nsw strategy, investment & architecture principles...strategic objectives. the principles cover a...

November 2020

NSW Strategy, Investment & Architecture Principles

Document number: 1.0 Version number: 1.0

Date: Tuesday, November 17, 2020

Contact Details

Name: Kritika Joon Position: Advisor, Enterprise Architect

Business Unit: ICT/Digital Investment & Assurance

Division: digital.nsw, NSW Department of Customer Service

NSW Strategy, Investment & Architecture Principles | November 2020 ii

Table of Contents

NSW Strategy, Investment & Architecture Principles

1. Principles Overview 1

1.1 Purpose 1

1.2 Audience 1

1.3 Cluster & Agency Principles 1

1.4 Methodology 1

2. Application of the Principles 3

2.1 Using these Principles 3

2.2 Key Features of Principles 4

3. Digital Strategy Development Principles 3

4. Digital Investment Planning Principles 10

5. Digital Architecture Principles 14

6. Document Control 19

NSW Strategy, Investment & Architecture Principles | November 2020 1

1. Principles Overview

1.1 Purpose

We are living in an age where our infrastructure and digital experiences are merging. In

today’s transformative era, digital is about leveraging technology for change. It’s about re-

thinking how we work, instead of jumping into solutions and delivery. Digital is about putting

customer at the centre of everything we do and driving customer outcomes in New South

Wales.

The NSW Strategy, Investment and Architecture principles provide a framework for strategic

decision making to enable the NSW Government clusters and agencies to achieve their

strategic objectives. The principles cover a range of capabilities pertinent in today’s digital

era - new ways of working, use of technology, data driven practices, privacy by design

approach, business transformation and digital design practices. The principles have a

strong focus on the customer and are aligned with the NSW Customer & Digital Strategy –

Beyond Digital.

These principles provide general guidance across three domains – strategy, investment and

architecture. These principles are robust and provide guidance to support consistent

decision making across all of government. The purpose of these principles is to enable the

clusters and agencies to achieve their strategies, support them in their investment planning

and architecture planning decision making.

1.2 Audience

The audience is enterprise architecture, strategy, digital transformation, service design and

investment planning practitioners across NSW Government.

1.3 Cluster and Agency Principles

Each cluster and underlying agencies will have their own set of principles endorsed by their

own governance forums and reflecting their strategy. However, those principles must also

be aligned with the whole of government strategy, investment and architecture principles,

and NSW Customer & Digital Strategy – Beyond Digital.

1.4 Methodology

Extensive secondary research has been undertaken to derive the set of NSW Strategy,

Investment and Architecture principles. The research involved undertaking a desktop scan


& analysis of leading digital governments including UK, Canada and Israel. Furthermore,

digital principles of different Australian jurisdictions have also been analysed including

Australian Capital Territory, Victoria, Queensland and Tasmania.

Whole of government strategies and standards across NSW Government have also been

analysed and scanned to check for strategic alignment with all of government customer and

digital direction.

The strategies, standards and frameworks reviewed and analysed are Beyond Digital

Strategy, NSW Design Standard, ICT Assurance Framework (Investment Principles), Tell

Gov Once Principles, existing NSW EA principles and cluster/agencies EA principles.

Enterprise architecture primer (Gartner) industry trends were also reviewed to support

design and development of the principles. The methodology snapshot is below in Figure 1.

Furthermore, user testing has been undertaken to validate assumptions, challenges and

opportunities. The draft principles have been reviewed internally by the digital.nsw EA team,

and, with NSW Strategy, Investment & Architecture community members, and 1on1 cluster

feedback from across NSW Government.

Figure 1. Methodology Snapshot


2. Application of these Principles

2.1 Using these Principles

These guiding principles can be applied and used in numerous ways. Some of the application

areas for these principles are:

• Provide a framework for ICT/digital decision making within NSW Government. These

principles can be embedded within digital strategy, strategic investment planning,

architecture development and governance processes.

