"I know that Nicola, our health minister, has been working extensively on some e-health reforms," Conroy said at an Australian Information Industry Association lunch in Sydney today. "Without getting into trouble, I understand that there are some things in the not too distant future that she might be saying on this front."

Roxon's inaction on the e-health front has had the Shadow Health Minister Peter Dutton saying earlier this year that she had no agenda, despite his offers of bipartisan support for reforms. His views were shared by some in the e-health industry.

While states have been forging on with their own e-health agendas, with Queensland and the Australian Capital Territory in particular laying out large sums of money for revamping health systems, the Federal Government did not give it significant consideration in the recent budget.

The Council of Australian Governments has passed over discussing the National e-health Transition Authority's business case for a national plan on e-health numerous times.

Roxon is currently examining a report from the National Health and Hospital Reform Commission, which will touch on e-health issues. According to the Australian Financial Review, this report suggested tying federal funding for hospitals to e-health implementation.

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• Roxon brings back health smartcard
• Roxon lost on e-health, opposition claims
• E-health too unsexy for COAG
• Scandinavian e-health trip for ACT minister

"We oppose the government's plan to censor the internet through mandatory ISP-level internet filtering technology," the groups said in a joint statement today, noting it planned a TV advertising campaign against the filter plan.

The statement was signed by the Australian Library and Information Association, Civil Liberties Australia, UTS University Librarian Alex Byrne, GetUp!, Liberty Victoria, the National Association for the Visual Arts, the National Children's & Youth Law Centre, the NSW and Queensland councils for Civil Liberties and Save the Children.

"While we wholly support measures that effectively prevent the distribution of material refused classification under laws that properly respect free speech, this proposed filter does not meet that aim," the statement said. "The proposed filter fails to meet the test of an effective child protection measure that respects the rights of children. Mandatory internet filtering curtails our human rights without offering any effective protection for children."

The organisations claimed the filtering scheme would block a range of "perfectly legal" material, and would be shrouded in secrecy, with "no effective oversight" of the blacklist of banned material.

"Any limits on the rights and freedoms of Australians must be accompanied by rigorous transparency and scrutiny; this proposed system does not allow for either."

Furthermore, the system could be easily circumvented, the group claimed. The funding for the scheme should instead go to measures like PC-level filtering software, and police and educational resources.

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• Optus joins internet filtering trial
• Hacker reverse-engineered ACMA blacklist
• Minchin is gaining on Conroy
• Govt to survey schools on e-security

Stephen Conroy at the ATUG Awards earlier this year
(Credit: Suzanne Tindal/ZDNet.com.au)

"There are actually trade agreements that require tender requirements," he said to the audience at an Australian Information Industry Association lunch today in Sydney. "So unless we're planning on breaking some international trade negotiations and agreements there will be tenders because it's a commonwealth and state procurement process, which both commonwealth and state have signed up to."

Aurora said back in April that requirements for goods and services would go to tender, yet despite a spokesperson for Conroy saying only a few weeks ago that the Tasmanian Government was confident the roll-out could begin in the short term, there has been no sign of one. With the "from July" timeline in mind, industry had begun to have doubts about whether any deals to be signed would be above board, believing that work might be passed out via a contract extension.

Sources pointed to the most likely candidate for such a move being Tasmania's $10 fibre-to-the-home TasCOLT project vendors. Yet persons involved with the state's previous fibre broadband efforts under TasCOLT have said they have not been privy to planning discussions for the state.

If, as Conroy said, a tender is held for the parties to be involved in a roll-out, previous industry comments placed a July start date as unlikely. Back in April, Juniper networks VP Shaun Page said that even if the tender was started then, it would be an aggressive timeline.

Today, at first Conroy hadn't wanted to answer queries on the delays, which might be caused by the tender, saying only that the government was in negotiations with Tasmania that were close to finalisation, with a memorandum of understanding already signed. "I'll promise you we'll put out a press release which will be able to identify some of those issues you've raised soon," he said. When pressed, however, he pointed out that a tender was a necessity if international rules were not to be broken, seemingly making the delays unavoidable.

The Federal Government has been in "very advanced negotiations" with Tasmania for almost a month. There have been reports of wrangling between the two governments over funding.

Conroy believed, however, that Tasmania's Premier David Bartlett was keen to get started. "He's an engineer. He's a geek. He gets it," he said.

