QGEA foundation principles
Principles at a glance
- Trustworthy: Our services cultivate trust by embracing openness, security, reliability and usability
- Leveraged: Share before buy before build
- Effective: Our investments solve the right problem, deliver value and support our direction
- Equitable: Our services are accessible and we leave no-one behind
- Unified: We work together to deliver a seamless, coordinated and personalised user experience for Queenslanders
- Modular: Our services are supported by components that can be designed and delivered incrementally and evolved harmoniously
Introduction
Purpose
To provide a consistent set of fundamental beliefs, values, aspirations or behaviours that guide departments when making digital and ICT investment and policy decisions within the Queensland Government.
Audience
This document is primarily intended for:
- strategy and policy development
- business service design
- investment planning
- portfolio analysis and management
- project management
- assurance
- enterprise architecture
- information management and security.
Applicability
These principles apply to all Queensland Government departments (as defined by the Public Sector Act 2022). Accountable officers (not already in scope of the Public Sector Act 2022) and statutory bodies under the Financial and Performance Management Standard 2019 must have regard to these principles in the context of internal controls, financial information management systems and risk management. Please see the Applicability of the QGEA for further information.
Scope
The principles apply to all elements (layers, slices and domains) of the QGEA and to all Queensland Government departments.
Principles
Trustworthy: Our services cultivate trust by embracing openness, security, reliability and usability
Rationale | Our services can only be provided effectively if they are trusted by Queenslanders and our partners. We cultivate trust by being transparent about what we do and how we both share, manage and protect our information and data. Putting people at the centre of all our decisions, understanding what they want from our services and delivering this in a way that makes it easy for them is key. |
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Leveraged: Share before buy before build
Rationale | We share as a priority, buy when we need to and build when we must. This can extend not only to traditional ICT assets but also to business services, business processes and information. Sharing existing investments can maximise their value, reduce cost and improve performance. Buying rather than building can reduce costs, complexity and implementation time. We explore partnerships and collaborations within departments, across Queensland Government, other jurisdictions and industry sectors. Better outcomes are achieved from building on prior learnings and working together. |
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Effective: Our investments solve the right problem, deliver value and support our direction
Rational | From the beginning we consider whether we are solving the right problem. The key to this is focusing on people (Queensland citizens, businesses and our staff) and delivering on what matters to them. Options for taking an agile, iterative or experimental approach to better understand the problem are explored. We consider if we can deliver value incrementally throughout the life of an initiative rather than big bang, big release, big spend. Priority is given to investments that align and advance Queensland Governments direction. Our investments are governed to ensure they continue to solve the right problem in the right way throughout their life from the start to benefits realisation. We understand how our investments have realised benefits for Queensland and learn from our experiences. |
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Equitable: Our services are accessible and we leave no-one behind
Rationale | Equitable access to government services and information is important to maintain a fair society and strong economy. As we continue to adopt increasingly digital and responsive solutions for Queenslanders, we need to ensure that no Queenslanders are left behind. All initiatives need to consider how we can make it easier for Queenslanders to access digital and ICT enabled services and address accessibility, capability building and digital inclusion. |
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Unified: We work together to deliver a seamless, coordinated and personalised user experience for Queenslanders
Rationale | Queensland Government delivers services in a range of areas including transport, health, education, law and order, and science. Queenslanders want to interact with the government in a way that is coordinated irrespective of organisational boundaries or who owns or delivers a service. So, while each department or portfolio area needs to be able to deliver responsive solutions in line with their accountabilities, this needs to also meet our customers expectations that we operate as a unified enterprise. To achieve this, we deploy flexible and interoperable back-end systems that connect and integrate customer experiences, so customers view Queensland Government as a single enterprise. This approach applies not only to the way we design our front-end services, it also applies to the way we structure our internal processes and share our information. We seek to be truly unified. |
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Modular: Our services are supported by components that can be designed and delivered incrementally and evolved harmoniously
Rationale | With our changing approach to government service delivery, citizen expectations and digital landscape we need to do be more responsive. We need to support our services with process, information and technology solutions that reduce complexity, encourage reuse, and enable integration rather than a siloed customer experience. A modular design approach divides a potentially complex service capability into independent, decoupled, reusable components with well-designed interfaces. This approach also helps to reduce complexity and constraints, supports sharing and integration and provides the flexibility to source multiple best of breed and innovative components and deliver them incrementally. |
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This approach realises the following benefits
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Applying the principles
The QGEA foundation principles help by:
- providing a set of values or aspirations to support consistent digital and ICT investment decision making and policy development within the Queensland Government
- informing the development of departmental architecture principles
- providing general guidance where formal strategy, principles or policy are not provided.
