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Major Digital Projects Report
Digital projects matter for Australians. This report provides a window into how these projects are performing – the systems they are improving, the data they are protecting, and the wider benefits they are delivering across all sectors of the economy.
It also outlines how reforms being led from the centre of government are ensuring every project has the best chance of success. While worthwhile, digital projects won’t always go smoothly, and these reforms are ensuring the public service is ready to meet the challenges they present.
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There are considerable benefits to a more inclusive Australia where everyone has the same opportunity to participate – both socially and economically.
The Strategy
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CEO foreword
Digital technologies underpin essential Australian Government services for people, businesses and communities. Ensuring the Australian Public Service (APS) successfully harnesses these technologies for public benefit sits at the heart of recent efforts to strengthen how major digital projects are designed and delivered.
Major digital projects provide enormous benefits – changing, improving and even saving the lives of Australians. Successful delivery can be challenging, with many of the projects in this report among the largest and most complex projects being delivered in our region. The case studies in this report highlight the transformative impact of several projects but, with 110 active projects, it’s just scratching the surface. Investment in digital transformation is intensifying as agencies work to meet the expectations of Australians for simple, secure and connected services. These services require digital projects that build and sustain world-class data and digital capabilities.
Continuously improving how the Australian Government designs and delivers its digital projects is at the core of the Digital Transformation Agency’s (DTA) role. This work matters – it is ensuring robust investment planning and oversight is in place to meet the challenges of delivering major digital projects successfully. Central to this work is an ongoing focus on creating the conditions projects need to succeed.
Transparency is one such condition and is a cornerstone of good governance which, in turn, fosters trust and accountability. For the public, transparency means having access to information that allows them to understand and engage with government decisions and initiatives.
This is the second public report on the delivery confidence of the Australian Government’s major digital projects. It outlines significant investments to enhance government services and how these projects aim to make the government fit for the digital age.
Chris Fechner
Chief Executive Officer
Digital Transformation Agency -
The Australian Government’s digital projects
This section introduces the 110 projects underway across the Australian Government. While these projects vary dramatically in scale, complexity and duration, they are all harnessing digital technologies to deliver world-class digital capabilities and services for Australians.
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Projects under central oversight
The processes described in the last section ensure the Australian Government can closely monitor and report on the performance of all its major digital projects.
This section sets out the projects now under central assurance oversight and changes since the last digital project data release in February 2024.
Central oversight now covers 110 active projects, up by 22, with an additional $6.7 billion in investment
Note: Since February 2024, 32 projects have left central oversight. Of these, 20 have closed, 10 now fall outside the scope for assurance oversight and one has been absorbed by an existing project. One project that was included as active in February 2024 closed prior to this report, however, continued to receive advice and assurance on closure activities, and was reported as active for this purpose.
Since the last report in 2024, 54 projects entered central oversight as part of the IOF, and 32 left. A further 56 projects that reported in 2024 continued under oversight this year.
The number of projects under assurance oversight will continue to change over time as new projects start, projects previously out of scope meet the criteria for inclusion following changes such as additional investment, and other projects close.
Since February 2024, of the 54 projects that have come under assurance oversight:
- 21 projects were previously funded, either during the 2023–24 Mid-Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook (MYEFO) or earlier, but only came under central oversight after the last report in February 2024
- 33 projects were newly funded in the 2024–25 Budget and are being delivered across 25 agencies.
Active projects by tier, budget and average duration
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Projects that left the portfolio
Digital projects are delivering enormous benefits for Australians - changing, improving and even saving lives. This section sets out recently completed and closed projects exploring how they performed and what benefits they delivered. It also reflects on how improvements to closure processes are ensuring that future projects systematically learn from past experience.
A range of projects across all investment tiers left the portfolio
Since February 2024, 25 projects have formally closed. These projects were delivered across 13 different agencies and had a combined value of $1.9 billion.
Projects that have closed Tier
Projects
Total budget
Median total budget
Average duration
1
Flagship digital investments
3
$1.1 billion
$150.9 million
3.8 years
2
Strategically significant digital investments
10
$631.4 million
$40.3 million
3.2 years
3
Significant digital investments
12
$219.7 million
$17.6 million
1.6 years
The average duration of closed projects was 2.5 years. Closed Tier 1 projects had a longer average duration than Tier 2 and Tier 3 projects. This longer average duration is mainly due to the inclusion of a closed 7-year Tier 1 project to improve weather and climate data.
Delivering benefits for Australians
The projects that closed since February 2024 have delivered significant benefits in areas as diverse as aged care, weather and climate data, and protection from scams. For example, Australians are now benefiting from closed projects that focused on:
- Bill relief – enabling the government to deliver targeted and temporary relief on power bills to eligible Australian households and small businesses
- Scam protection – protecting Australian consumers from online scams by taking down investment scam and phishing websites through enhanced data sharing and analytics capabilities
- Aged care – improving the quality of aged care by:
- providing more efficient and high-quality data exchange between aged care providers and government
- providing aged care providers with a more streamlined, secure and user-friendly financial reporting experience
- Weather and climate data – improving public access to Australia’s weather and climate data to enable better hazard preparedness and responses for the Australian community and industry
- Waste and resource recovery – improving national waste and resource recovery data to enable Australian consumers to make more informed choices
- Digital trade – developing better digital trade services to enable the trade industry to interact with relevant government agencies.
Finishing up – how projects leaving the portfolio performed
Of the 13 Tier 1 and Tier 2 projects that closed, 10 (76.9%) reported a High or Medium-High delivery confidence. Just 2 projects had a rating of Medium or lower, while one project did not report a delivery confidence rating.
Between February 2024 and February 2025, and before closing, 4 of these projects improved their delivery confidence, and 3 projects stayed the same. Comparisons for the remaining projects are not possible as they did not report a delivery confidence in February 2024.
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