IfG.CC - The Potsdam eGovernment Competence Center

The main component of the deal - part of a three-year strategic partnership between the two companies - will result in Healthways Australia moving the bulk of its information and communications technology to Telstra’s cloud-based and fully secure virtual servers.

The companies will also work together on the development of new health applications, such as a telematic monitoring device for diabetes Healthways Australia is trialing for Telstra.

Telco is transforming its IT operation to make better use of the cloud, data and application programming interfaces

Australia’s Telstra is transforming the IT infrastructure that supports its businesses-to-business (B2B) unit. The project will see the overall company become cloud first with a focus on better use of data application programming interfaces (APIs).

Establishing a clear deployment model and providing financial incentives for health care providers are some of the key issues to be resolved if telehealth services are to be successfully rolled out across Australia, according to the Department of Health and Ageing.

The issues, detailed in a discussion paper by the department, includes specifics around the implementation of the services, how the service will work, which medical specialties will work best in the online format, and potential technical issues.

Moreton Bay Regional Council in South-East Queensland is one of the smart cities that is part of the Global Smart Community and City Alliance (GSC3). In all, some 25 cities formed part of this Alliance, which is no longer active.

It is amazing to see the progress that Moreton Bay has made over the last two years. At the start of the GSC3 activities back in 2015, they were significantly behind cities such as Adelaide, Canberra, Newcastle and Ipswich, however, they are now there right up with the national smart city leaders.

Time-poor Australians juggling caring for their children and elderly parents are among the most likely to access health services from home, a new report has found.

The study, commissioned by the National Broadband Network (NBN), found that 90 per cent of those 'sandwiched' between caring for the two generations delayed trips to the GP in a bid to save time and money and avoid days off work.

This week’s Smart City roundup features Australia’s need to focus on smart infrastructure, Canada’s lead in the race for smart infrastructure deployments, fresh smart city solutions to be featured in Ecobuild 2016, and India’s new list of cities included in the 100 Smart Cities project.

Australia’s need to focus on smart infrastructure

The population in Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Melbourne is set to double by 2050 and now officials are looking at how to better approach infrastructure planning and operation to accommodate this growth.

Cybersecurity attacks are scary enough, but what happens when they start coming from unexpected sources to attack the underlying infrastructure of cities?

It may sound like the plot of a Philip K. Dick novel, but headlines in recent months have decried several attacks on public and private websites, mounted and executed through botnets on unsecured devices (not always computers) with internet access. To be sure, the Internet of Things promises more reliable and easy access to myriad industrial and municipal systems. However, as smart cities start investing in smart meters and other devices that could fall prey to attacks engineered by botnets taking advantage of unsecured IoT devices and other IP-connected electronics and systems, there is arguably a much broader threat vector for government agencies.

The Chair of the AIIA, Kee Wong, said the just launched e-Services Register represented a “collaborative effort between the Government, AIIA and industry to improve Government’s access to a broad range of quality ICT services.”

“It provides large and small ICT service providers the opportunity to engage with Government on a level playing field.

The third round of the Innovation Partnership Grants under the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s Aus4Innovation Programme has opened, targeting initiatives under priority targets of the Vietnamese Ministry of Science and Technology to promote post-COVID-19 recovery.

The round, with a budget of 1.5 million AUD (nearly 1.16 million USD), is designed for tested existing partnerships between Australian and Vietnamese institutions that are ready to scale up.

More than 70 executives from 42 technology companies participated in the Australia - Vietnam Tech Forum that opened in Ho Chi Minh City on April 12.

The event introduced Australian expertise in fintech, digital transformation and smart cities.

Assoc. Prof. Nguyen Quang Trung, head of the management faculty at RMIT Vietnam, said the government views digital transformation as critical to continued growth and prosperity.

An ambitious US$106 million (AUD$106 million) Regional Mobile Communications Project (RMCP) is delivering the benefits of mobile broadband to “outback” Australia.

This project supports voice and data services that are similar to metropolitan cities and towns.

The Western Australian Government will spend $36.5 million on clinical, emergency, specialist, education and remote telehealth services in the next four years.

Funding was announced by Deputy Premier and Health Minister Kim Hames last week, as part of the State Government’s $565 million Southern Inland Health Initiative.

During a keynote address, Mr Colin Murphy, WA’s Auditor-General noted the focus is on independent and impartial audits involving technology and telecommunications. Increasingly, governance and accountability takes a front seat.

Remote area emergency and health services are being enhanced through a $A21.28 million broadband development project jointed funded by the Commonwealth and Western Australian governments.

Announced today by the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy, said the Bush Medivac Western Australia project will deliver improved emergency and health services to Australians living in regional and remote areas by providing state-of-art terrestrial and non-terrestrial broadband network infrastructure.

40% of WA's new digital fund will be dedicated to future health IT projects.

Western Australia has handed down its 2021-22 state budget, revealing it will establish a AU$500 million digital capability fund for upgrading legacy IT systems and streamlining government services.

To be doled out over four years, the fund is aimed at progressing the government's digital transformation agenda and follows the same timeline as the state government's 2021-25 digital strategy that was released back in June.

Premier Colin Barnett made the announcement yesterday, saying that agency roll-ins to shared finance and payroll systems would be halted until the review could be completed.

Under the review, the state government will consider what the OSS has done in its seven-year history, what could be done better and how it could achieve better value for money.

The WA Police Force is responsible for policing the world’s largest single jurisdiction covering 2.5 million square kilometres across the massive state of Western Australia.

Superintendent Lance Martin, programme director with WA Police, says this improved mobile communications service is helping officers access information in real-time, while supporting field operations.

The initiative, funded under the Liberal-National Government’s Royalties for Regions Program, is the centerpiece of the State Government’s spending on health in the 2011-2012 State Budget and aims to reform and improve access to healthcare, according to a government statement.

In an extraordinary statement, the Western Australian Premier Colin Barnett informed the press that the OSS was “probably one of the great bungles of public administration in Western Australia.”

“This has been a very expensive and largely failed program,” he said.

The software will provide Enterprise Master Patient Index and Enterprise Provider Index, including implementation and integration with other healthcare systems and data cleansing.

The Health Identifiers Solution will be integrated with existing and proposed WA Health systems and interfaced with other providers’ systems and with the National Health Identifiers service.