• Guide and influence decision making behind selection of different digital products

and/or services, and related product architectures. This will ensure clusters, agencies

or project teams are effectively able to manage compliance to the ICT/digital

principles and best practice.

• Act as drivers for defining customer centric digital strategies, undertaking strategic

investment management and planning within government, and defining functional

requirements of architecture for digital products and services.

• Guide decision making on the use and deployment of different digital strategies,

products and even policies within NSW Government at an enterprise level. These

have been developed to ensure the ICT/digital services are cost effective, less risky

and deliver accelerated value back to the citizens.

• Support the decision-making process to initiate a dispensation request where the

implications of a specific architecture for a digital product/service cannot be resolved.

• Guide assessment of existing information system/ICT systems and services, while

also assessing the future strategic portfolio for clusters and agencies, for compliance

with whole of government standards.

• Ensure that the digital framework for developing products, strategies and services is

consistent across clusters and agencies. This further ensures that decisions are made

within the considered guiding framework.

• It removes the need to micro-manage technology and digital related decisions, and

effectively communicate the rules of engagement with all stakeholders.

• Guides clusters on strategic investment planning and funding, including state digital

assets (SDAs).


Figure 2. Application of these Principles

2.2 Key Features of Principles

A standard template has been used to define these principles. The key features of the

standard template include:

• Principle Statement: This is a succinct and unambiguous statement to communicate

the fundamental guiding rule.

• Rationale: This highlights the business benefits and rationale for complying with this

principle. It articulates the value of the principle at an enterprise level, and also forms

the rational behind applying the principle.

• Implication: This highlights the requirement, both for the business and for ICT/digital

for undertaking and carrying out this principle. This includes resources, costs, and

activities/tasks required for successfully applying the principle. It also includes the

impact to the business for adopting the principle. Implication also highlights future

transition and planning activities needed by the enterprise.


3. Digital Strategy Development Principles

The purpose of these principles is to guide development of customer focused digital

strategies. The principles are:

Principle 1 Government services are digital by default

Rationales • Improves customer experience and ensures digital is the default paradigm.

• Provides streamlined and seamless experience to customers. It also reduces overall costs and leads to productivity gains for government agencies.

• Ensures the services are consistently of high standard and embraces customer needs effectively.

Implications • Digital design practices must be embedded within clusters/agencies. Clusters/agencies should use the NSW Design System while designing digital services.

• The digital products and services should be simple and easy to use. Clusters and agencies should have the appropriate support and infrastructure needed to implement digital practices. This also includes having a fit for purpose digital culture.

• Implications for customers include slower services and manual paperwork involved which is time consuming.

Principle 2 Government services should be designed using human centered design and modern ways of working

Rationales • Ensures all government services are customer centric. Furthermore, enables to look at the big picture, understand the vision, understand customer needs effectively, and respond quickly.

• Ensures you are solving for the right problem by understanding and addressing customer pain points more effectively. Enables collaborating and co-designing with the customers and close the empathy gap.

• Enables capturing customer feedback by testing solution, and iterating until a suitable solution is defined. This ensures services and solutions are personalised according to customer needs.

• Using agile service delivery approach ensures government responds to changing customer needs rapidly. This improves responsiveness and flexibility while designing products and services. Refer to Agile Approach to Service Delivery for more information.

• Embed new and modern ways of working within teams across NSW Government, and ensures employees are equipped with the right digital skills and capabilities. This uplifts the overall digital culture.

• Reduces silos and brings down agency boundaries.

https://www.digital.nsw.gov.au/digital-design-systemhttps://www.digital.nsw.gov.au/design-system/guides/plan-project/lead-agile-culture/agile-approach-service-deliveryhttps://www.digital.nsw.gov.au/design-system/guides/plan-project/lead-agile-culture/agile-approach-service-delivery


• Promotes a fail fast, learn fast approach to service delivery in government, underpinned by rapid prototyping and agile delivery approach.

• Opportunities to engage with various accelerator programs across NSW Government -Digital NSW Accelerator (DNA), and Transport Digital Accelerator to apply and use different approaches for designing and delivering services in government.