The Tasmanian Government's original plan, which it submitted to the now defunct initial NBN fibre-to-the-node tender, had wanted to reach 44 per cent of Tasmanian homes, Conroy said, adding that the Federal Government wanted to take that up to 200,000 homes.

The global scene had also expressed interest in the project, he said, with international telecommunications companies registering their interest to set up research labs in Australia because of the planned network.

Also in his speech today, Conroy said he had received the list from executive recruitment firm Egon Zehnder outlining candidates for the NBNCo board and chairperson. He said as well that his department had been conducting discussions this week for the lead advisor for the NBN study.

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• Tasmania's NBN shrouded in mystery
• Tasmania to hold NBN tender
• Minchin expected NBN delays
• Aurora to lead Tassie NBN roll-out

Chief executive Greg Ellis played down Google as a threat to REA's 900,000 listings and five million unique browsers on its realestate.com.au website, saying competition was always good. Google announced this week it would list properties on its Google Maps application.

"It's a fairly rudimentary service, " Ellis said of the Google initiative. " ... Google's a very good company, it is competition, but we welcome competition because it makes us stay sharper and more focused for our customers and consumers," Ellis said.

"Our position in the marketplace is very strong, we are the market leader in online real estate."

Ellis said the group had cut back its international operations but this had nothing to do with the global economic downturn. "Our decision to focus on Australia was nothing to do with the global financial crisis ... (but) that there is a lot more profitable growth to happen in Australia.

"We were spending too much time in the overseas businesses and not enough time in Australia," Ellis said. "We've accepted now that we are not an international company — we're an Australian company with overseas operations."

Mr Ellis declined to comment on whether REA would withdraw from the United Arab Emirates but said the company remained committed to the businesses in Italy, Luxembourg and Hong Kong. "We've exited New Zealand, we've announced the consultation process with the UK, so we're now narrowing down the businesses where we think that we can provide sustainable profitable growth for the shareholders," he said.

In June, the REA Group announced a $28 million write down of its Hong Kong and UAE business. Ellis is in his first year at the helm of REA after former chief executive Simon Baker departed abruptly last August.

Ellis said there were still ways to grow the REA business substantially from its annual $156 million revenue. "Less than 10 per cent of our listings products are actually paid for, and over the next six to nine months you will see a significant uplift in the product offers that we will take to market," he said.

"So there's a whole new product set that will allow the agents to promote the vendor's property in a more meaningful or prominent way."

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• REA Group bags CMC Markets' CIO
• Realestate.com.au CIO quits
• Realestate CEO picks up $600k
• Realestate plucks CEO from Microsoft

(Power trip image by mugley, CC2.0)

UXC and Bilfinger Berger will each net a part of $80 million plus to install over 1.1 million meters to inner Melbourne and western Victorian homes.

UXC and Bilfinger Berger will be carrying out the planning and workforce scheduling, installing the meters, managing stock, installing communications technology and management systems, interacting with customers and conducting reporting of the roll-out. The installation will begin in the fourth quarter this year and will finish by the end of 2013.

"We are confident that BBS and UXC have the strength, experience and capabilities to help us deliver the state government mandated roll-out of smart meters and through it the most significant modernisation of Victoria's electricity distribution networks for years," Powercor advanced metering infrastructure project director Peter Bryant said in a statement.

The utilities also signed contracts with hardware and network partners last month in deals worth over $300 million.

Landis+Gyr and PRI Australasia will supply the smart meters while Silver Spring Networks will provide an IP-based network communications devices and software to connect the meters to the utilities electricity distribution networks.

CitiPower and Powercor make up 40 per cent of Victoria's energy distribution. Around 31 per cent of the 1.1 million smart meters will be on the CitiPower network while 69 per cent will be on the Powercor network.

Victoria's other electricity distributors Jemena and United Energy Distribution have also been actively preparing for their own smart meter roll-out. ZDNet.com.au believes Jemena awarded a contract to Accenture as system integrator in preparation for the roll out.

NSW's deadline for the roll-out of smart metering technology is 2017. Country Energy and IBM announced joint plans to trial the technology amongst 10,000 households.

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• Country Energy unsure on smart meter timing
• Vic to beat NSW to smart meters
• $5m Country Energy smart meter trial comes to NSW
• UXC buys into smart metering

(JB Hi-Fi in the Macquarie Centre image by maebmij, CC2.0)

JB Hi-Fi chief information officer Geoff Craig said that although Nortel's CS-1000 had been easy to implement and worked well in the capacity it was being used, VoIP wasn't a feature the retail chain had gone live with.

