Innovate NSW

In this interactive session, our esteemed panel will address key concerns and areas of focus that arise during the audience live poll. They will share their perspectives on how we can best address these critical challenges, emerging priorities and promising opportunities leading into 2025.

Mandy Young, Chief Executive Officer, State Insurance Regulatory Authority
Joann Wilkie, Deputy Secretary, Economic Strategy and Productivity, NSW Treasury
Chris Lamb, Deputy Commissioner, NSW Public Service Commission
Peter Achterstraat, NSW Productivity Commissioner, NSW Treasury

• ‘Service Simplicity’: sense-checking 2025 priorities for next-gen, simple and intuitive public service experience
• Speed, sophistication, and seamless interaction: unpacking the next critical steps to meeting 2024-25 citizen/customer expectations
• Traversing trust: unpacking the fundamentals, non-negotiables, and critical considerations into 2024 and beyond to retain public
  confidence in government

Ruth Owen, Deputy Secretary, Strategic Implementation Group, NSW Premier’s Department
Scott Johnston, Deputy Secretary & Chief Commissioner of State Revenue, Revenue NSW

Innovating in a public sector context: working within the confines of budget constraints, and caution – how can the public sector
innovate and take risks when cultural and political risks are high?
Embodying a bigger picture, fresh and creative, solutions-oriented mindset – and driving the change within your realm of influence.
Starting with “we don’t know what the answer is” – working your way from the outside, in.

Michael Rodrigues, 24-Hour Economy Commissioner, Office of the 24-Hour Economy Commissioner, Department of Enterprise, Investment and Trade
Lisa McLean, Chief Executive Officer Circular Australia, Member of Circular Economy Ministerial Advisory Group, Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water & Circular Australia
Eamon Waterford, Chief Executive Officer, Committee for Sydney
Chris Hanger, Chief Operating Officer, NSW Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water

• Accelerating public connection, trust, and confidence through seamless and simple services – the how to
• Developing the digital technology capability to keep pace with the ever-changing business needs and new requirements
• Creativity within the contact centre – innovative approaches to delivering a relevant and memorable experience to bolster engagement and trust
• Balancing digitisation and self-service with human connections: Striking the X-factor

Dan Bowes, Executive Director, Customer Service – Taxes and Grants, Revenue NSW
Kylie De Courteney, Managing Director, NSW Telco Authority
Paul McGilly, Public Sector Head, ANZ, Newgen Software

• Exploring practical applications and implications of Gen AI: opportunities and risks for NSW Government leading into 2025
• Transparency and Trust. The fundamentals. Ethical use of AI for decision-making and service delivery: sense-checking the evolving requirements and how to best adhere to these
• AI in Action: Spotlighting practical applications of Virtual Assistants, ChatBots within NSW Government and charting next steps for advancement
• Open data, open opportunity: Building traction into 2025 to drive innovation within NSW
• Transparency and Trust. The fundamentals
• Future possibilities for regulating and shaping AI in NSW

Vafa Ghazavi, Executive Director, Research & Policy, James Martin Institute for Public Policy
Will Liang, Executive Director, Asset Management, MA Financial Group
Jessica Ho, Director, Digital Investment Assurance, Digital NSW, Department of Customer Service
Ashok Mysore, Vice President, Infosys and Regional Head, Delivery and Operations, Australia and New Zealand

• Making NSW public sector the #1 choice for top talent. How do we reach the pinnacle of people and skills success?
• Providing the right structure and environment for talent to drive innovation and desired outcomes – Promoting a culture that is customer-centric, supportive, inclusive, and diverse
• Tapping into the power of collaboration – sharing skillsets, recruitment, and retention strategies across NSW public sector
• WX – the critical new CX: Delving into the realm of ‘workforce experience’- flexible working arrangements, 2024-25 employee expectations, demands and trends, and enticing career progression
• Making a compelling work (inclusive) environment for people to bring their best thinking to the table and retain top people

Jody Grima, Acting Deputy Secretary, Corporate Services/COO, NSW Department of Customer Service
Shaun Ruming, Deputy Secretary/Chief People Officer, NSW Department of Education
Hannah Tonkin, NSW Women’s Safety Commissioner, Department of Communities and Justice

• Building strategic leadership through insight capability – mastering the combination of data and AI to unlock significant value in operations, policy, and services
• Entrenching actionable insights across NSW Government – leveraging data to make customer driven decisions across all levels of the organisation
• Unlocking the true potential of data as an asset – and making it easy to understand
• Driving the culture to support accurate use of insights in everyday tasks and decisions

Natasha Mann, Deputy Secretary, Fair Trading and Regulatory Services & NSW Fair Trading Commissioner, NSW Department of Customer Service
Kate Carruthers, Chief Data & Insights Officer, UNSW
Catherine Garner, Senior Partner, Public Sector Lead, IBM Consulting

Roundtable 1: Harnessing the value of connected agencies and reimagined case management

The delivery of government services is often slowed down due to information being spread across several systems and multiple agencies.

