Already many Australians rely on technology to do everything from banking to dating, accessing support or seeing a doctor. Increasingly, citizens expect streamlined, efficient and user-friendly interactions with public institutions–just like they experience in the private sector.

The Australian Government’s Digital Experience Policy officially recognises there is “an opportunity to use data and digital technologies to improve our service delivery and decision-making, with a goal of better outcomes for all people and business.”

To achieve this, the policy itself:

• Sets standards for high-quality digital engagement
• Integrates data-driven insights based on actual use
• Standardises the design and delivery of digital government services
• Measures performance so that services can be continuously improved

The e-Estonia experience

Estonia is an exemplar of a digital-first government. As a country the same size as the Netherlands – albeit with a population of 1.2 million compared with 80 million, Estonia faced the challenge of working out how to deliver citizen services in a cost-effective way when they first gained independence from the USSR. (With our dispersed population and vast country, Australia faces much the same challenge, albeit without the luxury of building a unified national system from scratch.)

Understanding that analogue, in-person delivery would soon send them bankrupt, Estonia recognised early that digital would be the answer. But without the resources to buy existing systems, they knew they would have to build their own. Their first prophetic step was to establish a universal digital ID in 2002.

Only once the digital ID was firmly established were government services linked in. The platform for data exchange is known as X-road today, and it is the backbone that links each citizen and their unique digital ID with services such as the tax office.

Today, an astounding 100% of interactions with government are digital, from online tax to registering the birth of a baby, voting, registering a change of address or setting up a business (estimated time is a mere 15 minutes). Even the ability to file for divorce online was rolled out in December 2024 (albeit with a few safeguards against impetuous decisions!).

While Estonia had the advantage of starting from scratch, the path forward for countries like Australia is more complex—requiring updates to legacy systems, coordination across large institutions, and alignment with established regulations.

Challenges in achieving digital transformation

Bringing government operations into the digital age is anything but simple. From legacy systems and skill shortages to cultural resistance and systemic barriers, the path to transformation is strewn with challenges.

Legacy systems: an anchor slowing progress

One of the most significant obstacles government entities face is the reliance on outdated computer systems and software. These legacy systems, often decades old, are difficult – and sometimes impossible – to modernise without a complete overhaul.

Many of these systems were not designed to integrate with today’s digital solutions, let alone future technologies. Their incompatibility with modern tools makes it difficult to introduce automation, artificial intelligence or cloud computing into workflows. As a result, public sector agencies are often stuck maintaining ageing infrastructure rather than building innovative new citizen services.

Skills gaps: a shortage of digital talent

Even if governments manage to upgrade their technology, they frequently lack the people needed to use it effectively. There is a growing digital skills gap across the public sector, with many agencies struggling to attract and retain qualified IT professionals.

This problem is compounded by a shortage of personnel who can bridge the gap between technology and business needs. Governments need people who not only understand IT or cybersecurity, but also how to apply those skills to improve public services. Without this hybrid expertise, even the best tools can fall flat.

Cultural resistance: change isn’t easy

Cultural resistance is another major hurdle. Public sector employees may be wary of new technologies – especially if they believe these tools will complicate rather than simplify their work. If the benefits of digital solutions aren’t clearly communicated or if employees aren’t involved in the transformation process, pushback is all but inevitable.

Moreover, government organisations often operate within deeply rooted frameworks, where policies and procedures are hardwired into daily operations. Changing these long-established practices can be slow, difficult and full of internal friction.

Other barriers: funding, silos, security and compliance

Beyond systems, skills, and culture, governments must also confront several practical challenges:

• Insufficient funding: Digital transformation requires sustained investment, but budgets are often tight and subject to political fluctuations.
• Siloed decision-making: Departments may work in isolation, leading to fragmented strategies and duplicated efforts rather than integrated digital ecosystems.
• Data security and privacy: With increasing digitisation comes the responsibility to protect sensitive data. Balancing innovation with privacy and cybersecurity is a high-stakes game.
• Regulatory compliance and transparency: Governments must ensure that new digital processes remain transparent and adhere to strict regulations. This adds a layer of complexity that private companies don’t always face.

