Over the last two years Te Kawa Mataaho Public Service Commission has moved rapidly from an office-only organisation to a true cloud-native public service lead agency, according to Chief Digital Officer Bill Moses. 

The Office 365 toolset has been implemented with all appropriate security measures so that the Commission is able to collaborate seamlessly via video conference, online whiteboard, or just sharing via Sharepoint. This has been critical to an organisation responsible for public service workforce guidance, says Moses.

In his parallel role as chair of the Government CIO Forum, Moses keeps the public service digital leaders in contact with each other through monthly meetings to share solutions to problems and innovative projects for the purposes of learning and growing system-wide digital maturity. 

“In the first half of 2020 I gathered a group of digital leaders across the public service to collate information that would accelerate the digital maturity of other agencies. We brought together security information, configuration settings and organisational change collateral which could be easily shared across the public service,” he adds.

As this is a community-led group, one of the first things he did when he took on the chair role was to draft the terms of reference for the group. “This covers off the purpose for the group to gather and sets some boundaries and guidelines for information sharing. This has made it much easier for government CIOs to actively share projects and learnings and made the meetings a lot more interesting.”

He sets the agenda for each gathering six months in advance, focused on the purpose of the strategy for a digital public service. Topics have included everything from “What does digital mean to your CEO” through to “Understanding the interests of Iwi and data sovereignty”. 

“I put a lot of thought into who I invite to speak at the meetings and generally focus on public servants as influential speakers. Without the CIO Forum, consistent information out to all IT leaders in the public service would be sparse. I catch-up with my peers in the public service regularly to find out what is going on throughout the sector – I use this information gathering technique to help set future interesting topics for the forums,” he adds.

Building these trusted relationships with other CIOs has helped progress a couple of key initiatives including the Public Service Digital Identity project, says Moses. “This digital identity project stems from my conversations around the public service and realising that many of us use the same identity services…with that in mind inter-linking these services shouldn’t be difficult and I’ve asked other agencies to work with me on the project.”

His relationship with the Digital Public Service branch and his role at the Public Service Commission helps to link digital initiatives (with DIA acting as the oversight) with workforce initiatives, which reside with the Public Service Commission. “Using these links, I am running workshops across the public service asking public servants what things they would be able to progress if there were no digital or physical boundaries to collaboration across the public service.”

A win from this year is pitching a leadership training course for digital leaders in the public service. “Alongside the Digital Public Service branch who are sponsoring the training, we are welcoming 16 emerging digital leaders into a cohort, which is a first for the public service.”