"VoIP was never a big success because we've already got such a great spending relationship with Telstra that it was actually cheaper to not use VoIP than what it was to roll out an entire solution and support an entire VoIP solution," he told ZDNet.com.au recently. The New Zealand office does use a VoIP system, but he said it required more support than the phone service the stores ran on in Australia.

"[Telstra] actually changed our contract around so that our data was at a highly supported rate and obviously an affordable rate, gave us a fantastic discount structure and made it worth our while to stay with the voice lines as they were, and not use VoIP," he said.

Despite not making use of the feature, Craig said he would still implement Nortel's system if he could turn back time. "I've got a VoIP-capable phone system that I could turn on whenever I want," he said.

The only thing I find offensive about Telstra is their Next G pricing.

Geoff Craig, JB Hi-Fi CIO

Currently, Craig is in the middle of negotiations with Telstra for a new contract. Although in general the IT department runs as cheap as it possibly can, Craig admits it has paid a premium to hook up its stores via the telco's frame relay.

"Telstra has the best network around Australia," he said. "Most other successful telco companies sit on top of Telstra's network. The only thing I find offensive about Telstra is their Next G pricing."

The Telstra contract is the firm's largest IT spend, Craig said, although he wouldn't say how much the contract had been because of the negotiations. The next largest spend was on a three-year Microsoft enterprise agreement that cost the retailer around $2 million.

"If you'd ask me the pros and cons of the industry at the moment I'd have to say that definitely under cons I'd have to say Microsoft licensing," he said.

Although there were alternatives, the reality was that the Microsoft products were often the standard, which JB Hi-Fi had to use to be able to relate to its suppliers, according to Craig. "Our major database or third-party application vendor for our point of sale and back-end use Microsoft products," he said.

Craig has an almost non-existent IT budget to cover these costs. He only fields an IT team of 18. "Everything we spend, we literally get asked by the guys: how many CDs do you need to sell to pay for this?" he said. "The mandate from the company especially around the monetary scenario is: if it ain't broke, don't fix it," he said.

Everything we spend, we literally get asked by the guys: how many CDs do you need to sell to pay for this?

Geoff Craig, JB Hi-Fi CIO

A desktop refresh for the company's over 3000 machines is one example of what JB Hi-Fi doesn't do, despite the fact that many of its desktops are over five years old, he said. If one breaks, Craig said he replaces it.

This is made possible, according to the executive, because the applications the company runs don't require new hardware. "Because we use terminal services predominately for a lot of our applications delivered in store there's no speed difference," he said. The Markinson inventory control system, which the company has been running "since day dot", will operate even on an ancient machine running Windows 98, he said.

Yet if he truly wanted something, he'd get the funding, he said. "It's really easy with JB," he said. "If you need it, obviously the company will support you and you can buy it."

One of the largest projects he is doing now is to do with data de-duplication — the elimination of redundant data can reduce the amount of back-up storage required by a factor of 10. It meant quicker backups, according to Craig, and files could be synced to a live office site for disaster recovery.

He's chosen a Data Domain system that will be rolled out with consultants Thomas Duryea. The $100,000 implementation would be finished in four weeks.

The company has also implemented a new mail archiving system and has changed spam filtering vendor from MailGuard to FirstWave (which it purchased through Telstra), because it had grown out of the former small business focused system.

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• Nortel scores in Optus' ATO deal
• Nokia, Avaya, Siemens circle Nortel
• Nortel makes Aussie MD redundant
• Telstra onshores Memo service

Police Minister Neil Roberts welcomed Wednesday's decision by federal Attorney-General Robert McClelland to name the Queensland Police and the state's Crime and Misconduct Commission (CMC) as "interception agencies".

Roberts said phone tapping was an effective means of fighting organised crime. Police and CMC investigators could now monitor landlines, mobile phones and the internet, he said.

"Previously, both organisations had to enter into joint arrangements with other agencies to gain access to telecommunications intercepts," Roberts said. "In certain circumstances, telecommunication interception will be able to be used in the investigation of serious criminal offences including murder, kidnapping, serious drug offences, terrorism and corruption."

Queensland laws on phone tapping include a Public Interest Monitor (PIM), an independent barrister to oversee the powers and ensure they are not abused or exploited.