Implications • Clusters/agencies will need the appropriate skills/capabilities uplift. Cultural shift required in re-thinking government services from the perspective of customers.

• Must consider embedding HCD in enterprise architecture practice. The employees would need training to think differently to revisit customer problems and using customer centric approaches to designing government products and services.

• Clusters/agencies must consider using agile delivery approach while designing new products, services and solutions. Agencies must show proof that the service concept (e.g. prototype, MVP or POC) has been tested with customers prior to scaling.

• Agencies must request seed funding amount to test the concept with customers and prove value.

• Teams must focus on understanding the “why”, by breaking down a big complex program of work into smaller problems. This ensures a smaller problem is understood well first.

• Promote use of service design, service blueprints and user stories while designing products and services for customers.

• Consider leveraging ‘as a service’ model before building it or buying a service (i.e. renting/software model > buy > build options). Agencies can share trainings and lessons learnt with clusters/agencies.

Principle 3 Make government services seamless, simple and efficient

Rationales • Enhances overall customer experience by focusing on customer needs and reduces customer service complexity in government services.

• Ensures customers only tell us once, and also provides quicker value back to the customer.

• Improved customer satisfaction rates and increased trust in government services.

Implications • Must consider use of human centred design while designing new services. Develop prototypes/POCs/MVPs to test with the customers and capture feedback.

• Ensure undertaking a discovery phase to understand customer needs

and pain points before designing the product or service.

• Use customer journey maps to enhance overall customer experience.

https://www.digital.nsw.gov.au/transformation/digitalnsw-accelerator-dnahttps://future.transport.nsw.gov.au/technology/roadmap-in-delivery/transport-digital-acceleratorhttps://future.transport.nsw.gov.au/technology/roadmap-in-delivery/transport-digital-accelerator


• Engage in cross-agency collaboration to deliver simple and seamless

customer experience.

• Must use common design patterns, guides and components available via

the NSW Design System.

• Share resources, existing patterns and lessons learnt with cross agencies.

• Use different mechanisms to continuously understand customer engagement and capture customer feedback (e.g. digital analytics). Use behavioural insights to drive better customer outcomes and decisions.

• Effort required from agencies to reduce complexity and simplify services. This will ensure services are easy to digitise.

Principle 4 Use evidence and insights driven approach to design government services

Rationales • Enables a data driven culture within government.

• Improves decision making to drive customer outcomes.

• Uses data to drive design of digital products and services in government.

• Provides greater transparency to our customers and ensures information is available where appropriate.

• Ensures more efficient decision making and customer centric outcomes.

Implications • Must consider sharing data between government agencies to drive

citizen outcomes.

• Should use data insights to understand customer needs better.

• Ensure customers meaningfully engage with government and contribute to decision making.

• Clusters/agencies must use data and behavioural insights to create services and products.

Principle 5 Make services accessible for everyone

Rationales • Ensures government services are more accessible and inclusive.

• Promotes digital inclusion.

• Ensures digital services are legible and readable by all.

• Distinct customer needs are engaged from the outset to ensure well

designed services.

Implications • Must consider the different situational and environmental conditions a

customer may access the service/product from.

• Must meet the accessibility requirements (WCAG 2.0 AA).

• Identify where digital assistance might be needed to support customers (e.g. chat, telephone, FAQs etc.).

• Services/products must accommodate customers with diverse backgrounds and users with disability.


• Services/products must be tested on various devices and platforms before

public deployment.

• Must consider including cultural and linguistically diverse communities in

your design.

• Must consider non-digital access and support for people unable to use/access this digital service.

Principle 6 Ensure openness, transparency and trust

Rationales • Build an open standards culture (sharing code, information, research,

design and ideas).

• Ensures harnessing open standards and leverage best practice (e.g. open

source software).

• Leads to designing of seamless services and platforms across all devices

and channels.

• Open standards ensure suppliers compete on a level playing field. Open

standards drive flexibility and change.

• Promotes trust and enables cross government collaboration.

