IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

Plans by the South Australian Government to roll out biometrics at a number of prisons acrosss the state have been delayed due to required construction work.

Plans for the trial were announced in May. Pending a successful trial, it will be rolled out to sites including Yatala Labour Prison, Adelaide Women’s Prison, Mobilong Prison, Port Augusta Prison, Mt Gambier Prison, Cadell Training Centre, and Port Lincoln Prison.

The paper was launched by Premier Jay Weatherill at the recent ICT Strategy Summit that attracted over 400 industry representatives.

South Australian Government Chief Information Officer Andrew Mills says working in partnership with the Australian Information Industry Association is helping to deliver the best ICT strategy.

South Australian Premier Jay Weatherill today officially released the state government’s strategy position paper, SA Connected, which sets out its plans to shorten project delivery times and improve service delivery.

“From now on, we’re not going to start up any more big ‘ICT’ projects," the draft position paper reads.

The Commonwealth Government has provided $90 million for the project under the Council of Australian Governments National Health Reform funding to improve elective surgery and emergency-department funding, with the South Australian government contributing $318 million over 10 years.

Speaking at the e-health track of CeBIT's 2012 conference, Le Blanc outlined the process through which SA Health went to transform its state-wide IT systems.

SA Health was forced to reconsider its IT systems and reporting lines because of legislative changes put in place to prepare for e-health records. Reforming the health department was a legislative requirement, relegating return on investment and other commercial considerations to be of lesser importance, according to Le Blanc. He said that the department consequently had to jump into reform headfirst.

Australia is falling behind the rest of the world in using information technology to improve the healthcare sector, according to an Australian leading the implementation of an eHealth system in Sweden.

Kerry Stratton, managing director of Healthcare for software developer InterSystems in Australia, is two months into a trial of a national electronic health records project in Sweden, and said Australia has a lot to learn from the Scandinavian country.

Throughout the world, governments are grappling with the growing challenge of providing quality, affordable healthcare. However, innovations in technology are helping to alleviate this common dilemma.

In Australia, an ageing population, shortages of healthcare providers in metropolitan and rural areas, as well as increased rates of chronic disease, are all factors placing substantial strain on the local healthcare sector. However, while these challenges continue to mount, healthcare providers are being forced to do more with less as the costs continue to rise and place increasing pressure on government budgets. In fact, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare calculates annual spending on healthcare services now exceeds $6200 per person.

The officials indicated that either the Labor party's fibre-to-the-premises or the Coalition's fibre-to-the-node plan could offer the minimum speeds and reliability levels required by telehealth and other bandwidth-intensive health IT activities.

The project demanded an investment of $620 million that was announced at the Labor's 2010 election campaign launch. As per the Labor, the new technology prone medical services were going to bring a big change in the medical service section of Australia. The project was quite comfortably going to be involved in the policies of the primary health care.

The trial is to receive AUD 4mn (US$ 3.87mn) in funding and will see elderly citizens provided with telehealth monitoring units and high-definition video conferencing systems in their homes and primary care facilities. The new equipment will monitor blood pressure, glucose levels and cardiovascular function, and will be able to send alerts to a doctor or nurse when needed.

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).

Only one Australian city has been named among the world's 'smartest cities' based on green spaces and technological advancements.

We hate to break it to you but while Sydney and Melbourne were arguing over who has the better coffee, Canberra was officially named one of the ‘smartest’ cities in the world. The International Institute for Management Development (IMD) has recently released its Smart Cities Index studying 142 cities around the world on factors such as economic and technological advancements and sustainability with Zurich topping the list for the fifth year running. It was followed by Oslo in Norway at number 2 and Canberra in the third spot making it the only Aussie city in the top 20.

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.