Moving forward: a collaborative approach

Despite these challenges, digital transformation in government is not only possible–it’s essential. As we’ve seen at Riverbed, meeting today’s challenges—strengthening IT security, advancing digital transformation, improving user experiences, supporting hybrid workforces–demands networks and applications that offer actionable insights, seamlessly and at scale. Today, at all levels of government, Riverbed’s unified observability and acceleration solutions are helping organisations thrive and become more resilient. Riverbed’s deep experience and proven solutions help public sector organisations meet these challenges, solve pain points and achieve outcomes that allow for continued mission success.

Change may be slow, but with the right strategy, it can be meaningful and lasting. After all, the goal isn’t just modernisation—it’s building a government that better serves its citizens in a digital age. At Riverbed, we’re helping government agencies overcome these barriers.

Contact us to learn how we can support your digital transformation journey.

“Charting cyberspace is all about people, processes and technology.”

Colonel (Retired) Joseph Pishock knows more than most about the topic of Cybersecurity Manoeuvrability. Presenting to a packed out auditorium at MilCIS 2023 in Canberra, he discussed the challenges of managing a regulated and compliant (DODiN) network that had had “25 years of building one thing on top of another.”

Pishock spent 25 years in the United States Army before becoming the Director of Global Networks & Services in US SOCOM (Special Operations Command) in August 2020. At the time, Pishock considered cyberspace effectively uncharted, guided only by Visio diagrams (that may or may not have been accurate) that made it difficult for his team to troubleshoot effectively.

Pishock’s military experience meant he was very familiar with the saying, “move, shoot, communicate”, which is all about being in control and manoeuvring on the battlefield. However, when it came to supporting SOCOM, Pishock discovered that although he had a “wall of plasma”, he had no control. He knew he’d have to delve deeper into why a simple email couldn’t be delivered in a timely manner and why this had become a problem in the first place.

When it comes to managing cyberspace, there are three main considerations:

1. People
2. Processes
3. Technology

Pishock had highly intelligent people from top universities (including MIT and Columbia) in his team. But he realised that while they were great at reading checklists and following processes, they lacked the right tools and data to make decisions. True manoeuvrability would be impossible without this, which led to a collaboration with Riverbed to begin the process of mapping cyberspace.

“It’s important to provide the right tools to the right people and empower them to make decisions.”

Pishock and his team worked closely with Riverbed to deploy the latter’s Riverbed software and hardware, including Network & Infrastructure Performance Management, to instrument SOCOM applications and services. To create visibility across the network and empower decision-making, data visualisation was key. It was important that information be as consumable as possible for the intended audience, as different data means different things to different teams.

Infrastructure tooling collected detailed information about the network to build out a visual representation of the assets and the connections between them – known as a service map. Sensors also recorded temperature and other environmental data so that trends could be established.

Network tooling enabled SOCOM to visualise where communications were moving across the network and how efficiently it could do it. SOCOM could now also see who was consuming each service, where the service was, and how it was performing.

On September 23, 2022, Hurricane Ian hit Tampa, Florida, where SOCOM headquarters is located. Being just 11 feet (3.3 metres) above sea level and 100 feet (30.5 metres) from the coast, the threat required a complete site evacuation and a move to COOP (Continuity of Operations) locations, including hotels and alternate bases to keep people safe. If all of this wasn’t enough, Pishock faced the challenge of supporting a live mission and maintaining services with the data centre located about two feet (600mm) above seawater.

In a crisis there are always single points of failure and in this case, it came down to a rat chewing through an air conditioning system power cord in the on-premise data centre. The air-conditioning failed and the temperature in the data centre rose to a dangerous level. It was not safe to send people into an evacuated site during a hurricane, so a decision had to be made as to which services were essential for the live mission and which services could be turned off.

Fortunately, they were about six months into the Riverbed deployment, and Pishock felt in control for the first time. He was able to see which services were located where, and his team were able to determine which services could be turned off to slow the steadily rising temperature. They had a map of cyberspace and were able to save the data centre infrastructure from damage caused by overheating, successfully supporting the mission during the crisis.

