Service NSW goes digital with CA Technologies API management

Melbourne-based IT consultancy Versent has delivered CA Technologies' API management solution to Service NSW, allowing the agency to perform half of its transactions digitally.

According to CA, this is one of Australia’s "biggest public sector digitisation programs to date".

The NSW government portal offers access to more than 900 agencies to 7.64 million citizens.

"Service NSW is well on the way to achieving this digital adoption target with approximately 50 percent of transactions now being performed digitally. This is up from around 30 percent at the time of Service NSW’s launch. API technologies have underpinned this growth," said Glenn Einsiedel, Service NSW director of service enablement.

Service NSW digitisation required combining different processes and platforms. Services offered needed to be integrated with a CRM platform, which had to talk to government agencies' existing systems.

Versent chief executive Thor Essman said he wanted the customer servicing platform to act as a central source for Service NSW.

"We needed to ensure it could interact with government agencies’ existing systems to provide access to relevant citizen information," Essman said.

The $324,000 API security platform contract was awarded to CA in 2015 for a three-year period.

According to the contract, CA was selected based on the ability to deliver the functional components as required, experience in the provision of similar services, ability to carry out the work and understanding of the requirements.

According to CA, its solution promised the ability to scale up as the scope of the portal expanded with more services after it went live in September 2015.

"The API gateway was designed with future use in mind, particularly in allowing Service NSW to share information and services internally with government agencies and externally with authorised third parties and citizens," added Essman.

CA and Versent have allowed Service NSW to publish a number of APIs.

Ben McMullen, director of technology architecture and risk management at Service NSW, said: "The introduction of customer accessible APIs are part of the Service NSW maturity model; customer service is more than simply enabling APIs, it is at the core of our digital distribution strategy. Our ability to evolve and deliver differentiated APIs at speed and scale supports the expectations of our customers in today's digital world."

The gateway will also allow government agencies to deliver secure services to citizens via mobile phone apps.

Versent is working with a number of state departments to ‘app-enable’ key processes, such as validating vehicle licences.