GTR April May 2012 sample

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APRIL/MAY 2012 • ISSUE 12 EMERGENCY SERVICES TECH ON THE ROLL GETTING SMART IN WA HOW DSD KEEPS CURRENT PEOPLE POWER AND BIG DATA SOCIAL-MEDIA GOVERNMENT OR BUST SAVE WITH MANAGED PRINT Mobilising the government? We have an app for that.

description

Government Technology Review

Transcript of GTR April May 2012 sample

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EmErgEncy SErvicES

tech on the roll

GettinG smart in Wa ■ hoW DsD keeps current

PEoPlE PowEr anD

big data

Social-mEdiaGovernmentor bust

save WIthmanaGeD print

Mobilising the government?

We have an app for that.

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tapping people power for big dataHackers and developers have often had a natural antipathy towards government, working in the shadows whether by accident or design. With new data volumes and security threats looming, however, some government organisations are using novel techniques to tap the community’s latent development and problem-solving skills.

government gets a social lifeDepending on where you work, social media may be warmly welcomed or completely verboten. But as speakers at the recent Social Media for the Public Service conference shared, government organisations willing to embrace a social-media strategy are reaping the dividends many times over.

special features

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cover story: mobiliSing thE govErnmEnt? wE havE an aPP for that.From asset maintenance to customer service, government organisations deal with their citizens on the ground in many different ways – but the traditional dispatch model has limited responsiveness and flexibility. All that’s changing, however, as investments in iPads and other mobile devices are empowering field-service workers with real-time information – much of it provided directly to state and council organisations by the smartphone-wielding citizens they serve.

IntroductIon2 Editor’s letter

3 News

36 Opinion: Kevin Noonan; Lee Ward; Chris Jones

Features12 DSD: Defenders at the gateway The Defence Signals Directorate (DSD)

offers security guidance for government – but with new attacks every day, how does it keep up?

16 A license to print money Managed print services are helping

government agencies slash the cost of what has traditionally been a financial black hole.

32 NBN, IBM drive Geraldton’s tech vision City of Greater Geraldton executives will

use an IBM grant and Geraldton’s NBN primacy to become the high-tech capital of the north-west.

36 Emergency services answer the call Mobile broadband promises new

emergency services – but are incumbent technologies really dead? This GTR roundtable polls industry thought leaders.

43 Victorian councils shine in LG awards The 2012 National Awards for Local

Government highlight innovative forms of council-to-citizen communications.

case studIes27 GIS analysis finds Qld’s biggest tree If a tree stands in a forest but nobody

knows it’s there, is it still the state’s tallest tree?

28 Lessons from the shared-service wars It started off hard, but things are looking

up for the New Zealand Defence Force. Its shared-services head explains why.

30 Fremantle Ports gets into ship shape As WA’s resource-driven economy took

hold, Fremantle Ports had to get smarter about its operations.

34 Learning the downside of free devices They may have been free, but thousands

of government-funded computers created bandwidth problems for the Catholic Education Office Parramatta.

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EDITOR

David Braue

E: [email protected]

NATIONAL SALES MANAGER

Yuri Mamistvalov

E: [email protected]

Tel: 03 8534 5008

PRODUCTION MANAGER

Annette Epifanidis

E: [email protected]

Tel: 03 8534 5030

DESIGN & PRODUCTION

Odette Boulton, Annette Epifanidis

CONTRIBUTORS

Natalie Apostolou, Beverley Head, Chris Jones,

Kevin Noonan, Lee Ward

MELBOURNE OFFICE

Level 8, 574 St Kilda Rd. Melbourne Vic 3004

PO Box 6137, St Kilda Rd Central 8008

Phone: 03 8534 5000 Fax: 03 9530 8911

Participatory democracy has long been a fundamental tenet of Western governments, and Australia’s vocal political environment is a testament to its enduring success. Yet for the technologists charged with keeping the wheels of democracy spinning, sometimes the sheer complexity of government means you could use a little help.

Enter what, for lack of a better phrase, I’ll call “participatory data-ocracy” in which government bodies function less as ivory towers of administrative process, and more as citizen-centric arbiters of progress.

Forget the town meeting: forward-looking governments are using technology to reach out to their communities in novel ways. Social media has given citizens unprecedented access to their representatives at every level. Twitter and Facebook are at the vanguard of this revolution – yet many government bodies are only now appreciating social media’s power to help government participate in the community as well as dictate to it.

Many fascinating stories of citizen engagement were shared at the recent Social Media for the Public Sector conference, to which hundreds of local-government and state departmental representatives converged to learn how social media can help them service their communities better. In this issue, we cover a few of the highlights and offer some takeaway advice for your own explorations.