Riverbed’s expertise ensured a speedy implementation that worked first time. After facing some initial pushback from team members who saw change as a threat to their role, he addressed this by creating a sense of security and camaraderie amongst his staff and building a blameless culture. He leveraged the Burke Lewin model for organisational change to embed the solution into the fabric of SOCOM and ensure that the solution was maintained and supported into the future.

“The team at Riverbed blended into the project and became integral to the success of the project.”

After the hurricane, Pishock focused on further improving services within SOCOM and enhancing the organisation’s ability to support customers, which included end-user experience management. Device Mobility became a priority to understand what delays occurred from the point a CAC card was inserted into the laptop to opening the first email.

Prior to the end of the session, Pishock fielded questions about data and customer centricity versus network centricity and how shared infrastructure can help reduce the amount of technology that needs to be sent into the field during a mission.

“Email is not a crisis. Make the real crisis the new crisis.”

Colonel (R) Pishock featured in Australia’s Defence Connect Podcast where he discussed his experience of moving past the linear concept of PACE in order see well enough to actually manoeuvre through cyberspace.

An article was also published after an interview with Colonel (R) Pishock.

However, when Colonel (Retired) Joseph Pishock assumed the role of Director of Networks and Services at USSOCOM in the summer of 2020, he encountered a starkly different reality. USSOCOM’s enterprise network, the fourth largest in the US Department of Defense, serving over 80,000 personnel spread across more than 20 time zones, was plagued by frequent interruptions. Basic services, like delivering emails to headquarters, were sluggish and unpredictable. The network’s performance suffered due to legacy systems and the disparate needs of its users. 

Why network visibility matters when it’s mission-critical 

What Colonel Pishock realized was that USSOCOM lacked the necessary visibility into its own network. IT faced the incredibly complex task of connecting personnel with data, devices, applications, and communications across non-classified, secret, and top-secret networks. However, without a clear understanding of network dependencies, boundaries, relationships, and authorities, troubleshooting became a time-consuming, reactionary process. Consequently, Colonel Pishock turned to Riverbed for a solution that could provide the unified observability required for mission success.

Together, USSOCOM and Riverbed built a command-and-control structure capable of delivering real-time updates to authorized personnel. Previously, leaders only received information on network performance from the previous day. Thanks to Riverbed’s involvement, USSOCOM now has full and immediate visibility. Personnel in the help desk now share the same insights as network engineers, enhancing collaboration and problem-solving.

Colonel Pishock shared his insights at the 2023 Military Communications and Information Systems (MilCIS) Conference and Expo in Canberra, Australia. Drawing from the success of Riverbed’s partnership with USSOCOM, he offered five tips for how technology companies should approach US Defense.

Five tips to achieve visibility for mission-critical defense  

1. Don’t get stuck on laptops and desktops–include mobility as well

When it comes to enterprise networks, it’s easy to make laptops and desktops the focus. But Colonel Pishock’s advice is to pay equal attention to mobility. Because it isn’t centrally managed, cell/mobile phones can be a point of vulnerability. Riverbed’s Aternity provides visibility into the end-user experience across desktops, laptops and mobility devices. With it, you can identify the cause of delays to the network, devices or an app’s back end to diagnose and fix issues impacting UX. This is critical to optimizing the productivity and aspects of command, who rely heavily on mobile devices. 

2. Partnerships with professional services are essential 

Perhaps the most difficult lesson learned was that government organizations, no matter how qualified, can’t handle everything internally. Initially USSOCOM wanted to create a bespoke solution to solve its network issues but became its own worst enemy. After embarking on a failed in-house deployment which delayed the project by six months, Colonel Pishock advocated for USSOCOM to partner with Riverbed professional services to tap into their network expertise. 

3. Government needs to take an active leadership role  

Breaking down the barriers to support professional services throughout implementation was a weekly occurrence. Rather than leave the project to the IT teams, uniformed and civilian government leaders and operators needed to take an active role. This was crucial in getting Riverbed’s solution into the hands of personnel who would actually use it. Training was tailored for different users—creators, doers, and watchers—because they all utilized the same tool for different purposes.