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• Bosses can snoop on staff e-mails 'to fight terror'
• Q&A: Should police hack?
• NSW not alone in police hacking laws
• Kaspersky, Sophos to block UK police hacks

A Telstra spokesman today said the Philippines-based Memo service, which had operated for about six months, had not satisfied Telstra's Australian customers. "The change is being made because our customers asked for it," corporate affairs manager Rod Bruem said.

"Many of our small business customers use Memo much like a secretary taking calls and passing on messages, so they have strong feelings about the way the calls are answered."

Some of Telstra's larger customers had already been provided with an Australian-based alternative to the overseas service following complaints about the phone operators in the Philippines. Bruem said Telstra Business advised at the time the service moved overseas that calls would be coming back to Australia.

Queensland Consumer Watch spokesman Paul Tully said sanity had prevailed. "Since January - except for a few exclusive Australian corporate clients who complained bitterly - all Telstra Memo calls were unanswered by poorly trained Filipino staff whose skills in Tagalog far exceeded their English language ability," Tully said.

"Telstra customers have complained non-stop of messages with wrong numbers, wrong names, misspelt and confusing word combinations being received. The past six months has been utter pandemonium for Telstra customers."

Communications, Electrical and Plumbing Union divisional secretary Ed Husic welcomed the decision, but said the sending offshore of Australian jobs remained a concern.

"It's not like the work's disappearing, they're just sending it all overseas and getting someone else to do it while their balance sheet looks like they've got a lower number of employees," he said. "Genuine Australian jobs just disappear in a puff of smoke."

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• Union: Telstra to cut 100 Melbourne jobs
• Telstra, unions agree on bargaining principles
• Telstra freezes executive pay
• ANZ spends $10m to offset offshoring

The search giant said in a blog post that most of the user experience will happen on the web, and the interface will follow the minimal Chrome browser aesthetic.

"As we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work," the company said.

Google said that it had already been talking to partners for the project, although none were named. The project's source code will be open sourced later on this year and is intended to run on x86 as well as ARM chips. A new windowing system will be created to run on top of the Linux kernel.

Harking back to the original third-party application development model for the iPhone, Google stated that application development will be web-based.

Google stressed the separation between Google Chrome OS and Android: the former is targeted at users spending the majority of their time on the web on netbooks and full-blown desktops whereas Android is aimed at phones, set-top boxes and netbooks.

"While there are areas where Google Chrome OS and Android overlap, we believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google," the search giant said.

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• Google Wave: Screenshots
• A URL shortener for Google Maps
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• Google ushers in Sydney-built Wave

(Credit: Apple)

The bigger 32GB iPhone 3GS goes for NZ$599 on those same terms. Dropping down the monthly cost to NZ$40, NZ$60 and NZ$80 increases the cost of the 16GB model to NZ$699, NZ$649 and NZ$599 respectively. The 32GB device goes for NZ$899, NZ$849 and NZ$799 on the lower monthly cost plans.

This differs from Australia, where Telstra and Optus have the iPhone 3GS 16GB for no money upfront on a two-year contract for AU$100/month and AU$79/month plans respectively. Vodafone Australia also offers the iPhone for no money upfront, provided you sign up for at least AU$69 a month over two years (16GB model) or AU$114 (32GB model).

Those who can afford the NZ$130/month iPhone plan get 500MB data, 250 voice minutes and 600 texts with it. The lower monthly cost plans halve the data to 250MB a month and have fewer voice minutes: the NZ$40 plan comes with 20, NZ$60 has 60 and the NZ$80 has 120; the number of texts on the two cheapest plans drop to 100 and 200 respectively, but the NZ$80 has 600 texts per month.

Vodafone's iPhone-specific plans haven't been updated to include MMS PXTs — these are charged at 20 cents each on all the plans, possibly because the previous iPhones didn't provide MMS functionality.

To soften the blow of the iPhone plans not being updated, Vodafone has a three-month introductory offer. On top of what's included in the plans, iPhone buyers on contract get 3GB of data and 1000 MMS PXTs. This offer is available until end of September, and requires version 3.0 of the iPhone operating system, according to Vodafone spokesperson Paul Brislen.

Brislen would not say if the offer would remain in place after the three months have passed, but it's a safe bet to assume that updates to Vodafone's iPhone plans will be made, if only to include MMS bundles.

For those not wanting to go onto a fixed-term contract, the global mobile giant offers the iPhone by itself, costing NZ$1179 for the 16GB version or NZ$1379 for the 32GB model, which is roughly on par with what it costs when buying it from Apple Australia.