The principles are not meant to direct immediate action or specific instruction but rather support a mindset or provide guidance in making digital and ICT investment decisions and setting policy. The considerations help in asking the right questions around our investments and provide an indication of where a department should be heading if they are aligning with the principles. They are intended to have long term applicability and their essence is reflected and refined in other QGEA documents.
Departments must align with the principles but may choose to expand on them or adopt their own terminology to reflect more accurately their business context.
Adopting the principles in decision making
In the absence of more specific guidance within the QGEA or within a department, the principles should be used to address emerging issues and guide departmental planning, management and implementation processes, including guiding decisions about new investments.
These principles should be considered throughout the lifecycle of an initiative from idea generation through to design, delivery, continuous improvement and benefits realisation.
Consistent departure from the principles will lead to increasing difficulties at department level and may impact adversely on the departments capacity to fulfill its commitments to the digital and ICT directions of the Queensland Government.
The principles are only one element in a departments overall evaluation process about new investments.
Adopting the principles in policy formation and review
When departments review their existing policies, these principles must be considered. Where a policy conflicts with a principle, where possible, the policy is adjusted to support the principles.
Each policy does not require a specific mapping to the various principles. Rather, the principles should be used as a general guide for departmental policy formation and review.
Precedence within the principles
There is no precedence defined in the principles. At times the principles may appear to diverge from each other. This will require interpretation on the part of the decision maker considering the priorities and focus of the investment in question.
For example, a small pilot initiative may prioritise the Effective principle over the Trustworthy principle particularly in the context of security in order to quickly test an innovation in a managed environment for a limited number of users.
Departments can contact the QGCDG if they have any questions or require further clarification on these principles. Feedback on the principles is always welcome and can be emailed to qgea@qld.gov.au.
Appendix A Background
In 1999, the Queensland Government launched the Government Information Architecture (GIA). The GIA was a principles-based architecture that contained a set of overarching principles as well as detailed domain principles relating to the management of information, applications and technology.
These principles were widely used by agencies and formed the basis for much of the Queensland Governments ICT policy and decision making between 1999 and 2005, when the GIA was replaced by the Government Enterprise Architecture (GEA). While it was the intention of the Queensland Government Chief Information Office (QGCIO) to migrate the GIA principles into the GEA, this activity was never formally completed.
As part of the revision of the GEA and publication of the QGEA 2.0, the QGCIO developed a revised set of foundation QGEA principles based on:
- the governments overall objectives and priorities regarding service delivery, information management and ICT and the Right to Information
- a comparative analysis of enterprise architecture principles used in many public-sector jurisdictions within Australia and internationally
- information drawn from Queensland Government agencies and the GIA.
In 2018 a review of the QGEA foundation principles commenced with contributions from many individuals and departments which was greatly appreciated. The review considered developments in digital and ICT generally as well as within Queensland Government such assurance and investment review.
Appendix B Summary of changes to QGEA foundation principles v1.0.0 to v 2.0.0
Principles Version 1.0.0 | Principles Version 2.0.0 | Actions based on early consultation feedback |
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Trustworthy | Trustworthy | Revised |
Transparent | Deleted | |
Leveraged | Leveraged | Revised |
Effective | Effective | Revised and merged with Aligned |
Aligned | Effective | Revised and merged with Effective |
Equitable | Equitable | Revised |
Cohesive | Unified | Revised and renamed |
Managed | Deleted | |
Compliant | Deleted | |
Modular | New |