Past federating action led by the Australian Government, such as the National Construction Code and data-sharing during the COVID-19 pandemic, demonstrate the benefits and opportunities that can arise with early and centrally driven leadership.
The Australian Government can help to create a new era of productive infrastructure delivery by applying a federating role to enable sector innovation.
A centrally led model has been key to unlocking productivity benefits in other countries, notably the United Kingdom.96
The most effective approach in the Australian context would be to establish a national office for digital by default in infrastructure.
The office would be a centre of excellence leveraging the experiences of similar entities, such as Digital Built Britain, Digital Scotland, or the Infrastructure Technology Department of the Scottish Future Trust.97 98It could reside within an existing department, but would benefit from collaboration with other Australian Government departments and agencies.
The office would work with states and territories and their infrastructure delivery agencies, industry, Standards Australia and other critical stakeholders to provide a unifying strategy for embedding digital infrastructure delivery and operations as the default.
Its initial task would be developing a clear roadmap for national digital infrastructure. This would establish the vision, direction, actors and actions required to create a step change in digital infrastructure planning, delivery and operations.