The Queensland Government has moved to implement the first recommendation of its government-wide review of ICT use and expenditure. The final report of the review is due in December.
ICT Minister Ros Bates has announced that all of the State’s departments will be required to appoint a senior level officer in charge of coordinating and consolidating print services. Departments will also have to conform to centrally determined printer settings, with the aim of saving the Government $1.8 million a year.
“All machines will be set to print in black and white, double-sided at draft quality and colour printing will be only used where necessary. All print devices will also have settings enabled for energy saving/sleep modes when they are not in use,” said the Minister.
The Queensland whole-of-government panel for Personal Computers, Servers and Associated Services (QP707) has been extended by five months out to 30 November 2012. The new expiry date will take the term of the panel close to the submission date for the report of the State’s ICT audit, which is likely assess the effectiveness of such coordinated procurement arrangements.
Former Chief Information Officer at the NSW Department of Education and Training (now Education and Communities) Stephen Wilson, has joined Sydney Water as its new head of IT. Wilson left the Education Department in June 2011 to take up the role of Chief Technology Officer at Qantas.
The Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO) is advertising several positions at Executive Level Two. Successful candidates will “provide high level advice on the direction of whole-of-government ICT policies and solutions in line with new and emerging technologies, together with possible actions for addressing associated issues and risks”.
The Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency is looking to hire a First Assistant Secretary to take charge of its Corporate Support division (which includes IT).
Work on NSW Health’s $170 million Electronic Medications Management system (eMM) is likely to commence imminently, with PriceWaterhouseCoopers recently completing a $550,000 contract for the establishment of the project on behalf of Health Support Services.
In other NSW Health news, the Department has still not set a date for the release of its revised $1.5 billion ICT Strategy which was originally due in April this year.
2012-13 procurement plans released by the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) reveal that it intends to approach the market for an electronic voting solution in Q2 of the financial year. A spokesperson for the AEC told Intermedium that the solution would expand the ballot services it offers to Fee for Service clients such a private organisations and industry associations.
The NSW and Queensland Police forces have both been nominated to receive the US based ConnectedCOPS Award for incident management via social media. The Queensland Police Service is widely recognised as forging the model for social media engagement during the 2010-11 Queensland Floods. The NSW Police have since adopted its own model and added their own initiative – Project Eyewatch – which encourages citizens to participate in crime prevention activities via Facebook.
Telstra and AARNet have each been awarded a place on a standing offer arrangement to supply internet carriage services to the Tasmanian Government for seven years to 2019. The deal is worth $2.2 million to Telstra and $4 million to AARNet.
IT News has reported that the Australian Taxation Office is internally developing a real-time analytics system for assessing financial data, with the potential to speed up customer transactions with the agency.
The Brisbane Times has suggested that by Peter Costello’s Commission of Audit into Queensland finances may have used unconventional financial measures to inflate its findings on the budget deficit left by the previous Labor Government. The Commission of Audit focused on achieving a tougher ‘fiscal balance’ in its recommendations to Government, while the Federal, NSW, SA, WA and Victorian Governments all used an ‘operating balance’ to measure budget surplus or deficits in their latest budgets.
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