SDA Lifecycle

How State Digital Assets are developed and assured for whole-of-government use.

State Digital Assets are managed through a prioritisation process to determine if they are ready to be used by default by all agencies, promote their adoption and ensure ongoing sustainability.

1. Identify & prioritise assets

Our process starts by identifying what we need to achieve our strategic focus. We then review existing, in development or planned digital assets to identify a shortlist of potential options.

Working with cross-department leadership and governance groups, we ensure we have identified the right priorities and potential assets to use. We consider the proposed assets’ value to departments as well as how they relate to other existing assets within the NSW digital architectures, including policies, standards and most importantly the customer.

This helps us create a shortlist of priority SDAs owners* to engage.

* Note: ongoing reference to “SDA owners” refers to program owners of existing or new (developing) assets

2. Engage digital asset owners

Owners of prioritised State Digital Assets are consulted to better understand the assets’ status, benefits (realised and expected) and how they plan to reach whole-of-government adoption.

Asset owners are invited to share any needs and challenges they may have to scale and run their assets sustainably. This can include funding gaps, technical dependencies and agency collaboration. We connect asset owners with relevant best practice standards and guidance.

Importantly, we identify if the state digital asset should be “used by default” by all NSW government agencies.

3. Consult leadership and governance groups

Information collected from asset owners is presented to leadership and governance groups to increase awareness of State Digital Assets, their benefits, funding needs and adoption targets. If required, agreement may be obtained for priority SDAs to be "used by default" by all NSW government agencies. The "use by default" criteria and process will be outlined in the future NSW ICT Reuse Policy.

4. Publish on Digital.NSW

Information about State Digital Assets is published on digital.NSW to improve their discoverability. This helps NSW Government agencies to find these assets and start to reuse them as part of their program of work.

5. Advocate for funding and adoption

Working across the State Digital Asset portfolio, we identify which assets have the greatest urgency for support. We coordinate with these asset owners to provide updates to relevant leadership and governance groups, to ensure issues such as funding, adoption, policy that impact their assets’ success are resolved.

6. Assure and report

We regularly report back to leadership and governance groups on the progress and adoption status of State Digital Assets we’ve engaged through this process.
We conduct ongoing assessment of all digital and ICT investments to ensure State Digital Assets are incorporated appropriately as part of their program of work.