• Enables identifying of re-use opportunities across government.

• Drives more effective and collaborative decision making, and design better digital services for the customers in NSW.

• Reduces costs and duplication and improves overall transparency.

Implications • Must consider use of core and common components (state digital assets).

• Must share data, standards and code where applicable, and make data easily available via data.nsw.

• Cross-collaborate and share ideas via different communities of practices and government network.

• Government bodies must be clear about the user need and functional outcome for a standards-based solution in specifications so that suppliers can meet these needs.

• Open standards must consider and respect the data protection, privacy

and security requirements.

• Make APIs available to ensure services can be built on government

information and data.

• Use the Digital NSW Community to host discussions and encourage contributions to build an open culture – share ideas, share work in progress, user research etc.

Principle 7 Continuous improvement of operations using DevOps

Rationales • Ensures government services are more responsive to change.

• Ensures cluster operations are MOG-proof, and resilient to changes.

https://community.digital.nsw.gov.au/


• Accelerates delivery of internal operations and customer services to

citizens.

Implications • Must integrate QA and testing activities with DevOps activities.

• Create/drive quality awareness within teams to drive a culture of continuous improvement.

Principle 8 Start small, experiment, iterate and continuously improve

Rationales • Fastrack innovative ideas into outcomes.

• Ensures designing scalable services that are responsive to change.

• Release MVPs early and get customer feedback.

• Reduces risks and improves chances of success.

Implications • Build a culture of building prototypes and testing with customers.

• Utilise the NSW Design System for guidance, patterns and toolkits for agile delivery.

• Test service/concept with customers to validate assumptions and customer needs.

• Use seed funding to test with customers and prove value.

Principle 9 Collaborate and foster cross-government and industry partnerships

Rationales • Enables working in multi-disciplinary teams with a diverse set of skills to deliver outcomes.

• Drives innovation and collaboration and creates an engine for accelerated transformation.

• Provides quicker value back to the customers.

Implications • Must consider re-using government procurement contracts where applicable.

• Consider collaborating with government agencies for core and common services (state digital assets).

Principle 10 Re-use over re-invent of government services

Rationales • Promotes sharing or standardization of commodity services (such as identity, human resources management, finance and document management).

• Reduces costs, drives efficiency and improves overall business agility.

Implications • Cluster/agencies should leverage state digital assets for core and common services.

• Cross-agency and wofg re-use opportunities must be considered by clusters/agencies when designing a new initiative.


• Clusters/agencies will need to consider the use of common processes

and patterns, supported by common use applications and solutions.

• Clusters/agencies will require the ability to publish, discover and consume common capabilities. The use of reference models and taxonomies to identify shareable and reusable components will assist in this task.

• Re-use is also about re-using and leveraging established/proven ideas or concepts from other agencies and clusters in NSW Government.

Principle 11 Privacy and security by design

Rationales • Ensure customer, supplier and employee information is managed and

used securely.

• Services are resilient to cyber incidents.

• Security measures are made frictionless for customers and end user.

• Service level agreements are not put at risk by service outages as a result

of cyber or physical security attacks.

Implications • Must align and comply with cybersecurity best practice and NSW Cyber Security Policy.

• Engage with cybersecurity expert early to know how to identify and manage risk.

• Must carry out testing and assessment for security.

• Comply with mandatory cybersecurity policy requirements.

• All NSW Government cybersecurity standards and NSW IPC standards must be adopted and complied with.

• Robust data recovery and business continuity plans must be maintained, updated and adhered to.

Principle 12 Promote government as a platform to build customer centric government services

Rationales • Builds a culture of open platforms, promotes API first and data driven approaches.

• Reduces silos between government departments and improves efficiency.

• Improves delivery of services to customers (user centric services).

• Co-designing/jointly addressing customer challenges and co-creating solutions.

Implications • Make data easily available for use via data.nsw.

• Open standards must consider and respect the data protection, privacy and security requirements.