4. Orient everyone around a real problem and create a baseline to measure success 

To create a baseline for performance, Colonel Pishock said it is important to set up a vignette. For this project, he kept it simple. How long does it take from the time you put in your ID (CaC) card to achieve a functional Outlook? Internal teams had no idea what the start-up sequence was, or what systems talked to what. It exposed a lack of understanding of the dependencies and interdependencies within the SOCOM network. Working hand in glove with experts from Riverbed, Colonel Pishock was able to streamline, simplify and create a baseline (1 minute). The baseline changed every time a modification was made. Now, USSOCOM can actively monitor the network, make changes and proactive decisions to optimize performance. 

5. Ensure your solution integrates with existing cyber tools

Chances are, Defense already uses other technology solutions. Any technology company approaching Defense needs to find a way to integrate their solution with existing tools. Don’t create a situation where there is a complicated divestment decision to be made because Defense is often locked into multi-year agreements. The ideal solution can be integrated with existing systems, setting Defense up for divestment in the future, which is a more realistic goal.

Mission success depends on providing personnel with real-time data and insights to make fast, informed decisions. As the digital infrastructures that support defense grow in complexity, closed networks become barriers, rather than facilitators, of data flows.

Therefore, having clear visibility across these landscapes is not just important–it’s mission critical. Riverbed can help you monitor network needs and adapt in real time–supporting operational continuity and mission delivery. Find out more about what Riverbed Unified Observability portfolio can do for defense organizations today.

As an example, let’s take a look at the zero-touch model now in place for COVID-19 testing. Anyone who’s been worried about a sniffly nose or scratchy throat during the past few months starts by calling their medical centre. They then have a telehealth consultation with a doctor who refers them to a drive-through centre.

Without leaving the car, the patient has their temperature and breathing checked, and swabs are taken. If all is well, they receive an automated SMS within 48 hours confirming that the test was negative.

Many elements of this zero-touch model, which could transform access for people in regional and remote Australia as well as vulnerable members of our community, would also be suitable for use in other areas of federal, state and local government. Digital government services could transform everything from welfare and community services to business and financial support.

With COVID-19 increasingly looking like it will be with us for years rather than months, the government has another important reason to prioritise the digitisation of services in these areas. However, reliable service delivery is critical. An accelerated transition to digital delivery demands application and network performance that is reliable and easy enough that people will actually want to use these digital government services.

The New South Wales government acknowledged this long before COVID-19 reared its ugly head when it made a commitment that its digital transformation will be guided by six key customer commitments, including ease of engagement. This is fundamental, given that citizen expectations are increasingly defined by consumer apps with highly functional user experiences.

But the reality is that new apps and infrastructure can drive increasing complexity in terms of integration, visibility and network performance that make it a challenge for government agencies to ensure a good digital experience, supported by reliable performance.

Here are a few focal points for government agencies looking to ensure efficient, secure and easy-to-use digital government services in what we can expect to become an increasingly zero-touch world:

Visibility for digital government services

Understanding what is happening, and where, in the network, is the first step to delivering reliable, high performing and secure digital government services. Agencies need to be able to continuously monitor dynamic networks and infrastructure to ensure application performance and availability.

Deep and broad visibility and analytics will enable IT teams to fully optimise hybrid IT resources, ensure service quality and network security in the zero-touch, digital government service delivery model. With this capability, IT teams can proactively identify and resolve performance issues before citizens and agency reputations are impacted.

Accelerate performance without accelerating cost

Efficiency in digital government service delivery will become more critical going forward in the pandemic recovery phase as agencies are called upon to do more with less. By increasing data performance on the network while reducing bandwidth utilisation, agencies can achieve faster application performance and reduce cost at the same time.

Some believe that SD-WAN is the way to do this. While it’s true that SD-WAN is transforming the way networks are deployed and managed, SD-WAN alone can’t address enterprise application performance. In fact, the overhead assigned to SD-WAN reduces the available payload of each packet. In most cases, additional performance is still required for geographically remote locations such as those in the Middle East, Europe, Africa, the Americas and South Pacific just to mention a few.

