IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

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.

The Ho Chi Minh City Institute for Development Studies (HIDS) and the Australia-Vietnam Policy Institute (AVPI) on Friday signed a memorandum of understanding on digital transformation, energy transition, green economy, and super city governance using technology.

This is a milestone in the two institutes’ cooperation, a follow-up to a Ho Chi Minh City delegation’s visit to Australia in May this year.

Digital transformation is becoming an important pillar in the development strategies of all nations. In Viet Nam, the goal of building a digital government has been clearly defined with people at the centre, data as the foundation, and technology as a tool.

Online public services are considered the test of the effectiveness of this process. Lessons from pioneering countries show that for technology to truly serve the people, the decisive factors lie in governance mindset, the digital capacity of officials, and the engagement of the community.

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.

ETS is available across the State and has supported more than 58,000 emergency cases since it began, and now deals with about 300 cases a week.

Western Australia's virtual emergency department has been expanded to a 24/7 service. The WA Country Health Service's Emergency Telehealth Service (ETS) is now available around-the-clock from its 78 rural and remote locations.

This regional mobile communications project (RMPP) will boost high-speed, fast-access coverage across major roads, highways and regional communities.

The RMPP project kicks off with a US$41 million (AUD$38.2 million) three-year contract that has been awarded to Australian telco, Telstra.

The Western Australian Department of Treasury and Finance has claimed success in implementing key projects across the past year as it looks to fully modernise its revenues, tax and shared services systems by 2013

According to its annual report for the 2009/2010 financial year, the government will finalise a roll out of Oracle e-Business systems by mid-2012, seeing a total of 90 agencies gain access to the shared services platform. A total of 14 agencies were rolled in during the past year, with plans to roll in a further 20 agencies across 2010-2011. The systems, focussed around project operations and shared services, are expected to enable whole-of-government industrial awards, the first of which were completed and implemented over the past year.

The eHealth System will be made available to all stakeholders responsible for providing health services and benefits to defence staff, including clinicians, the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, and civilian health providers.

Last month, I was proud to unveil Australia's first ever Digital Transformation Strategy, which will revolutionise the delivery of government services over the next seven years and ensure we remain a world leader for digital government.

The strategy sets out a bold and detailed plan on how we intend to achieve our goals and was backed by a roadmap containing more than $1.5 billion worth of fully funded digital initiatives that will be rolled out over the next two years.