Victorian government departments have made limited, and in some cases no, progress fixing shortcomings in the state's digital services platform identified five years ago. They also gave the Auditor-General inaccurate reports about the status of their remediation work.
The Victorian Auditor-General's Office (VAGO) follow-up review examined whether the Department of Government Services (DGS) and Department of Premier and Cabinet (DPC) implemented action plans they committed to after VAGO's 2021 audit of Service Victoria.
DGS has completed only one of the five recommendations made to Service Victoria in 2021. DPC partially completed two of its five before DGS assumed responsibility for the platform in 2023. VAGO found both agencies gave inaccurate reports about the status of their actions in its yearly survey on responses to recommendations.
Although users can now access more services on the platform, DGS still cannot show whether Service Victoria is delivering the benefits intended in its original 2015 business case. It cannot show how many transactions the platform delivers. VAGO also found DGS has no clear strategy for Service Victoria's future or for encouraging other agencies to move their services onto the platform.
User satisfaction has remained consistently high since 2021. But VAGO found DPC's changes to Service Victoria's performance measures have reduced transparency around its operations. As a result, DGS does not know if it has reduced transaction costs since the original audit.
The review also found DGS and DPC do not have a good understanding of what digital services the government still delivers outside the platform. Without this, VAGO said, it is difficult to identify transactions that could be added to deliver services more efficiently across government.
Service Victoria was established in 2015, within DPC, to modernise how Victorians access government services through a centralised online platform. The 2021 audit found it had improved customer experiences by moving some services online but had not reduced transaction costs as intended. All 10 recommendations from that audit were accepted. The Service Victoria administrative office has since been abolished and absorbed into DGS, which retains the name as a public-facing brand for the government's digital services website and app.