Social media is only one way that modern government bodies are delivering the new data-ocracy. Increased use of mobile field-service technologies is empowering council and departmental officers, whose work is being informed by traditional asset management and innovations such as crowd-sourced reporting of faults with council-specific smartphone apps.

Others are furthering the data-ocracy with competitions that draw out innovative developers offering new perspectives on old problems – or demonstrating their hacking prowess in unprecedented government-backed security challenges. Others, like the International Space Apps Challenge, provide access to massive data sets to see what citizens can make of them.

Also this month, emergency-services systems providers discuss the challenges and opportunities of new technologies; we find out how the Defence Signals Directorate is keeping up with rapid changes in information security threats; and look at managed print services, which is trimming costs from an area an area that is often a budgetary black hole.

I’d love to know how your government body is empowering the new data-ocracy – or hear any thoughts, comments, concerns or suggestions on the magazine. Have a read through, and drop me line so we can make GTR a participatory media-ocracy. Hey – that has a nice ring to it.

David Braue, EditorE: [email protected]

Government Technology Review is published by CommStratABN 31 008 434 802

www.commstrat.com.au

All material in Government Technology Review is copyright. Reproduction in whole or in part is not allowed without written permission from the Publisher.

To subscribe to GTR magazine phone: 03 8534 5009, email:[email protected]

or go to www.govtechreview.com.au/subscribe

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A surge in online ‘hacktivism’ drove

cybercriminal activities to near-record heights

during 2011, with more than 855 reported

incidents and 174 million database records

compromised as a result of hackers’ activities.

The figures were documented in the

Verizon Business 2012 Data Breach

Investigations Report (DBIR), which boasts

a number of high-calibre backers: the

Australian Federal Police, Dutch National

High Tech Crime Unit, Irish Reporting

and Information Security Service, Police

Central e-Crime Unit, and United States

Secret Service. It is based on aggregated

data that spans eight years, over 2000

security breaches, and more than a billion

compromised records.

Interestingly, the analysis showed

that most attacks were opportunistic,

uncomplicated, and undetected by their

victims for some time. Fully 96 per cent of

attacks were rated as “not highly difficult”;

92 per cent of incidents were discovered by

a third party rather than the victim; 85 per

cent of breaches took weeks or longer to

discover; and 79 per cent of victims were hit

by opportunistic attacks.

Despite their typically larger IT budgets,

government organisations didn’t fare much

better than large private enterprises, Mark

Goudie, managing principal for Verizon

Business’ Asia Pacific investigative response

business, told GTR.

“I wouldn’t say government organisations

were any better or worse,” he said. “One

thing I would say is that they are very good

at classifying data. And from someone who

has seen a lot of data being stolen, I am a

firm believer in data classification being an

extremely valuable exercise. The whole point

of data classification is knowing where data

can and cannot exist.”

Most of the organisations hit could

have protected themselves better, with 97

per cent of breaches deemed “avoidable

through simple or intermediate controls”. Of

the victims that fall under the auspices of the

financial industry’s PCI DSS data-security

requirements, 96 per cent had not achieved

PCI DSS compliance.

One significant trend was the rise in

technology-based hacking: fully 81 per

cent of attacks involved hacking and 69 per

cent of attacks involved malware; that’s a

31 per cent and 20 per cent increase over

the previous year, respectively. By contrast,

use of physical attacks, social tactics, and

privilege misuse were down significantly; this

suggests a stronger presence by outside

hackers than in the past. Indeed, the report

found that 98 per cent of attacks were

instigated by “external agents” and 58 per

cent of all data theft could be tied to activist

groups.

The full DBIR can be downloaded from

bit.ly/GIoSmp.

hack analysis shows breaches unsophisticated, avoidable

australasian e-waste recycling program launched

Vendors of printers, computers and other IT

products were lining up in late April behind the

Australia and New Zealand Recycling Platform

(ANZRP, at www.anzrp.com.au), the first

industry-led national electronic waste collection

and recycling program.

Designed as a common effort to deliver

a viable product stewardship effort, ANZRP

has more than 20 members including Amicroe

Australia, Bluechip Infotech, Brother International,

Dell Australia, Dicker Data, Direct Memory

Access, EMC, Epson Australia, Medion AG, NEC

Australia, Pioneer Electronics Australia, Rectron

Electronics, Targus Australia, The Reject Shop,

Thorn Group and Uniden Australia. Founding

members include Canon, Epson, HP, Panasonic,

and Toshiba.

