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2011 Excellence in eGovernment Awards

Special Minister of State Gary Gray announces the 2011 Excellence in eGovernment Award Winners.
“I would like to thank every agency that participated in the Awards, which are a tribute to the excellent work that Government does. The Awards really showcase how the Government is using digital technology to better connect with the people that we serve”

Winner - Excellence in eGovernment Award and Service Delivery Award

The National Library of Australia for their project Trove

Mr Warwick Cathro, Assistant Director-General, Innovation, National Library of Australia, accepts the Excellence in eGovernment Award from Senator the Hon Kate Lundy.

Trove is the National Library's premier discovery service, linking Australians to resources available online, and in Australian libraries, cultural institutions and research collections. Highlighting valuable material collected by 1100 Australian institutions, Trove links to more than 120,000,000 items, including full-text books, journal and newspaper articles, images, music, sound, video, maps, websites, letters, archives, and biographies of prominent Australians. In 2010, the site received 3 million visits and now boasts an average of 25,000 unique visitors a day. Trove allows users not only to discover the contents of unique Australian cultural collections, but to interact, often instantly. Visitors to the site add comments and tags, as well as assist in improving the machine-readable indexed text in the full-text newspaper section.

Category Award Winners

Applications Development Category:

NSW Department of Education and Training for their Essential Secondary Science Assessment online practical component project.

Kate O'Donnell, Director, Educational Measurement and School Accountability Directorate, NSW Department of Education and Training, accepts category award from Senator the Hon. Kate Lundy.

Essential Secondary Science Assessment (ESSA) provides a yearly statewide test for 14-year-olds to supply diagnostic information with the intention of raising the profile and achievement in science for schools and community. The online format enables students to observe change over time using video, audio and animations, and to interact with their simulated investigation. The 2010 online practical component was delivered for 349 government and non-government schools, with 31,845 students completing the 20-minute test. This implementation of such a large multimedia test in real time is ground-breaking.

Geospatial Category:

Department of Sustainability and Environment, Victoria for their Positioning Regional Victoria project.

Jacqueline LeLievre, Senior Project Manager, Department of Sustainability and Environment, Victoria, accepts category award from Senator the Hon. Kate Lundy.

The Positioning Regional Victoria (PRV) project provides a state-wide Networked Real-Time Kinematic (NRTK) high accuracy (±2cm) positioning service. The PRV project managed the installation of over 57 Continuously Operating Reference Stations (CORS). As a result, Victoria’s existing network has grown to more than 103 CORS, enabling the delivery of a robust infrastructure. PRV is helping new and existing industries that are increasingly dependant on access to high accuracy satellite positioning and navigation infrastructure by delivering a strategic and rational alternative to the current ad hoc GNSS infrastructure development. High accuracy GNSS users now benefit from access to one multi-modal infrastructure, providing a technological advantage to attract and spatially enable business and investment.

Government 2.0 Category:

Queensland Police Service for their Social media for emergency management, communications and public relations project.
James Kliemt, Senior Digital Media Officer, Queensland Police Service accepts category award from Senator the Hon. Kate Lundy

In mid 2010, Queensland Police Service (QPS) began trialling a social media  strategy to provide timely and accurate public safety information, and to support operational police in the course of their duties across Queensland. This resulted in both the capacity and internal leadership to effectively engage with and inform the broader Queensland community throughout the natural disasters of late 2010 and early 2011. Disseminating information through social media proved extremely powerful, and far more effective than relying on traditional media alone to provide information to the public. The ability to communicate directly to the people of Queensland was invaluable and in turn, allowed QPS to become more effective in supporting and serving the needs of the community. Additionally, these benefits presented QPS with the ability to manage potentially damaging misinformation being disseminated throughout the community and media.

Project Management Category:

WorkCover Corporation, South Australia for Project Harry

Gavin Woolford, Project Manager, Workcover Corporation, South Australia, accepts category award from Senator the Hon. Kate Lundy.

In 2004 WorkCover South Australia (WCSA) identified major risks associated with its ageing legacy systems which had been developed using an in-house proprietary programming language not used outside of WorkCover. Following extensive market research and a thorough tender and evaluation process WorkCover “Project Harry” was commissioned to implement a Social Enterprise Management solution. The project entirely replaced WorkCover’s key business systems used to support levy collection from 50,000 employers and management of $500 million in claims annually. The system was  implemented in April 2010 including the successful transition of more than 650 million records of client related data stretching back over 20 years. Project Harry achieved its goal of addressing risks associated with the legacy applications whilst delivering a range of business benefits and providing a platform for the future. 

Category Award finalists

Finalists in the Excellence in eGovernment Awards at CeBIT Australia 2011.