As a result, a significant amount of time is spent by workers in government agencies on manual data entry into many disparate systems to manage support around a single individual, preventing front-line case workers from spending more valuable time with their customers.

This session will explore how technology can help government agencies improve their customer experience as well as the productivity of their front line and back office staff by providing a unified view of their customers – with a particular emphasis on:

• • The challenges of delivering personalised service at scale
  • The barriers to implementation and dealing with resistance to change
  • The opportunity to build trust in government services

Facilitated by: David Strangward, ANZ Salesforce Practice CEO, Simplus & Infosys

Roundtable 2: Strategies for Improving Business Resilience
In the current business risk climate, operational resilience is more important than ever. This roundtable will be an interactive discussion on:

• Defining resilience & the importance of strengthening business resilience
• The role of technology in business resilience
• Strategies for improving business resilience amidst compounding threats

Facilitated by: Charlie Forsyth, Chief Product Officer, Noggin

Roundtable 3: Getting started with Generative AI for Government

• Broad use cases and customer examples
• How to get going?
• Overcoming barriers and enablers

Facilitated by: Hannah Goodwin, NSW Public Sector Account Executive, Google Cloud & Craig Bruce, Head of Customer Engineering, Public Sector, Google Cloud

Roundtable 4: Modernising Regulatory Systems: Overcoming Challenges and Driving Transformative Digital Solutions

In an era of rapid technological advancements, many agencies face increasing expectations to improve digital service accessibility and experiences while operating within complex regulatory environments.

Drawing from extensive experience working with public sector agencies, MTX will share innovative solutions and proven strategies for streamlining and automating regulatory processes associated with licensing, permitting, business registration, inspections, and renewals. By leveraging the latest technologies, MTX has delivered seamless experiences that ensure compliance, strengthen public trust, and create systems that can better adapt to future challenges.

Join us to explore how these advancements can provide superior digital service experiences and build a more resilient regulatory framework.

Facilitated by: Grace Edwards, Public Sector Lead, MTX APAC

Roundtable 5: Elevating Digital Experiences: Ensuring Safety and Accessibility

The online and digital experiences you offer your customers are crucial to their interactions with an organisation. In today’s crowded digital landscape, it is essential to create remarkable and accessible experiences while also ensuring safety and security.

• Exploring the Benefits and Potential of Enhanced Digital Experiences: Discuss strategies for leveraging digital platforms to improve customer interactions.
• Speed to Market: Discuss strategies for creating and delivering content with speed to accelerate time-to-market for digital experiences.
• Expanding legal and regulatory requirements as well as increasing awareness of the impacts of digital accessibility on customer experience, brand reputation, and revenue are leading a push to embed accessibility as a central element in the design and delivery of digital experiences. We’ll review Accessibility Guidelines and Practices and discuss how to navigate the evolving landscape of accessibility guidelines and best practices.

Facilitated by: Marcus Duhon, Senior Solutions Engineer, Acquia

Roundtable 6: Build a Foundation of Digital Trust – Delivering the Digital Government Services of Tomorrow

• Delivering omni channel citizen experience using low code.
• Help reduce the Citizens Digital Divide with low code and automation.
• Entering the Era of hyper personalisation. What does it mean for customer experience.

Facilitated by: Paul McGilly, Public Sector Head, ANZ, Newgen Software

Roundtable 7: After Robodebt: where to now for automated Government decision making?

• Fundamentals of the legal and ethical use of technology in public sector administration
• Best practices in designing systems for statutory and policy compliance
• What you need to know about the judicial review of administrative decisions
• How to handle adverse media scrutiny when it happen

Facilitated by: John Gray, Partner, Technology & Digital Economy Co-Lead, and NSW Government Co-Lead, Hall & Wilcox & Stephen Lin, Lawyer, Hall & Wilcox

Roundtable 8: How can we leverage digital to foster a simple, inclusive and accessible service that meets all needs and expectations?
Facilitated by: Kylie De Courteney, Managing Director, NSW Telco Authority

Andrew George, Chief Executive Officer, WaterNSW
Megan Stiffler, Deputy Commissioner, Fire & Rescue NSW
John Cleland, Chief Executive Officer, Essential Energy
Alexandra Geddes, Executive Director, Programs & Innovation, NSW Environment Protection Authority
Annette Pitman, Chief Executive Officer, Create NSW