Kiwis, however, can't purchase the iPhone directly from Apple. For the time being, Vodafone is the only carrier with the iPhone in New Zealand. While Telecom New Zealand's new XT network is arguably a better match for the 850MHz and 2100MHz 3G device — Vodafone's network runs in the 900MHz and 2100MHz bands — the incumbent is refusing to comment on any other handsets than the ones it has currently in store, according to spokesperson Nick Brown.

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• Freshtel gets iPhone app approved
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ATO CIO Bill Gibson
(Credit: ATO)

Last week the Australian Taxation Office unexpectedly flagged a $604 million extension with supplier EDS so that it would have enough time to transition its desktop and datacentre services to a new provider. The original plan had been to break up the $1 billion EDS outsourcing contract into three pieces which would be tendered and transitioned by June 2010.

In the middle of last year, the agency was ready to refresh its desktops under the EDS contract, ATO CIO Bill Gibson told ZDNet.com.au yesterday. In some cases its computers were six years old. The agency was making do with scavenged spare parts, but the failure rates were picking up.

Yet that refresh had to be put on the back burner because of "circumstances", according to Gibson. "There are some government policies which have emerged over the last few months," he said. "There was a range of other initiatives that we needed to take into our planning."

The fact that the office hadn't refreshed last year put renewing desktops high on the priority list now. EDS will be carrying out that refresh during the extension time, to be finished by June 2011.

Gibson wouldn't mention which government policies and initiatives had caused the delay of the desktop refresh. However, analysts speaking last week about the EDS extension mentioned that the Gershon review likely had a hand in the agency setting its plans back. The ATO also had to brace itself for extra work with the government's stimulus payments.

There was a range of other initiatives that we needed to take into our planning.

Bill Gibson

"I'd imagine the Gershon report has raised a few questions they probably have to sort out," Jim Longwood, research VP in Gartner's IT outsourcing team, told ZDNet.com.au.

Longhaus research director Sam Higgins agreed. "From a risk mitigation perspective, putting something to market that he's going to need to unwind in the post-Gershon world is probably the reason," he said. Higgins also pointed out the impact of changing governments in general on agencies: "There has to have been some impact for Bill and others."

Three months ago, the ATO called in Boston Consulting Group to review its sourcing plan. "They reviewed the current strategy in light of business pressures," Gibson said. The result was the extension. "We will be signing on contractors a little later than we had originally planned," the CIO said.

The original idea was to have started the transition for the desktop part of the contract by April next year. Now it was expected to be initiated by the start of July, to be completed by the same time next year, he said.

Even if the incumbent were to win we have high expectations that whoever wins will be moving our systems into the most up-to-date technology available.

Bill Gibson

Gibson had decided earlier that the centralised computing contract would come after the end user computing contract instead of the original plan to transition the contracts in parallel. "Once we started into the program we realised that wasn't sensible," he said.

Gibson now expected to release a draft tender on 31 July for the centralised computing portion, followed by an updated final tender on 1 October. He said the vendors would have a generous amount of time to respond before the contract was signed, likely to be sometime late 2010.

He had received feedback from the vendors that it would take six months to plan the datacentre support transition and 18 months to implement it, longer than he'd originally thought. He hoped to have the planning time integrated in the negotiation time before the contract was signed, which puts the transition finishing around a year and a half after the contract is signed late next year.

Despite saying the transition would take longer than planned for centralised computing, Gibson denied that the agency would be spending more on paying two vendors during the transition than it had originally budgeted. "We won't have two firms on the books for longer," he said. "It's not going to impact the costs significantly."

Gartner's Longwood said that Gibson's assessment of the transition time was fair, adding that from his experience talking to outsourcers, 18 to 24 months was considered to be the minimum lead time. Without the extension, the ATO would have been borderline whether it would have got that through, he said.

Ovum analyst Jens Butler said that Gibson's experience showed just how deeply embedded first generation outsourcers were. "It actually makes them quite difficult to extract them out of those contracts," he said.

If we contemplated extending this, what's in it for us?

Bill Gibson

Yet Gibson believed that the non-incumbent vendors would have equal opportunity to win the new contracts despite costs incurred to transition. "Even if the incumbent were to win we have high expectations that whoever wins will be moving our systems into the most up-to-date technology available," he said.

The ATO's end-user computing deal, worth around $60 million a year, has CSC, HP/EDS, Fujitsu-owned Kaz Group, Lockheed Martin Australia and Unisys still in the race. The mainframe contract, worth around $160 million per year, has been whittled down to Lockheed Martin, CSC, IBM and incumbent EDS. Optus has already picked up the managed network services contract.

