Digital Government Solutions That Serve Citizens Better
Government software development and AI in government for Australian federal, state and local government: citizen portals, case management and open data platforms for OFFICIAL workloads.
The Pain Points We Understand
The problems we plan around when building for government & public sector, because they shape the architecture from day one.
Legacy Monolithic Systems
Federal and state government agencies are burdened by decades of technology debt: COBOL mainframes handling welfare payments, Oracle Forms applications managing licences and permits, and PeopleSoft installations running on unsupported versions. These systems are expensive to maintain, impossible to modernise incrementally and create single points of failure that have already caused high-profile service outages affecting millions of Australians.
Citizen Experience Expectations
Citizens benchmark their interactions with government against consumer digital services, banking apps, e-commerce platforms, streaming services. The contrast with most government digital channels is stark: forms that timeout, 10-step processes requiring physical documents, no status visibility after submission and contact centres with hour-long wait times. The pressure to meet community expectations while navigating procurement rules and policy constraints is intense.
Whole-of-Government Interoperability
Citizens shouldn't need to prove their identity to seven different agencies or re-enter address details every time they interact with a new service. But achieving genuine interoperability requires agencies to adopt common standards (GovPass, myGovID, the National API Design Standard), modernise point-to-point integrations into event-driven architectures, and navigate governance structures that don't naturally incentivise cross-agency collaboration.
Procurement and Compliance Complexity
Government ICT procurement through BuyICT panels, state government standing offer arrangements and council tender processes adds significant lead time and administrative overhead. Mandatory security requirements including IRAP assessment, Essential Eight compliance and ISM control mapping create real complexity, but agencies that shortcut these controls face the prospect of a data breach affecting citizens' most sensitive personal information.
What We Build For Government & Public Sector
Purpose-built software and technology solutions designed around the specific needs, compliance requirements and workflows of government & public sector organisations.
Discuss Your ProjectServices Most Relevant to Government & Public Sector
FAQ, Government & Public Sector
Common uses of AI in government include drafting and summarising correspondence and briefs, searching policy and legislation, triaging service requests and FOI applications, and assisting case officers with document-heavy work. Commonwealth agencies build under the DTA Policy for the responsible use of AI in government (version 2.0, with its remaining requirements in force from December 2026), alongside the ISM and PSPF. Decisions about people need human accountability and a clear record, and our guide to AI and software development for Australian government covers the requirements in detail.
An Information Security Registered Assessors Program (IRAP) assessment is conducted by an ASD-certified assessor, that's not us, and you should be wary of any vendor claiming to do their own IRAP assessment. What we do is design and build systems that are genuinely ready for IRAP assessment: we map system controls to the ACSC's Information Security Manual (ISM) from the architecture phase, implement the Essential Eight mitigation strategies (application control, patching applications and OS, restricting Microsoft Office macros, user application hardening, restricting admin privileges, patching OS, MFA and regular backups) at the appropriate maturity level for your system's risk profile, and produce the security documentation artefacts that an IRAP assessor will request. We hold no IRAP-assessed system ourselves and say so up front.
No. We hold no BuyICT or state panel membership at the time of writing. Agencies can still engage us through a prime contractor that holds panel membership, through an open approach to market, or, for many state agencies and local councils, under their own procurement rules. We will tell you plainly if a panel is the only route your agency can use. Our guide to selling software to Australian government explains the channels.
The Australian Government's Digital Identity system (built on the Trusted Digital Identity Framework) provides a federated identity layer that lets citizens authenticate once using a digital ID such as myID (formerly myGovID) and access multiple government services. We implement OIDC/OAuth 2.0 integration with the identity exchange (currently administered by Services Australia) following the published technical specifications. For state government services, we also integrate with state-level identity providers including the NSW Digital ID (Service NSW account), the Victorian Digital Identity and similar schemes. Beyond authentication, we implement the claims and attributes API to retrieve pre-verified identity information (name, DOB, address) to pre-populate forms, a significant citizen experience improvement.
Australia's Protective Security Policy Framework (PSPF) defines the handling requirements for OFFICIAL, OFFICIAL: Sensitive and PROTECTED data. We build OFFICIAL and OFFICIAL: Sensitive workloads in Australian cloud regions with appropriate encryption, access controls and audit logging. PROTECTED systems need infrastructure and services assessed through ASD's IRAP program and personnel with the relevant security clearances; we have neither, so for PROTECTED work we can only contribute components that need no clearance under a cleared prime contractor. Either way, we design with data classification in mind from the start, including labelling, handling rules for API consumers and the access control architecture needed to enforce classification boundaries.
Yes. The DTA's Digital Service Standard (and equivalent state frameworks like the NSW Digital Design System and the Victorian Digital Service Standard) require a user-centred, iterative delivery approach. We're comfortable operating in the delivery model these frameworks prescribe: discovery phases producing validated problem statements and user research insights; alpha phases producing low-fidelity prototypes tested with real users; beta phases delivering progressively complete services; and live phases with ongoing continuous improvement. We use Jira and Confluence for delivery transparency (standard across most government ICT environments), and our delivery leads are familiar with the reporting cadences and governance artefacts required by government programme management offices.
Let's Build Digital Government That Citizens Actually Use
Whether you're modernising a legacy permit system, launching a new grants management platform or implementing a whole-of-government API gateway, our team understands the compliance, procurement and political realities of Australian government ICT. Book a confidential discovery conversation today.