Government / Case studies

As one of Melbourne’s three state-owned water retailers, South East Water provides water, sewerage services and recycled water services to about 1.4 million customers in the Melbourne’s South Bank through to the Mornington Peninsula and Gippsland. The company has about $2 billion of assets in the ground and about 800 information workers. Given the distributed nature of the organisation, it’s not surprising that having flexible, robust communication systems is vital. Add its busy, industry-recognised contact centres into the mix and it quickly became clear to CIO, Marcus Darbyshire, that the company required an innovative approach to its communications technology that would provide a platform for the future.

Until recently, the idea of a World Wide Web in which information and services are defined - the Semantic Web - has remained something developers aspire to rather than a reality. That is starting to change. Earlier this year, the ABC launched three new socially networked digital radio websites which aggregate content from several different sources, including MusicBrainz, YouTube, Last.fm and Wikipedia. It is not only a new approach for a content-rich organisation such as the ABC, it is a working example of the possibilities of Semantic Web technology.

The Royal Australian Mint may be in a heritage-listed building, but there will soon be nothing old about the technology. The Mint has been going through a refurbishment and modernisation program that has involved it moving from two buildings into one and significantly revamping its technology.

Mindjet’s MindManager software has helped an LES consultant increase productivity by up to 60 percent and deliver successful projects to the Defence Force and other clients.

The Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) is deploying what may be the first national e-health records management system to unify disparate medical databases across its four regional sites.

City West Water has reduced maintenance costs, eliminated paper based reporting and increased responsiveness with an integrated job management system and a new fleet of Next G handsets.

Minnesota's solution may have been cheap and inelegant, but it works just fine.

The CRM strategy initiated by Australia's Child Support Agency had an unusual aim: to encourage clients to look after themselves and rely on the agency less.

When the CES was ditched in favour of the Job Network in 1998, the government employment service not only took on a new name, it also adopted a new service delivery model. With the whole country watching, failure was not an option.

John Costello investigates how government organisations at all levels are using portal technology in a variety of ways to meet the needs of their communities.

Thanks to the decentralisation of outsourcing and the freedoms granted by new procurement guidelines SMEs are queuing up for government contracts - and presenting CIOs with a slew of new issues to face.

How to connect students, faculty, staff, alumni and businesses so that they can share the school's services, research and applications? Go for the gateway approach.

At the city, state and federal levels, the government's embrace of information technology is empowering citizens while at the same time driving forward the national agenda for standards, innovation and computer literacy.

Public sector IT management must begin to think of themselves and their departments as the consultancy of choice for their government entity

When the South Australian government decided to implement a new levy to fund emergency services, such as fighting bushfires, it looked to select a system that could effectively issue accounts to hundreds of thousands of households across the state.

The city's CIO has a tall order: uniting the tribes through information technology.

In overhauling Dallas's antiquated IT system, the city's first-ever CIO has a Texas-size challenge on his hands.

Are best practices in public sector IT management and government-wide technology initiatives non-existent? After a stint as IS director of Victoria's WorkCover Authority, Ian Rodgers certainly thinks so.