• Make APIs available to ensure services can be built on government information and data.

https://www.digital.nsw.gov.au/digital-transformation/cyber-security/resourceshttps://www.digital.nsw.gov.au/transformation/cyber-security/cyber-security-policyhttps://www.digital.nsw.gov.au/transformation/cyber-security/cyber-security-policyhttps://www.digital.nsw.gov.au/transformation/cyber-security/contacthttps://www.digital.nsw.gov.au/transformation/cyber-security/cyber-security-policyhttps://www.ipc.nsw.gov.au/fact-sheet-privacy-design


• Should work towards a common data standard across services and

agencies where practical.

Principle 13 Customer experience must be measured to optimise design

Rationales • Enables quantifying and measuring customer satisfaction rate.

• Ease in identifying gaps, pain points and improving those in the future releases.

• Increase efficiency and reduce cost.

• Improves customer trust in government services.

• Public sector employee experience is critical for customer success. Therefore, legacy technology concerns must be addressed to improve employee experience.

• Enables internal services, applications and systems to be more intuitive

and employee centric.

Implications • Make use of customer research to inform decision making about improving services.

• Should regularly consider different metrics and feedback mechanisms to capture customer feedback to drive iterative improvement of design or technology.

• Employee experience drives customer experience holistically. Agencies must consider reducing and/or removing technical/legacy debt from their internal systems and services.


4. Digital Investment Planning Principles

The purpose of these principles is to guide investment planning for strategic ICT and digital

initiatives across the sector. The principles are:

Principle 1 Investments are strategically aligned with NSW Government priorities and direction

Rationales • Ensures investments are aligned with goals of government and delivering to the customer needs.

• Ensures investments are aligned with whole of government customer and digital direction.

• Ensures investments are aligned with whole of government policies for improved outcomes for the citizens of NSW.

Implications • Cluster/agency strategic plans must be aligned with whole of government strategic priorities (e.g. NSW Premier Priorities, State Outcomes and Cluster Outcomes).

• Cluster/agency strategic plans must also be aligned with whole of government customer and digital direction as outlined in the Beyond Digital Strategy.

• Design of business solutions/services will need to be aligned with, and traceable to whole of government strategic goals and outcomes.

Principle 2 Initiatives must have clearly articulated and S.M.A.R.T investment goals

Rationales • Increases chances of initiative success.

• Enables tracking of success/progress via measurable KPIs and targets.

• Ensures initiative is delivered on time and on budget and meets the needs of the customers.

Implications • Customer value must be articulated in the business case/lean business case.

• ROI for each initiative will be assessed when applying for funding.

• Initiatives must articulate ROI across different metrics such as financial, social and socio-economic.

Principle 3 Investments should re-use whole of government contracts

Rationales • Reduces duplication of technology services.

• Maximises the return of investment made with existing platforms and services.

• Prevent additional operational complexities and overall costs.

https://www.nsw.gov.au/premiers-prioritieshttps://www.budget.nsw.gov.au/outcome-budgetinghttps://www.budget.nsw.gov.au/outcome-budgetinghttps://www.digital.nsw.gov.au/beyond-digital/ministers-forewordhttps://www.digital.nsw.gov.au/beyond-digital/ministers-forewordhttps://www.treasury.nsw.gov.au/information-public-entities/business-cases


Implications • Must consider the whole of government contracts prior to procuring

services at a cluster level.

• Must comply with whole of government ICT/digital sourcing policy.

• Procurement contracts must be reusable and expandable (albeit pricing for other options should be considered as well), so that it can be reused easily by other government agencies.

• Procurement templates would need to add this additional clause to enable reusability.

Principle 4 Must have the right digital capabilities to creatively solve and deliver digital services

Rationales • Ensures initiative can be delivered effectively.

• Reduces the need to go to market to source the required skills/ capabilities, thereby saving time and reducing cost.

• Improves overall readiness of the initiative to start delivery as soon as funding is received.

• Reduces time taken to move from ideation phase to actual delivery of service/product.

Implications • Clusters/agencies must be well equipped with using agile/digital methodologies.

• Undertake upskilling teams/functions where applicable. Upskill in digital skills of the future.