The program will provide the community

with permanent e-waste collection sites

across Australia by July of this year, with

more sites across the country by 2013. Its

stated goals are to boost the recycling rate

for televisions and computers from 17 per

cent in 2010 to 80 per cent by 2021, and

to provide a long-term solution to television and

computer waste.

e-payments could save gov’t $240m per yearAustralian government bodies could

save $240 million in annual administrative

costs by replacing paper-based citizen

payments with prepaid cards for electronic

payments, a Deloitte Access Economics report

has advised.

Entitled Efficient and Modern Payments: Benefits of Government Prepaid Cards,

the report was commissioned by Visa and

suggests that government bodies’ high

dependence on paper cheques was costing

them unnecessarily.

Use of prepaid cards rather than cheques

would also benefit government disbursements

by shortening delivery of time-critical payments,

as in emergency and disaster relief situations;

replacing cash and cheques with electronic

payments; electronically limiting the use of

payments to specific circumstances; and

reducing the administrative and compliance

costs of paper-based processes. The full report

is available at bit.ly/K9eZ5H.

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Privacy agency updates data-breach guidelines

The Office of the Australian Information

Commissioner (OAIC) has moved to fill the void

around mandatory data-breach guidelines with

the release of a formal guide designed to help

organisations shape measures to deal with

data-security breaches.

OAIC’s guide comes four years after a 2008

recommendation from the Australian Law Reform

Commission advocated the passage of a law

requiring affected individuals and the OAIC be

notified in the event of a data breach. No specific

law has been passed as a result, but the current

publication is intended to guide organisations

that want to form their own data-breach policies.

The guide outlines four key steps –

including containing the breach, determining

the nature and extent of the breach, and

assessing what personal information is

involved; evaluating the potential harm the

breach may cause; notifying law enforcement

agencies and, once the breached system

had been fixed and tested, affected parties

by phone, letter, email, or in person; and

demonstrating a spirit of transparency when

breaches occur.

The updated guide can be downloaded at

bit.ly/Iz3Af9.

aiia considers need for accreditation of SmE government suppliersAn accreditation scheme for SMEs wanting

to supply government buyers is being

considered by a working group reviewing

last year’s troubled Victorian eServices Panel

review, which saw the number of government-

approved suppliers slashed and then expanded

after widespread protests.

The Australian Information Industry

Association (AIIA), one of four industry

organisations on the eight-member

review panel, floated the idea of SME

accreditation as a way of compromising

between large companies’ desire to be

recognised for their capabilities, and small

providers’ determination not to be left out of the

lucrative government market.

Such accreditation could simplify the

competitive process for SMEs that often

struggle to meet government agencies’

onerous due-diligence requirements. “You

should not have to reveal highly confidential

information, just to win government work,”

AIIA treasurer Russell Yardley recently told

technology news site iTnews.

Perth councils set for consolidationThirty local-government organisations across

the metropolitan Perth area may need to

brace themselves for a period of dramatic

IT and organisational consolidation after a

government-commissioned panel found the

preponderance of councils was creating

service duplication and confusion.

A final recommendation will be presented

to the government in June, but indications are

that the panel – headed by former University

of Western Australia

vice-chancellor

Professor Alan

Robson – will offer

one option that

suggests reducing

the 30 councils to

anywhere from 12,

five or even one

‘super council’.

dhS commits to $374m integration project

Proving the era of the mega-contract is far from

over, the Department of Human Services (DHS)

recently signed on for a $374m IT overhaul

that will provide a major plank in the agency’s

Service Delivery Reform agenda.

The scope of the project includes

consolidation of 14 data centres down to

three; a 25,000-desktop Windows 7 rollout;

consolidation of HR and finance systems;

adoption of Microsoft Exchange rather than

various legacy messaging platforms; a review

of telecommunications services, and potential

rollout of customer relationship management

(CRM) and unified communications.

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Cover story

By NATAlIE APOSTOlOu

THE RELENTLESS ExPLOSION OF DATA, HOW TO HANDLE IT, HOUSE IT, MINE IT

AND LEVERAGE IS DEPICTED AS THE PRIVATE SECTOR’S BETE NOIR – BUT IN

THE PUBLIC SECTOR, THESE RICH DATA ISSUES ARE AMPLIFIED BY A RANGE

OF FACTORS. NEW APPROACHES TO FIELD SERVICE AND MOBILE DATA

ACCESS ARE HELPING MANY GOVERNMENT ORGANISATIONS KEEP UP.

Mobilising the government?

We have an app for that.

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A ll layers of government are currently not only dealing with the streams of data that they have at their disposal,

but how to integrate these cross current streams across multi-layers, divisions and geographic boundaries.

