The NSW Police Force has signed an $11.8 million, three-year software licensing agreement with IBM. The contract has been set up under IBM’s Passport Advantage enterprise licensing program, which offers the Police the option of availing itself of software-as-a-service subscriptions if it so chooses.

Queensland Premier Campbell Newman has announced that a three month Commission of Inquiry into the failure of the Queensland Health payroll system will commence in February 2013, to be headed by Former Court of Appeal judge Richard Chesterman. The Terms of Reference for the inquiry include a detailed examination of the State’s contract with IBM, potentially opening the way for legal proceedings against the vendor. In the same week, the Victorian Auditor-General recommended that his State’s Education Department consider legal action against CSG, the key contractor for its similarly troubled Ultranet project.

Barbara Reed, Lee Barnett and Steve Hodgkinson have become the latest additions to the NSW Government’s ICT Advisory Panel, which will be headed by Deutsche Bank’s John Baird for another 12 months. Gartner group vice-president Warren Anderson has vacated his seat.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has selected finance sector software specialists First Derivatives to provide a new solution for its monitoring of the stock market for suspicious trading, IT News reports. ASIC received $43.7 million in the last Federal Budget for the replacement of its current market surveillance system.

The Canberra Times reports that a single computer hacker has been able to break into the staff database at the Australian Defence Force Academy and access the details of military personnel employed at the university. “So simple, took like three minutes," the self-confessed hacker told the newspaper.

Macquarie Telecom will build a new high security data centre in Canberra in an effort to boost government business, ZD Netreports. The Intellicentre 4 Bunker is due to open in mid 2013, and will support Macquarie’s contract obligations to the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) and its client agencies under the Internet Gateway Reduction Program.

CSC has sold its Australian labour hire unit Paxus to South African employment services company Adcorp, for US$73.5 million. Intermedium’s 2011-12 Labour Hire Report shows that Paxus topped the Federal Government labour hire market in the financial year.

Telstra has signed a five-year managed telecommunications services deal with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), covering managed data, mobile and voice services, as well as the organisation’s transition to a digital video platform for the high speed distribution of media.

The National E-Health Transition Authority (NEHTA) has told ZD Net that the ICT market is a very different place compared to two years ago, when it initially approached the market for National Authentication Service for Health (NASH) system to support electronic health records. It said that the new capability on offer will allow the Department of Human Services to manage the NASH internally, following the termination of NEHTA’s $23.6 million contract with IBM.

"Industry capabilities were not fully established when the contract was first let, but have been built and enhanced locally into secure, capable services in the meantime. The DHS solution has been able to leverage off the capability, together with their considerable technical capacity to offer a NASH solution," a spokesperson told the website.

In the lead up to international negotiations around the Trans Pacific Partnership, US Ambassador to Australia Jeffrey Bleich has called upon the US and Australia to end “protectionism” when it comes information in order to realise the benefits of a global trade in cloud computing. He likened those who want to keep data in local facilities to “people who once thought keeping their money hidden under the mattress was better than having it in a bank”.

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Contracts reveal ASIC’s $20 million IT partnership with Accenture

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