ABS ßetaWorksTM is an open invitation to the Australian community to assist the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) with identifying, prioritising and developing concepts for the ABS web site. It is a "sandpit" environment, enabling new web design concepts and enhancements to be showcased to the community. Feedback is used to realign concept priorities and validate future directions based on needs of the community. ABS βetaWorksTM generates keen discussion and provides vital information on customer wants and needs in particular areas of the ABS website. An effective and efficient means of demonstrating how the ABS is active, listening and responding to customer ideas. It has become an effective web 2.0 solution for client consultation.

Following the Black Saturday fires of February 2009 the need for more effective communication between CFA and its members and CFA and the community was never greater. The agency had been engaging in social media activity via YouTube and Facebook but a need was identified for a central hub that could focus all of the agency’s social media activity and provide a platform for CFA members to share their stories with each other and the wider community. More than 1 in every 100 Victorians are now connected to CFA online and receiving regular updates and emergency warnings via the CFA Facebook page and Twitter accounts (over 90,000 followers). Through CFA Connect the agency has also become the first emergency service in Australia to host regular online bushfire safety meetings.

The ITSC project delivered an ICT Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery capability through the provision of a highly available, scalable and fault tolerant technology environment that supports the delivery of information services now and into the future. The project outcomes include: higher availability to provide improved access to information; greater scalability to ensure that CrimTrac can respond to new and changing needs more rapidly; reduced cost of support, maintenance and infrastructure provisioning; improved serviceability through concurrent maintenance and improved alignment with current ICT trends in data centre and system provisioning.

In response to the Black Saturday disaster that claimed 173 lives, the Department of Justice has developed free smartphone applications. The apps were developed for iPhone, iPad, Blackberry and Android to give people real-time information on fires and tips to be fire ready. The apps encourage users to do a five-minute assessment to gauge their level of fire readiness. The apps deliver real-time emergency information and fire safety advice directly from the Country Fire Authority.

Over 100 Spatial functions are available freely available to every DEEWR user. These include interactive Geocoding and Boundary tagging of addresses and simple mouse click access to in-house and external data reports by location. The goal of this project was to provide greater spatial capability within the department and reduce costs. The outcome has been the provision of a more agile and functional in-house geospatial tool, and substantial reduction in costs.

NSW Local Government Procurement provides a fully integrated whole-of-local-government centralised procurement service to councils and associated organisations in NSW. VendorPanel.com/LGP is a secure web based (SaaS) application is designed to simplify the way Council staff get quotes and proposals from Preferred Suppliers. The application was launched in the second half of 2010.  Since then it has managed competitive sourcing from LGP preferred suppliers worth an estimated $26m.  The application is now accessible to 152 Councils in NSW to access LGP managed whole-of-local-government panels, including: Engineering Services, ICT Services, Heavy Plant & Equipment, Street Sweepers and other categories. 

The key objective of the Virtual Tally Room (VTR) initiative was to deliver uninterrupted, real-time election results to the public, media organisations and other parties, anywhere around the world. As soon as each count is completed in polling places results become available via the VTR, allowing access and scrutiny in numerous formats via different delivery channels. The VTR provides two information sources. The first is the VTR website containing 20,000 individual pages of election results. The second is the Media Feed, an XML based delivery channel, to support media broadcasting of the election. Both sources deliver election results on a 90 second update cycle. Almost every major media outlet in Australia used the media feed facility at the 2010 Federal Election and the website received 110 million hits in the 24 hours after the close of polling.

VPS Hub was created as a whole of Victorian government intranet platform for collaborations across 42,000+ members of the Victorian Public Service (VPS). It provides online tools for new ways of working and innovating across government. The Hub establishes and builds virtual networks and partnerships, overcoming the barriers and silo-effect of traditional government structures. Through tools such as communities of practice/interest, blogs and wikis staff share data, information, ideas and knowledge. This easily accessed WoVG resource helps maximise job performance. It also diffuses lessons learned from innovation projects. VPS Hub is a secure extranet for collaboration between government and external parties. 

The WynCrowd project was undertaken to produce an integrated solution which seamlessly tied customer reports from crowd-sourced technology to council’s customer request, property and asset management systems. The project focused on the more mature NeatStreet application which is a free GPS-aware phone application; however can be applied to other crowd-sourcing applications. The crowd-sourcing process can be described as a community member uses the phone application to take a photo of an issue (e.g. pothole on road), select category, type message and then press the send button. Using the satellite-based geolocation the report is auto-distributed to the appropriate council. This initiative has created a framework to better manage and coordinate the required works associated with the requests.

Images by CeBIT Australia, released under an Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license external link icon.

Contact for information on this page: e-Government Awards Coordinator

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Last Modified: 27 June, 2011