for efficiencies emphasises the need for more connected information. Citizens are also looking for more seamless services, and that is driving the need more inter-departmental data sharing, which again is information focused. I expect that as more governments gain technology traction we will see similar results across the region.”

When asked to rank engagement tools, Australian respondents gave low scores to instant messaging (IM) (27.8%), Bring Your Own Device (45%) and social media (47.3%).

Thomson said that “Although there is a strong interest in multi-channel service delivery, policy makers are really looking for how tools provide better quality and more transactional services, as opposed to just more information about those services.”

He added: “I think policy makers are rightly sceptical about the incremental value of IM and social media as tools for service delivery, but at the same time understand the value in citizen engagement.”