Digital Delivery Model Review

Purpose

Following the implementation of major reforms, an Australian Government agency needed to transition from delivery structures designed for a large, time-critical transformation program to a model that could sustainably support ongoing reform, system operation and continuous improvement.

HealthConsult was engaged to review the digital delivery model end to end - from policy inception and investment through to design, implementation and ongoing support. The project aimed to identify the causes of delivery pressure, benchmark practices across comparable government organisations and define a practical future-state model.

Approach

HealthConsult brought together a multidisciplinary team spanning strategy, governance, business analysis, human-centred design, technical delivery and financial analysis.

Our approach included:

• mapping how demand, decisions and work flowed across the existing delivery system through workshops, focus groups, document analysis and detailed examination of delivery activity;
• assessing the future demand environment and the financial and workforce conditions required to sustain digital services;
• benchmarking delivery practices across eight Commonwealth and state government organisations of different sizes and levels of maturity;
• examining how leading organisations manage demand entry, shape work before commitment, protect constrained capacity, control work in progress and use performance information to guide decisions; and
• translating the combined evidence into a detailed future-state model, maturity diagnostic and staged implementation roadmap.

Outcome

The review established that the agency’s delivery pressures were not the product of any single process or team. They arose from the interaction between how demand entered the system, when commitments were made, how scarce capacity was allocated, how work flowed and how delivery, financial and outcome information was connected.

HealthConsult developed a Future State Digital Delivery Model that introduced pathways for different types of work, visible and prioritised queues, readiness and capacity controls, protected capacity for operating and improving existing services, and system-level monitoring to identify emerging constraints.

A staged roadmap provided a practical pathway for testing and implementing the model without disrupting ongoing delivery.