• Clear KPIs should be defined to measure progress and digital maturity in different agencies/clusters.

• Consider leveraging skills from different sources – NSW Government, other state jurisdictions, federal government, industry and third parties.

• Must consider seed/scale funding pathway and approach for new ways of working and service delivery.

Principle 5 Investments should leverage small medium enterprises (SME) use to drive innovation

Rationales • Drives collaboration/partnering with SMEs/industry partners.

• Allows for positive impact where they are needed the most (e.g. partnering with non-profits to communicate with at-risk communities).

• Accelerates sourcing from vibrant and competitive markets locally and globally.

• Overall improves outcomes for customers.

Implications • Clusters/agencies must consider SMEs while undertaking procurement

activities.

• Create opportunities for SMEs to ensure fairness in participation by different suppliers in government procurement processes.

https://buy.nsw.gov.au/buyer-guidance/plan/before-you-approach-the-market/government-arrangements#:~:text=A%20whole%2Dof%2Dgovernment%20contract%20appoints%20one%20or%20more%20suppliers,can%20use%20to%20choose%20suppliers.https://buy.nsw.gov.au/schemes/ict-services-scheme#:~:text=In%20accordance%20with%20Procurement%20Board,Procure%20IT%20v3.


Principle 6 Think big, start small and scale fast (seed prior to scale investment)

Rationales • Co-creating and testing with customers to ensure pain points are addressed and service is successful.

• Puts customer at the centre while designing products and services.

• Ensures to test the change with the customers prior to commercial commitment. This ensures required change is successfully adopted by customers.

• Reduces delivery risk and improves chances of customer success.

Implications • Strategic business case or lean business case must articulate how customer value has been proven.

• Must consider building/testing POCs, MVPs or prototypes with customers to prove value, capture feedback and ensure customer needs are met.

• Articulate use of right digital methodologies and skills in business case (e.g. agile approaches and human centred design).

• Articulate customer value and prove it early before any commercial engagement.

• Use NSW Design System for guidance on testing with customers.

Principle 7 Must invest in priority things first

Rationales • Priority initiatives are funded first (i.e. strategic priorities of government – whole of government and cluster priorities).

• Government funding process is responsive to changing priorities in response to different events and circumstances (e.g. COVID-19, bushfires).

Implications • Clusters must articulate an initiative’s relative priority in relation to other initiatives.

• Strategic plans must be responsive and flexible to changing priorities

• Must articulate the customer value for that priority initiative and why is it needed at that point in time.

Principle 8 Must not invest in technology only

Rationales • Ensures going beyond technology.

• Ensures customer centric services are designed and delivered.

• Investments must consider other aspects such as skills, capabilities (people).

Implications • Investment plan/business cases must articulate customer value.

• Investment decisions must consider customer impact (e.g. - regional impact, total jobs created etc.) while evaluating funding requests.

https://www.digital.nsw.gov.au/digital-design-system


Principle 9 Use seed investment approach for accelerated value to customers and lower risk

Rationales • Quicker value to customers. Ensures investment drives value for money and intended business benefits are realised.

• Improves chances of success and reduces risk .

• Ensures service is tested with customers, therefore customer pain points are addressed.

• Ensures clusters/agencies make the best use of government money.

Implications • Lean business cases must articulate why seed funding is required.

• The approach should articulate how concept/service will be tested with customers to prove value.

• Identify customer needs and pain points during discovery process.

• Business cases/LBC must highlight availability of in-house skills for overall delivery readiness.

Principle 10 ICT/digital investments must be environmentally friendly

Rationales • Ensures ICT/digital investments incorporate environmentally responsible design for services and products.

• Ensures government services are paperless, and therefore have a low carbon footprint.

• Ensures NSW Government investments enable and support a low carbon economy in the information age.

Implications • Clusters/agencies must consider investments in smart infrastructure (smart devices, smart buildings and smart tools).

• Data driven approaches must be considered to optimise existing systems and infrastructure for efficiency gains.

