Late last week, Malcolm Turnbull announced the Digital Transformation Office, designed to radically transform the way ordinary citizens interact with government offices by leveraging digital technologies.

The core aim of the Digital Transformation Office is to overhaul existing government service delivery to end users - that's you and me, the common or garden Taxpayer Australis - and to, in the words of Turnbull's FAQ, make them "simpler, clearer and faster to use."

Which, in and of itself, is a laudable aim, especially as right now dealing with any government service is something of a game of Russian Roulette. Or maybe that it's just that I sometimes feel like shooting myself after dealing with some of them.

Part of the issue is that, as Turnbull correctly identifies, there's no real uniformity in whether or not a particular service offers a clean digital interface, if there's an interface at all. Cohesion is highly desirable, although that in itself is a not insignificant challenge too.

Imagine trying to reconcile every single bit of tax law that an Australian citizen might need to with the specifics of, say, military signups while also administering arts grants on the side, all from a similar looking interface. The promise is lovely, but the devil will be frolicking happily in the details, of which there are few.

It's not a small job, in other words, and there's clearly room for some efficiency by going down a more digital route. Turnbull's FAQ notes that the DTO will "champion digital by default," but that "users will still be able to access a number of government services over the counter or phone" without specifying what those services would be.

Which highlights the first problem - namely that the DTO initiative has been announced and a buzzword-friendly FAQ's been written, but there's not a whole lot of actual detail about what it will all specifically mean on a department by department basis, which is where the end users will actually interact with their government via mobiles, tablets and laptops.

The second problem is a financial one. In an opinion column in The Australian, Malcom Turnbull notes that there are significant savings to be made from rationalisation of services where digital fits, given the $6 billion a year the government spends on ICT. On this, again, I have no doubt, because as with any large business there are always edges that can be refined - although I'd be hopeful that this wouldn't be a smokescreen for the reduction of services as a byproduct.

What Turnbull doesn't note, but that The Register detailed is that right now, the Digital Transformation Office has no actual budget to achieve its aims. That's going to be quite a challenge. Budget positions can always shift in the halls of power in Canberra, although I suspect anyone even whispering the word "budget" in Canberra right now does so in very hushed tones.

There's really not enough detail to assess the DTO plan in any kind of reasonable detail, although the use of the UK's Government Digital Services as an example of a "hugely successful" similar initiative is troubling. For a start, the GDS has a budget - it expects to spend 8 million this financial year - and has had issues ranging from terrible software delivery to services that almost nobody actually used even when they were implemented. It's an example of how it has been tried, and I don't doubt the need to make changes, but it's not an absolutely flawless vision by any stretch of the imagination. Of particular worry there is that the verification system for citizens appears to be hopelessly muddled - if you can access it at all. That's not an example we should emulate, is it?

This brings into focus the other side of the equation for the delivery of any kind of digital service in Australia and that's the fact that it could indeed lead to the development of some genuinely world-beating software services that make interfacing with Centrelink, Medicare and every other department seamless and as close to non-miserable as it's feasible to get, but that'll only really deliver results if the end users - again, that's you and me - can actually access it. Which means universal and decent broadband access, especially if you want to really streamline government provided services in a digital way.

Malcolm's also in charge of the now MTM NBN rollout, but that's one that's seen significant delays and some serious watering down for those in remote and regional areas under the guise of "competition." Gone are the promises of every Australian on 25Mb/s bandwidth by 2016, as well as any kind of guarantee of upload speeds plus the inherent reliability of fibre, which could be quite vital for transacting documents with government agencies in a digital way as you fill out forms and send in supporting information, or possibly interact via video with government representatives.

Or in other words, if the government goes all-digital but you don't have the bandwidth to properly deal with them, is that necessarily better than waiting with a paper ticket in a bland office somewhere?

Alex Kidman is a freelance technology writer; follow him on Twitter @alexkidman.