In many areas, local councils are trailblazing in mobile applications innovation – and showing state and federal governments how field-service apps can be implemented to derive business, social and community benefits from big data.

Those councils are finding it of paramount importance to grapple with the explosive growth of local data, storage data management – and using that data for the wider benefit of the community. IT managers and CIOs are finding that using mobility and applications that leverage data is about the ways in which the council can use services in a better way for the community, and how they can store that information and manage it data in a more effective way.

Act global, app localAustralia’s sixth largest government authority, Queensland’s logan City Council, has been one of the more progressive in terms of using mobility to help power the community’s utility, information and communications needs.

According to CIO Jim Barclay, the Council is concerned with getting a better share of information among the different tiers of government. Management and processing of that data into meaningful and timely information is of paramount concern: “Trying to find relevant information across layers of government and departments is always a challenge,” he explains. “We are building new cities, yet we are still building

them in the same ways. Private and public entities are all holding disparate bits of information and it doesn’t help citizens at the end of the day.”

logan City Council has worked with a number of established and startup IT organisations to take their digital data management to the next level. One of the council’s partners is information management specialists Glentworth, which recently overhauled the council’s information management strategy including how they gather and supply information to customers.

“Previously we had the approach, let’s improve technology, whereas Glentworth provided a real focus on what information is needed, and where it is gathered from,” Barclay said. But with logan’s population anticipated to rapidly escalate over the next ten years as southern émigrés flock north, Barclay says expectations will rapidly increase.

“logan is in one of Queensland’s major growth regions and we wanted to make sure we were able to service the needs of our growing areas with a very proactive approach,” he explains. “People expect to self service, get their information from one place, and for that information to be correct.”

The council has also recently competed a data collection trial project with Rype, a Queensland-headquartered mobile and cloud integration consultancy, and Blink Mobile Interactive (BMI). That mobile data collection trial, completed in February, is now being rolled out and enables the rapid creation and deployment of customised electronic forms that can be completed and uploaded to Council systems using a variety of tablets, phones and laptops.

BMI’s Blink Mobility Platform provides the capabilities to build and deploy many different mobile services based on existing services. This is allowing the council to extend mobile services to

the field, improving its customer focus and allowing council officers to receive customer requests online in real time from mobile customers.

Rype designed the processes and interfaces to take the critical inspection data recorded in BlinkForms in addition to uploading it into the council’s Pathway administrative system. During the trial, council officers experimented with two inspection forms – one for food premises inspection and the other for nuisance trees. The iPad was used by council officers as the device of choice.

Barclay says the council was assessing the roll out of the use of the mobile technology across all departments including Development Assessment, Animal and Pest Services, Road Infrastructure Management and Parks – where officers are required to be out in the field and report information back to council.

“The trial mobile pilot delivered increased productivity and efficiency for officers,” he explains. “They found they were able to stay in the field for longer and didn’t have to return to the office as frequently to input the data they had collected. This is something we’ve been working on for around ten years now, and the it has enabled us to develop a platform which allows mobile devices to have secure access to council’s systems with fantastic outcomes.”

Working with new data sourcesAdding to the complexity of government’s data management issues is the rise of social media, web based crowdsourcing and two-way digital communications, which means that ‘other people’s data’ has become a relevant part of the public data matrix.

There’s nothing like a natural disaster to push a government into creating a bigger focus on disaster

“We are building new cities, yet we are still building them in the same ways. Private and public entities are all holding disparate bits of information and it doesn’t help citizens at the end of the day.”

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and crisis management. While local government has been experimenting with social media and crowdsourcing as new modes of data collection, the Queensland flood disaster in 2011 brought the benefits of this new social and transactional data resource to the fore.

During the flood crisis, the Brisbane City Council and Sunshine Coast Councils actively used social media feeds such as Facebook and Twitter via mobile to relay more granular details on the effect on the floods – not only to the community but as a way of researching what was actually happening within the community when traditional modes of communication were cut.

As a result of the flood experience, Sunshine Coast Council now has a dedicated social media team which works in the field, reporting back and capturing accurate information on real time issues such as road closures and infrastructure that needs fixing by the council.

The rise of social media as a mobile application, and as an application that can quickly digest rich data and disseminate to a wide community of people, has allowed government bodies to also experiment with inhouse mobile applications that would have never been possible in pre-social Web days.

Queensland Health, for example, last year developed an iPad app called The Viewer as an in-house attempt to solve the problem of aggregating disparate patient data and records from various health institutions. The read-only web-based application consolidates all existing patient information from Queensland Health systems in one place.