• Must adopt and comply with NSW Smart Places Strategy.

https://www.dpie.nsw.gov.au/our-work/strategy-and-reform/smart-places/smart-places-strategy


5. Digital Architecture Principles

The purpose of these principles is to guide architecture planning and development for

strategic ICT and digital initiatives (products/services) across the sector. The principles are:

Principle 1 Use Service NSW as the default front door and entry point (where applicable)

Rationales • Consistent and standard approach to customer services.

• One stop-shop for all customer services within NSW.

• Improves trust, and customer satisfaction levels.

• Reduces silos and improves cross-agency collaboration.

• Reduces cost and delivery risk.

Implications • Must consider architectural patterns and common re-usable components where applicable.

• Consider the impact of not using SNSW as the default entry point.

• Understand and consider the onboarding requirements, data integrity and cost to delivery.

• Agencies must prioritise customer benefit over organizational need when developing service features.

Principle 2 Use omni-channel architecture patterns to ensure consistent customer experience

Rationales • Drives consistent customer experience.

• Ensures government services are seamless and easy to access.

• Improves overall customer satisfaction with using government services.

• Improves overall efficiency and reduces costs.

• Reduces silos between government departments and drives cross-agency collaboration.

Implications • Consider leveraging a centralized logging solution for all components.

• Consider using value added components via APIs (e.g. receipt generation, SMS, email messaging, client management and case management).

• Leverage existing SNSW security patterns (IAM, client edge security and business security).

• Other domains to consider – digital asset management, user experience, and transaction logic).


Principle 3 Use service-oriented architecture to be more responsive to customer and operational needs

Rationales • Improves information flow and makes government services more flexible.

• Increases reuse opportunities within government.

• Rapid development & deployment of new functions and customer requirements.

• Ensures government services are easily scalable and reliable.

Implications • Use existing software modules, instead of creating new ones.

• Adopt agile delivery approaches and adapt to changing environments quickly (increased customer demand, COVID-19, bushfires etc.).

• Focus on more business-centric services which are loosely coupled and use service-oriented design (e.g. design patterns, rules engine).

• Must focus on simplification and standardisation, service orientation and interoperability.

Principle 4 Data and functionality that adds value in reuse must be accessible via API

Rationales • Improves data sharing opportunities within government.

• Ensures business decisions are driven by data-based outcomes.

• Improves interoperability and promotes openness within government.

• Accelerates development and delivery of government services, thereby saving time and reducing overall costs.

• Ensures government code can be shared for reuse by other jurisdictions nationally and globally.

Implications • Data must be recognized as an asset with value to the customer and government.

• Reusable data and information assets will need to be tracked and maintained.

• Agencies must consider data stewardship roles and other associated roles as information owners (where applicable).

• Ensure compliance with data policies and data management framework on data.nsw.

• Ensure compliance with API best practice outlined on api.gov.au.

Principle 5 Human centered design matters

Rationales • Co-design and co-create with the customer at the centre.

• Addresses customer needs as well as pain points.

• Ensures services are successful, reduces risks and costs.

https://data.nsw.gov.au/https://api.gov.au/


• Improves changes increased customer satisfaction and trust with

government services.

Implications • Consider using agile delivery approach for initiative delivery.

• Undertake comprehensive discovery with customers to understand needs and problems.

• Co-design/co-create solutions with customers at the centre.

• Regularly iterate to capture customer feedback and improvements.

Principle 6 Privacy must be considered at all stages of digital services

Rationales • Ensures customer information is secure and privacy is maintained.

• Government services and systems are resilient.

• Ensures services take a proactive and preventative approach to privacy.

• Ensures privacy is embedded into the design of systems, services and products.

• Provides end to end security throughout the entire lifecycle.

• Ensures respect for customer privacy – keeping it user centric.

Implications • Must align with cybersecurity best practice in NSW.


• Must carry out testing and assessment for security.

• Comply with mandatory cybersecurity policy requirements.

• All NSW Government cybersecurity standards and NSW IPC standards must be adopted and complied with.

