IfG.CC -
Institute for eGovernment

The Federal Government is studying a whole-of-government big data strategy among several other initiatives as part of its three-year ICT strategy released last year, according to an update today.

Announced last October, the 40-page ICT strategy document aimed to improve operational efficiency, services and stakeholder engagement until 2015.

The Federal Government has revealed plans to allow larger departments to become cloud providers in their own right, with smaller agencies shifting between government-run resource pools with "minimum difficulty".

Guidelines [pdf] issued this week by the Government's central procurement office AGIMO sought to standardise approaches between agencies toward resource pooling under 'community' or 'government clouds'.

The Federal Government has flagged a trial of in-house telemonitoring technology for chronically ill veterans via the National Broadband Network (NBN), kicking off in July 2012.

Both the veterans’ affairs minister, Warren Snowdon, and communications minister, Senator Stephen Conroy, announced the $8 million project which will enable 300 chronically ill veterans, from NBN connected areas in Toowoomba, Coffs Harbour, Armidale, Mandurah and Geraldton to have their health monitored without leaving their home.

The Federal Department of Health has introduced e-health legislation into Parliament pertaining to its $467 million Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR) project, scheduled for completion by 1 July 2012.

The Federal Department of Health has revealed detailed plans for the third round of funding to be allocated to the National e-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA) next month for the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR).

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Ageing (DoHA) told Computerworld Australia that negotiations around the funding were expected to be completed shortly as the scope of NEHTA’s activities for the rest of the initiative were finalised, but could not yet disclose the figure.

The Government will likely struggle to meet its target of 500,000 registrants for the personally controlled electronic health record (PCEHR) by June, after it was revealed only 109,000 Australians had registered in the last nine months.

The system, launched last July, has been plagued with issues, including with its online registration system and availability for general practitioners.

The Federal Government will move to improve operational efficiency, services and stakeholder engagement under a three-year ICT strategy, released today.

The 40-page document was first aired as a broader "draft ICT Strategic Vision" 18 months ago and released after a secretly commissioned inquiry into the Australian Government Information Management Office's (AGIMO) capacity to implement a whole-of-government strategy.

The Federal Department of Health and Ageing has denied states and territories additional funding to implement its $467 million personally-controlled electronic health record (PCEHR) project.

The lack of federal funding would require individual state governments to front up their own money to establish infrastructure not directly tied to the rollout of the national e-health records.

"No additional PCEHR funding is expected to be allocated to states or territories," a department spokesman said.

The Federal Government on Tuesday issued a tender to establish a panel of cloud service providers as it readies to provide agencies with easier access to hosted IT infrastructure services.

The Department of Finance is establishing a whole-of-government services panel and will select preferred providers and execute head agreements in December.

Moves to allow private sector access to the Attorney General’s Document Verification Service should not be viewed as a cunning government plan to invade our privacy, but rather an effort to help secure digital identities.

The DVS is a clearing house for those government issued documents routinely used for establishing identity.

According to the Department, GovCMS will be an important service for Australian Public Service (APS) Agencies and will make use of shared or cloud services where “minimum efficiency scale hurdles are not met”.

Assistant Secretary at the Department of Finance, Mundi Tomlinson said the Cloud Services Panel aimed to provide Agencies with scalable and flexible cloud services via industry offerings.

These developments are also referred to as the Internet of Things, of which the digital economy will play a key role.

The Federal Government will penalise health practitioners to the tune of $66,000 for any personally controlled electronic health record compromised, leaked or “inappropriately accessed” under draft e-health legislation released today.

Health Minister Nicola Roxon said in a statement that she expected the PCEHR system to be “more secure and private” than paper-based records.

The Critical Infrastructure Protection Survey was conducted by Applied Research and included 150 respondents within Australia, from the total of 3457 organisations surveyed worldwide.

It found that Australian organisations had a lower awareness of the various critical infrastructure protection (CIP) plans that the government had set up and were less engaged in them than in the past.

Liberal MP and former Optus executive Paul Fletcher has delivered a stinging attack on the ambitious technology projects of the Labor Government, arguing Australia has not learned lessons from numerous failed IT projects in the private and public sector.

Fletcher savaged the National Broadband Network (NBN), the Personally Controlled Electronic Health Record (PCEHR) project, and the ‘one PC per student’ Digital Education Revolution in a speech to a conference of technology journalists on the Gold Coast Sunday.

This new service will provide timely, accessible, face to face health information and counselling (via the internet) using the latest technology for men and their families. Information sessions have been delivered in these four locations.

It will meet amid concerns that overstretched communications networks will shortly no longer be able to meet its needs and the national broadband network (NBN) may not deliver the fast, reliable broadband system the Service needs.

“Due to the remote areas in which we operate, the Flying Doctor has always been innovative and embraced new technology,” said Mrs Joan Treweeke, President RFDS SE Section.

FutureGov met with Steven Boyages, Medical Director, eHealth NSW during the recent Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) conference in Singapore to discuss the progress of NSW’s future plans for eHealth.

Since the launch of the federal scheme six months ago, 1200 doctors across Australia have applied for one-off $6000 grants, which were part of the government's $620 million ''telehealth'' program.