Shifting half of the remaining government transactions from traditional channels to digital channels could net Australia a $20 billion productivity dividend with the bulk of the savings accruing directly to the tax payer, according to a new study by Deloitte.

Called “Digital government transformation” the report which was commissioned by Adobe finds that although some government transactions may be difficult to replace with digital options due to their complexity, there is still room for growth as “Citizens have either not transitioned over or governments have not yet transformed their processes to allow for digital options.”

According to the authors, “This report finds that of the estimated 811 million transactions at the federal and state levels each year, approximately 40 per cent are still completed using traditional channels. If this figure could be reduced to 20 per cent  over a ten-year period, productivity, efficiency and other benefits to government worth around $17.9 billion (in real terms) would be realised along with savings in time, convenience and out-of-pocket costs to citizens worth a further $8.7 billion – and all at a cost of $6.1 billion in new ICT and transitional arrangements.”

Furthermore they say that taking benefits to governments and citizens together,  the next stages of digital transformation deliver benefits worth around four times as much as they cost.

Deloitte’s assessment of the savings was developed using data from publicly available sources covering existing government digitisation efforts along with the experiences of the South Australian Department of Premier and Cabinet, the Australian Taxation Office, the Department of Human Services, the Digital Transformation Office and Service NSW.

This article originally appeared at www.which-50.com