Tasmania’s Digital Transformation appears to be on track, buoyed by strong economic winds blowing across Bass Straight. This year’s state Budget builds on the promising signs from last year to lift Tasmania out of its digital doldrums by tackling some high profile legacy issues and topping up existing funding programs.

Liberal Premier Peter Gutwein has delivered a ‘Labor-like’ Budget, with a focus on funding for health and hospitals, building new social housing units, and a commitment to clean energy and emissions reduction. Hobart’s main newspaper, The Mercury, ran the headline “Jobs, health and climate change” and economist Saul Eslake describes it as an “uncharacteristically big-spending affair.”

In what could be the Budget’s most far-reaching ICT investment, $15 million will be spent in 2020-21 to set out for the first a strategic and long-term vision for digital technology across the health system.