WAN optimisation technology is able to make this additional improvement possible, allowing agencies to increase data transfer performance by up to 100 times while reducing bandwidth utilisation by up to 99 per cent across hybrid and software-defined networks. Users have been known to experience up to 33 times faster application performance for on-prem, SaaS and cloud-based apps while costs incurred by cloud egress are reduced by up to 99 per cent.

In other words, SD-WAN and WAN optimisation solve fundamentally different problems. They are  complementary when deployed together.

Scalable and ready for anything

As Australia battles its way through a second wave and beyond, it’s expected that COVID-19 will have a lasting effect on citizen expectations of public sector service delivery. The key is to be able to ensure high performance of citizen service delivery applications today while building in the ability to scale to successfully meet the demands of the future—which may arrive at short notice.

To make this less complex and costly, IT teams must ensure that they have access to the right diagnostic and network performance management software to simplify and automate the provisioning and management of secure network resources while maintaining and optimising application performance.

Armed with these capabilities, government agencies can ensure investments in digital services pay off for government and citizens alike at a time when they’ve never been more needed.

While the unpredictability we face outside of our work lives at present is, for most of us, out of our control, the technological reality we face on a daily basis while working from home isn’t. The key issue behind much of the unpredictability experienced by those in the public sector is latency—the amount of the time it takes to send a packet of data from one location to another. In other words, the amount of time between an action and a response.

Latency’s impact on application performance can make or break a user’s experience

There’s a common misconception that adding network bandwidth is a quick fix for what is more commonly a latency-related issue. And, while SD-WAN can give IT teams the power to improve network performance, it does not necessarily impact latency and therefore cannot guarantee an improved experience for staff members working from home.

So, here we have another theme: the importance of knowing where the real issue lies. There are tools that can significantly support a smoother and more predictable IT experience for public sector workers dispersed across the country accessing work systems via the public internet.

The first is Network Performance Management (NPM). This allows government IT teams to see what is happening on the network across servers, data centres and clouds. Rather than jumping to the conclusion that more bandwidth is the answer, you might find that something else is causing the issue. NPM enables faster and more cost-effective resolution of IT issues in a dispersed environment.

Improving public sector app performance and reducing network costs

Once you’ve drilled down into where the real issue lies with poor application performance, you will likely find that latency is a critical issue. This is where Riverbed’s SaaS Accelerator can help. This fully cloud-based service allows organisations to measure, monitor and accelerate top enterprise collaboration applications including Microsoft O365 apps (SharePoint, Exchange, Teams & Stream, Office WebApps); Salesforce; ServiceNow; Box and Veeva, among others. With SaaS Accelerator, IT teams are able to ensure the fastest, most reliable delivery of applications to any user, regardless of location or network type—all while reducing cloud egress costs.

In independent tests by the Enterprise Strategy Group, the reduction in average file transfer time when users in Sydney uploaded and downloaded files using SaaS Accelerator were 85 per cent and 75 per cent respectively. By saving minutes of time per day per user, large organisations will be able to reclaim thousands of hours of lost productivity each year.

And, it becomes more powerful with increased usage. That’s because information that has already been downloaded by someone within your network can be shared peer-to-peer among users rather than needing to be downloaded again. As more items are downloaded by users throughout the network, there are fewer things that have to be downloaded again for the first time at some point in the future.

This improves application performance and reduces network costs. Data reduction is an important component of Riverbed SaaS optimisation, particularly as enterprises move to more data-rich collaboration apps.

Ensuring that government IT teams have the right tools to efficiently support their staff working from home is critical, not only for productivity and staff morale today, but going forward. The next step is to ensure that work not only gets done but that it gets done well. While staff may be accepting of second-best app performance in a short-term crisis scenario, it’s clear that this pandemic isn’t going away anytime soon and neither are public sector app performance issues.

A full return to the office is not on the cards for many in the short to medium term. For some, not even in the long term. The future success of the public sector will require more flexible, hybrid ways of work, enabled by secure, high-performing IT. Fortunately, this falls into the category of things that we can control.

Get in touch if you’d like to learn more.

Of course, government IT professionals are used to managing complex and distributed IT systems and users, but COVID-19 really re-framed the IT risk management challenge.

