The technology advisory firm founded by former New South Wales minister for Customer Service and Digital Government Victor Dominello has been given the all-clear to provide consulting services to the NSW government.
The green light comes a year after the now University of NSW professor left politics and less than six months after the nascent firm, ServiceGen, was barred from working with companies bidding on state-run projects for a year.
According to the ministerial code, former ministers wanting to accept post-parliamentary work within 18 months of leaving office must seek advice if the job relates to any of their responsibilities in the two preceding years.
Mr Dominello has sought advice from the parliamentary ethics advisor John Evans on several occasions since leaving politics in March 2023, including before providing consulting services to Accenture.
While the proposal did not give rise to “reasonable concern”, Mr Evens in September set five conditions on the firm, one of which requires Mr Dominello seek further advice should he seek work with NSW government agencies.
But in further correspondence published this week, Mr Evens has now approved Professor Dominello to work with Liquor & Gaming NSW, which he had direct responsibility for until December 2021.
Liquor & Gaming NSW approached ServiceGen in January to help it develop a new strategy “for the collection and use of operational data”, which would be “designed to help to optimise the agency’s regulator and public reporting activities”.
The agency has been part of the NSW Department of Enterprise, Investment and Trade since April 2022, when it – and a handful of other agencies – transferred out of the Department of Customer Service.
With the two-year window following Mr Dominello’s responsibility for Liquor & Gaming up, Mr Evens found no grounds for “reasonable concern”, but has imposed two conditions that mimic the conditions set last year.
The conditions require that Mr Dominello must not improperly use, or disclose to another person, any information “acquired in the course of you official functions”, for private benefit of yourself of any other person or organisation.
In November, Mr Dominello was chosen to lead the federal government’s myGov Advisory Group, working alongside former Human Rights Commissioner Edward Santow and the director of the Tech Policy Design Centre at the Australian National University, Joanna Weaver.
Mr Dominello also chairs the Ministerial Digital ID Expert Panel, which was set up in October to provide independent advice on the expansion of the Australian Government Digital Identity System.
He was also named the inaugural director of the Trustworthy Digital Society Hub, a digital trust research initiative between the UNSW and the University of Technology Sydney, and an executive director on the Tech Council of Australia board, in May 2023.
