Building a Thriving Queensland Digital Economy

Presented by Chris McLaren, Queensland Government Chief Customer and Digital Officer, Customer and Digital Group

Chris discussed the progress and future plans of the Queensland Government, emphasising the importance of continuous improvement, innovation, and service delivery. He highlighted the organisation's journey post-covid, shifting from survival mode to strategic planning. He underscored the importance of training, cyber security, and building easy and connected digital services.

Review of 2023

• Chris Compared 2022/2023 to setting the Digital Group up for flight. The group has planned the route and is taxiing fo takeoff!
• The Group has 3 set objectives; Foundational, Digital Economy & Digital Customer and Government.
• They released QChat an LLM agnostic AI Interface that is rolling out to WOG in Qld. Think of this as UniGrad that has experience across 50 degree's at your fingertips.
• They have completed the Tell Us Once project and setup the QGov state sharing framework.
• They stopped 2.2B+ Cyber Attacks and blocked 100% Denial of Service attacks.
• Setup equitable access to internet with starlink for regional communities.

2024 Customer and Digital Priorities

• Customer consultation has shown again and again that Queenslander's want a single government login and for the service to meet them where they are or work 'My Way'.
• The group is creating a custom interaction platform with an agency console to empower customer and digital government.
• They are creating a digital economy with equitable access with the Digital Infrastructure Plan, inclusion hub and workforce action plan.

Cyber Security Priorities

Presented by Rob Champion, Queensland Government Chief Information Security Officer, Customer and Digital Group

Rob shared what is presently happening in the threat landscape, how the government is acting and gave some useful tips and insights as to what vendors and government can be doing together to protect Queensland from different and emerging threat vectors. **

Summary of the Threat Landscape

• There are different groups of bad actors; organised crime who's business is your data, opinionated groups who may act against you due to an industry association and even events coming out of international events due to political reason, of which Australia is seen as a major player.
• In response, there's three things we need to be aware of:
  1. Speed: These groups can turn release vulnerabilities into threats in hours.
  2. Scale: What is the size of vulnerabilities.
  3. Impact: How deeply can they impact or effect organisations.

Current Program Priorities for QLD Govt

• The Security team has created a Cyber Security Hazard Plan, available at www.disaster.qld.gov.au.
• We're good at responding to disasters but need to get better at these threats.
• They Group is going to be adding surety that they are uplifting their Cyber Posture with departments ISMS's and ensuring this is consistent through the supply chain.

How can industry help

• Expect to be targeted - When a Cyber event is publicised, think and practice how your org would handle it.
• Uplift Cyber Hygiene - Yours and your customer, implement the Essential 8, invest in the skills and resources.
• Report Incident - We need to work as a community no matter who is at fault to learn and improve.