• Robust data recovery and business continuity plans must be maintained, updated and adhered to.

Principle 7 Must build interoperable systems to share data and information

Rationales • Increases productivity and reduces costs.

• Reduces silos and improves cross-agency collaboration.

• Makes it easy to share data across government agencies.

• Making data easily accessible for use.

Implications • Comply with data sharing practices and policies within NSW Government as outlined on data.nsw.

• Consider operational and business interoperability when designing systems.

• Application integration requirements must be considered to reduce duplication and improve.

https://www.digital.nsw.gov.au/transformation/cyber-securityhttps://www.digital.nsw.gov.au/transformation/cyber-security/cyber-security-policyhttps://www.ipc.nsw.gov.au/fact-sheet-privacy-design


• Must align with cybersecurity best practice.


Principle 8 Proactively consult and work with business & finance leaders to ensure strategic alignment

Rationales • Ensures IT is an enabler of business services.

• Reduces silos between ICT/digital, finance and business functions.

• Ensures ICT/digital initiatives deliver strategic business priorities and

outcomes.

Implications • Consult business and finance functions when understand requirements.

• Must consider the strategic business priorities when defining outcomes for an initiative.

• Business case must highlight the customer and strategic value for an initiative.

Principle 9 Use agile approach to ensure business and customer is part of the design

Rationales • Accelerated value back to customers.

• Ensures customer pain points are addressed.

• Ensures delivering truly customer centric services.

• Testing services/concept with customers first, and then scaling.

• Reduces delivery risk and costs.

Implications • Use digital methodologies and agile approaches.

• Leverage existing NSW Design System capabilities and toolkits to design digital services and products.

• Ensure team has appropriate digital skills and capabilities to deliver an initiative.

• Must articulate customer value.

Principle 10 Use existing infrastructure (where applicable) instead of building functionality

Rationales • Reduces costs and risks.

• Improves re-use opportunities.

• Improves consistency and standardisation across government services.

Implications • Consider leveraging existing components and patterns where applicable.

• Work collaboratively with clusters where core/common components (state digital assets) are considered.


• Understand the integration requirements with existing infrastructure (where applicable).

Principle 11 Duplicate channels must be consolidated to reduce cost to serve

Rationales • Drives consistency and standardization across government services.

• Reduces costs and improves overall efficiency.

Implications • Identify existing channels and infrastructure to reduce silos and duplications.

Principle 12 Must re-use customer information where appropriate and subject to consent (tell us once)

Rationales • Customers only have to tell government once.

• Helps build familiar and consistent services.

• Enables customers to obtain an outcome in fewest number of steps possible.

• Request POI only if necessary, to the minimum level required and as infrequently as possible.

Implications • Leverage SNSW to reuse customer information where needed.

• Explain what to expect and what will be done with customer’s information.

• Allow customers to navigate to tell us once services from other entry points.

• Use familiar interfaces that orient the customer within the services they are accessing.

• Reuse customer information (e.g. prefill a form) where appropriate and subject to consent.


6. Document Control

6.1 Document Approval

Name Position Date Approved

Daniel Roelink Director – Enterprise Architecture, digital.nsw, NSW Department of Customer Service

Nov 2020

6.2 Document Version Control

Version Status Date Prepared By Comments

V0.1 First draft for review

Aug 2020 Kritika Joon • Initial draft of principles

• Reviewed by community members

V0.2 Second draft for review

Sep 2020 - Oct 2020

Kritika Joon • Updated draft based on community feedback

• Rationales and implication added.

• Reviewed by 3x clusters

V0.3 Third draft for review

Oct 2020 Kritika Joon • Revised version reviewed by 1x cluster.

V0.4 Fourth draft for review

Nov 2020 Kritika Joon • Reviewed by digital.nsw enterprise architecture team.

V1.0 Principles released and published

Nov 2020 Kritika Joon • Approved for publishing by Director – Enterprise Architecture, digital.nsw

nsw strategy, investment & architecture principles...strategic objectives. the principles cover a...

Documents