The Australian Government has today announced plans to establish a Digital Transformation Office (DTO) to manage the development of digital public services across government. Based in the Department of Communications, the unit will combine web developers, designers, researchers and content specialists from across government into a new unit to quickly improve e-government services. The announcement said it will “operate more like a start-up than a traditional government agency”. One of the DTO’s first tasks will be creating a single digital identity for citizens to use to log in to every online government service. The unit is also intended to work closely with state governments, according to the announcement.

The DTO is a very similar approach to that taken first in the United Kingdom, and then in the United States. Britain set up the Government Digital Service in 2011, taking the management of e-government services away from individual departments and placing it in a specialist unit with greater hiring power and management structures more akin to a startup than a government agency. Last year, the United States government created 18F, its own specialist digital team operating from the centre of government with a remit to work across all departments. Singapore has also established its own government digital team within the Infocomm Development Authority, although its remit is less wide-ranging. The move comes after Communications Minister, Malcolm Turnbull (pictured), invited members of the Government Digital Service to Australia last year to discuss their operating model.