The good news is that, as part of their business continuity plans, many government agencies had sophisticated teleworking systems and remote workplace collaboration software available when lockdowns struck. Staff could swiftly begin to work from home and continue with business-somewhat-as-usual. This was particularly true of the larger, more well-resourced agencies.

However, while the preparedness was commendable, it doesn’t necessarily mean that the new work-from-home environment is optimised for the performance and security that is so essential to government work.

In addition, this level of technological readiness and agility was more common among metro versus regional or local agencies. For smaller state and local agencies, enabling remote work was far more of a challenge—and in many cases, brought with it a notable increase in risk.

With workers spread across the country, and globally, connecting via the internet, remote work has brought with it many more connections that can fail. Support for thousands of new endpoints is now required. There are new challenges at an application, network performance management and security level. An evolved approach to IT risk management is more critical than ever.

Make working from home work better

Whether you’re a larger federal, or smaller local government agency, the next step is to optimise the remote work environment. Do staff have access to the technology they need to get their jobs done effectively? Are their home work environments fully protected?

Achieving this depends to a great degree on the functionality of your networks and applications—whether they are able to support the workload of your remote workforces, whether they are secure at a time when cyber-attacks are on the rise and whether they enable productivity. Poor network performance has the potential to create security, productivity and performance risk, as it can make or break application performance.

There’s somewhat of a negative feedback loop here, given that staff who do not feel adequately resourced to do remote work productively may turn to third-party applications—shadow IT—to get the job done. In just one example, the government banned the use of Zoom for federal politicians on 8 April 2020, and the Department of Defence has banned the use of this very popular video conference solution due to security flaws.

This can increase risks across government agencies at a time when high performance is particularly critical. On 19 June, Prime Minister Scott Morrison warned of a “sophisticated state-based” cyber-attack targeting all levels of government, industry and beyond. “It is vital that Australian organisations are alert to this threat and take steps to enhance the resilience of their networks,” said Morrison.

Seeing is optimising

Remote work is also creating new network visibility challenges that hinder the ability of IT teams to identify and resolve issues before they escalate. With additional complexity across the IT environment, it can be harder to detect where exactly issues were located—within external agencies’ infrastructure or somewhere else along the application deployment chain.

Understanding what is happening across your network, and where, is the first step to securely empowering remote employees and catching red flags before they turn into something that could land an agency in the news for all the wrong reasons.

By gaining a complete view of their agency, IT professionals can gauge performance everywhere, at all times, across a complex, hybrid web of legacy, mobile, cloud and shadow IT components. In this scenario, it becomes clearer exactly when, and where, there are improvements to be made or unusual activities to secure.

Riverbed’s unified Network Performance Management (NPM) makes it easy to monitor, troubleshoot and analyse what’s happening across your hybrid network environment. The integrated dashboard enables agencies to monitor, report and resolve operational issues throughout government operations. With end-to-end network visibility and actionable insights, any network-based performance issues can be proactively resolved.

A few examples of red flags that can indicate productivity or security issues lie ahead:

• Users are spotting issues unknown to the IT team
• Productivity is down
• Apps are taking a long time to load or there are regular site outages

Given what is now being forecast about the future, remote work will become more common than ever. As such, the visibility and optimisation that network performance management platforms like Riverbed NPM provide become increasingly important components of IT risk management.

Conclusion

While it is unlikely the government shifts to permanent work-from-home models like some Silicon Valley tech giants have proposed, early analyses show strong support to make remote work an accepted practice, rather than the exception. It is increasingly likely that the ability to support flexible work arrangements will become foundational to retaining and attracting the best talent.

In other words, as McKinsey and Company put it, “Since the world is unlikely to ever return completely to its pre-pandemic ways, the public sector should seek to rapidly change how it works, including improving its agility and productivity, in lasting ways.”

The future of the public sector will require more flexible, hybrid ways of work, enabled by secure, high-performing IT—whether its staff are gathered in offices in a city centre, or spread out across homes throughout the country and across the globe. Additional vigilance is critical. As organisations, we’re only as strong as our weakest link.