South East Queensland has its first Digital Plan, and a 2032 deadline to make it count. Evinact CEO Neil Makepeace looks at what comes next.
South East Queensland has a new 10-year Digital Plan, and that’s an achievement in itself. Getting governments, councils, businesses and community organisations to agree on a shared vision for a region as large and diverse as ours is no small undertaking.
Developed by the Council of Mayors (SEQ) as part of the SEQ City Deal, the Plan sets out how better use of digital technology, data and infrastructure could improve productivity, support economic growth and make the region a better place to live and work.
Evinact has a close connection to the Plan. Our Group Founder, Neil Glentworth, was its primary author and led its development from inception, and we’ve been part of this conversation since ‘smart cities’ was the phrase of the day.
The Plan identifies six areas, including housing, transport, disaster resilience and cost of living, where coordinated digital investment could make a practical difference.
But as anyone who’s spent time around government strategy knows, having a plan and delivering on it are two rather different things.
One region, many priorities
Over recent weeks, Evinact has hosted two invitation-only lunches with business and digital leaders to discuss the Plan and what it could mean for their organisations. A common thread was the role of councils, and how a region made up of very different local areas can share data, standards and investment while still meeting local needs.
South East Queensland is often spoken about as though it’s a single, homogeneous entity. Anyone who’s spent time working across the region knows that’s far from the case.
Consider the differences between Brisbane, the Gold Coast, Toowoomba and the Scenic Rim. A major capital city, a coastal tourism hub, a regional centre and a largely rural community, each with its own economic priorities, infrastructure needs and local challenges.
That’s precisely how local government is supposed to work. Councils exist to respond to the particular needs of the people they serve. So what does it mean to ask them to operate as one digital region?
The opportunity is to identify where greater coordination can deliver benefits that individual councils would struggle to achieve on their own. That might mean common data standards, coordinated infrastructure planning or the ability to scale successful digital initiatives across multiple councils. The Plan provides a framework for that collaboration, but its success will depend on the governance, leadership and working relationships built around it.
Nobody gets excited about a Common Data Environment, and that’s fine
One of the Plan’s central proposals is the development of a Common Data Environment, or CDE. Now, I don’t imagine many people are sitting around their kitchen tables talking excitedly about Common Data Environments. Most people would probably tell you they just want their rubbish collected, their roads maintained and public services that work.
Fair enough. But that’s exactly why the CDE is important. In simple terms, it would make valuable data available across organisations that need it, under common standards and appropriate governance arrangements.
Take housing. Information about land use, planning restrictions, infrastructure capacity and development applications is currently held across different organisations and systems. Better access to consistent, trusted data could help governments and industry make faster, better-informed decisions about where housing can be built and what infrastructure needs to support it.
The same principle applies to transport, where an increasingly congested region has much to gain from better coordination of transport data, infrastructure investment and real-time network management. And when severe weather strikes, consistent information about flood risks, infrastructure, roads and emergency resources can support more coordinated responses.
These are practical benefits that people can see and feel, even if they never learn what a CDE is.
Of course, making data available across organisations is considerably easier to describe than to deliver. Each organisation has its own responsibilities, systems and requirements. You need governance to establish the conditions under which information can be shared, along with agreed standards, clear accountability and appropriate safeguards. It’s detailed, often unglamorous work. But if we get it right, the potential benefits in time, cost and service delivery are substantial.
Digital identity and the promise of ‘tell us once’
Another foundation identified in the Plan is digital identity. Again, it’s a fairly technical concept with a very familiar application.
Think about the last time you dealt with a government department, registered for a service or visited a new healthcare provider. How much information did you have to provide that another organisation already held?
There’s a principle in digital government known as ‘tell us once’: people shouldn’t have to supply the same information every time they interact with a different public service. A trusted digital identity can help make that possible, making services more secure and connected. It would also reduce administrative effort for residents and businesses and make service delivery more efficient.
Our discussions also highlighted what better coordination could mean for education and community services. Consider a child with disability who attends both a specialist school and a mainstream school, while also receiving support through other services. That child may interact with multiple organisations, different funding arrangements and separate information systems. Ideally, those organisations would coordinate their services around the child’s individual needs.
Achieving that requires careful consideration of what information can be shared, with whom and for what purpose. Privacy and information-sharing legislation rightly place obligations on organisations handling sensitive personal information, particularly about children. Evinact has considerable experience in this area, which involves detailed work across governance, privacy, legislation and technical design.
Brisbane 2032 gives us a deadline
It’s impossible to discuss South East Queensland’s future without talking about the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games. As someone who spends a fair amount of time in these conversations, I’d suggest the Games already receive their fair share of attention. But they do provide something valuable in the form of a deadline.
In 2032, the eyes of the world will be on our region. We need to deliver an outstanding experience for athletes, visitors and residents, supported by reliable transport, communications, public safety and city operations. That gives governments and industry a shared objective around which to coordinate investment and action.
It also brings forward decisions about digital infrastructure that will have consequences for decades. Digital capability needs to be considered from the outset, because it’s very hard to add after the concrete has been poured. That includes telecommunications networks, connectivity in new developments, resilient communications and the capacity to support emerging technologies. Much of this work is expensive and largely invisible to the people who benefit from it, but without it, many of the more exciting applications of data, AI and connected services simply won’t be possible.
My colleague Jon O’Brien has explored this in more detail, identifying practical steps to help ensure Brisbane 2032 leaves South East Queensland with a lasting digital legacy. Ultimately, 2032 should be an important milestone in the region’s digital development, rather than the finish line.
From a shared plan to shared action
One of the encouraging things about our recent discussions has been the willingness of people from many different sectors, including government, commercial enterprise, telecommunications, education and community services, to engage with the Plan and consider what it means for their organisations.
But collaboration doesn’t happen simply because a strategy calls for it. We need leadership that can bring organisations together, establish shared priorities and coordinate investment and implementation. We need practical governance arrangements that allow organisations to work together while respecting their individual responsibilities. And we need to pay attention to the foundations identified in the Plan: common data, digital identity, digital infrastructure and implementation coordination.
South East Queensland has never had a digital plan of this kind before. It represents a considerable amount of work, engagement and collective thinking, and it’s a strong starting point for what comes next.
If our recent conversations have reinforced anything for me, it’s that the appetite to collaborate is there, along with a growing understanding of what better digital coordination could deliver.
The Plan has got us this far. Now the real work begins.
If you’d like to talk about what the Digital Plan means for your organisation, get in touch with the Evinact team.