According to Queensland government chief information officer Peter Grant, it is the only application of its kind in Australia and saves clinicians time when searching for patient

Cover story

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B U I L D I N G T H E N B N , O N E i P H O N E A T A T I M E

They may be building the infrastructure behind our fastest cutting edge telecommunications networks, but engineering teams often have to contend with antiquated operational methods to get the job done. Given the remote terrain and situations that they are often operating in, capturing and relaying data for engineers in the field is one of biggest concerns for project managers.

To improve this situation, seasoned infrastructure deployment specialists Kordia developed an in-house iPhone app that allows engineers to retrieve, capture and relay rich data from site surveys in real time. The iPhone app, which is currently being considered to be launched as a licenced product, was originally developed during the design phase for the first-release national broadband network (NBN) site in Townsville.

The initial Townsville site covered about 3100 premises with an additional 3000 premises covered off in stage two. Given the NBN deployment’s difficult and unpredictable geographic rollout areas, the design work had to be done on site in ‘brownfield’ deployment areas with existing infrastructure.

The app was developed organically as engineers worked out what served them best in terms of using audio, video or data streaming to survey a rollout site. The data was collated and then transmitted live to the NBN Co database using the iPhone app. The project included ‘for construction’ diagrams, outside plant equipment selection, methodology and decision matrices for design rules, documentation on asset identification, optical budget planning, production of the bill of materials, and engagement with local utility suppliers – and the local council.

To support the iPhone application, the Downer/Kordia team also developed an asset database register called KOST (Kordia Operations Services Team). The database allows for asset information to be collected during the field scoping phase for use during the design phase. The database comes complete with photos, asset location, customer property entry information, conduit requirements and more.

“The intention of the iPhone application is to enhance the efficiency of data collection in the field with immediate upload capabilities, ” said Kordia MD Peter Robson.

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information stored at various Queensland Health hospitals and facilities. It also supports improved decision-making and reduced errors in Queensland Health facilities.

In NSW, local and state government have had an experimental journey into mobile apps – particularly in the transport arena with several attempts at a statewide platform suffering from teething problems.

Parramatta City Council, for one, has been heavily investing in its digital information strategy with a heavy emphasis on mobility and instructive data usage. The council has introduced two smart-phone applications, Parra Smart Parking which features live navigation to car spaces, using the smart phone GPS function and Parra Shuttle Bus Tracker that allows users to view real-time tracking of Parramatta’s free shuttle bus.

The Smart Parking app also enables access to additional data on car park details including up-to-the-minute occupancy rates.

Parramatta’s focus on connective technologies is an initiative of the ParraConnect Advisory Committee, an ongoing program that aims to help businesses, community groups, government stakeholders and residents. Both apps were developed by mobile application development and smart city solution integrator Smart Global Solutions.

Cover story

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ADELAIDE TAPS CITIZEN POWER FOR POTHOLE SPOTTING

Improving field service and customer responsiveness aren’t just about putting new faces on old data sources; many councils are enlisting the help of their ratepayers to identify problems that can be triaged to appropriate council staff.

South Australia’s Adelaide City Council has taken a bold step in this direction with the release of Adelaide Report It! (bit.ly/Iz3d4k), an app that lets iPhone, Android, and Blackberry users report issues ranging from graffiti to potholes and faulty lights across Adelaide city and North Adelaide.

Developed by Web-apps firm Freedom Speaks LLC and based on a similar platform from CitySourced (www.citysourced.com), the app taps into the phone’s GPS to pinpoint their locations, allowing users to

attach photographs and written reports that will direct council officers to the relevant locations. This lets them be reviewed and actioned, if necessary, far faster than if the council relied exclusively on council officers to patrol and identify the issues.

“I don’t think there’s any other government in Australia that has leveraged connective technologies like we have here in Parramatta,” says Parramatta lord mayor John Chedid. “Parramatta is a key employment, cultural and social hub and it is vital that we continue to improve the way visitors, workers and residents access our City.”

Frank Dorrian, program manager for Parramatta’s Digital Concierge program and MD of

Smart Global Solutions Australia, believes that the applications will assist in improving future traffic management. “The Parra Smart Parking application will identify capacity data trends,” he says, “which will ensure Council can provide the necessary car parking spaces required for Sydney’s growing second CBD and will also reduce Parramatta’s carbon footprint by minimising the amount of traffic congestion.”

“As a result of the flood experience, Sunshine Coast Council now has a dedicated social media team which works in the field, reporting back and capturing accurate information on real time issues such as road closures and infrastructure that needs fixing by the council.”

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