New South Wales’s status as Australia’s leading digital government in Intermedium’s annual assessment was corroborated by high overall digital funding in the state’s 2022-23 pre-election budget, with big-ticket items in transport and emergency services.

However, digital transformation funding beyond 2022-23 is uncertain, with no further top-up to the Digital Restart Fund (DRF) announced in budget papers. The DRF was last increased in June 2021 (to $2.1 billion), and over $130 million in new DRF projects was announced with this budget. Intermedium understood that the DRF was already oversubscribed prior to the budget, so the absence of new funding means that this digital transformation well has in all likelihood now run completely dry.