The ATO had got a good deal out of EDS on the extension, according to Gibson. Apart from negotiating a refresh, which would deliver running cost savings to the office, the agency had also bargained for more extensive use of virtualisation — all at a lower cost.

"We've got more for less," Gibson said. "As to who pushed who down, it was a negotiation. If we contemplated extending this, what's in it for us?"

Gartner's Longwood said that has been a typical result of CIO bargaining recently. "We typically see 5 to 8 per cent reduction in deal costs in these tough times," he said. "Most CIOs at the moment are focusing on short-term savings and not rocking the boat."

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• ATO brings Boston back
• ATO delays Change Program schedule
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The agency — one of Australia's largest single consumers of ICT products and services — has previously used three separate panel contracts to supply its needs, although it also holds much larger ongoing contracts with single parties, for example IBM.

In tender documents released this week, Centrelink said it would consolidate two of those panels into one, to cover services relating to the diverse areas of applications development and support, business intelligence, database, mainframe, mid-range, desktop and mobile devices, network and communications as well as security.

"Centrelink anticipates appointing approximately 10 to 15 members to the panel," the agency said in tender documents. The new deal will not cover the supply of hardware or proprietary software.

The agency did not comment by the time of publication on who its current suppliers were, but past analysis by ZDNet.com.au has shown many of Australia's largest technology companies hold contracts with Centrelink; IBM, CSC, Fujitsu's Kaz, Dimension Data, Sun Microsystems and Acer, among others.

In the tender documents, Centrelink said it currently ran multiple IBM mainframes running the z/OS operating system, a number of mid-range servers running Solaris, Windows Server Linux and Novell Netware, a storage area network, virtualised systems via VMware and Lotus Domino mail servers running on Windows Server.

The agency runs a Cisco wide area network connecting its offices, supplies its staff with Windows-based PCs, laptops and mobile devices (although it also utilises BlackBerrys), and a number of Teradata systems. It is known to run Acer on the desktop, and makes much use of Cognos' software in its databases, along with SAP for HR and financial systems. Centrelink has around 2000 ICT staff.

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• Centrelink disaster plans cleared by auditor
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• CIO Steward defends 'light ICT' budget

Service Stream provides, among other things, infrastructure deployment and management services to a number of local telcos and other utilities, making it one of the key contractors to companies like Telstra.

In a statement to the Australian Stock Exchange this morning, it said its chief executive Patrick Flannigan would step down after leading the company since September 2004. Claiming the company was positioned very well for a return to growth in the 2009/10 financial year, Flannigan said it was timely for a process of renewal to take place at Service Stream.

"It has been a pleasure to work with such a committed management team and I am very proud of what has been achieved at Service Stream over the last five years, in a very large way brought about by the efforts of our 4000 plus workforce," he said.

Service Stream has contracted an executive recruitment firm to undertake a local and global search for a replacement for Flannigan, taking also into account internal candidates.

The news came as the company said it had felt the impact of the "further softening" of the economy. It expects to report earnings before interest, taxation and depreciation of $30 million for the 2009 financial year, on revenue of $550 million, a result Flannigan described as "very disappointing".

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• ACMA appoints telemarketers' nemesis
• Telstra ditches 97 suppliers to save AU$140 million
• Service Stream to merge with TCI
• Telstra renews services contractors

(Waiting for the bus (south)
image by Cimexus, CC2.0)

The new smartcard-based ticketing system, set to be operational in the second half of 2010, is modelled on Perth's SmartRider system and also implemented by Downer EDI.

The smartcard has a microchip that doesn't need to be taken out of wallets to be identified by the requisite reader.

"Canberrans can look forward to a new ticketing system that is fast, easy and flexible," Chief Minister and Minister for Territory and Municipal Services Jon Stanhope said in a statement. "It will offer bus users a reusable and rechargeable card for travel on all ACTION buses."

Users will be able to recharge their smartcard over the internet, via telephone or at card machines across the territory, the chief minister said. Casual users will also be able to buy a one use ticket. The territory will retain its current fare structure.

Passengers tagging on and off will also allow the government to better monitor passenger trends and meet changes in demand, according to Stanhope.

"The new smartcard system is an important part of the ACT Government's investment in developing a more efficient and user-friendly bus network," he said.

South Australia is in the middle of searching for an electronic ticketing system, as is NSW. Victoria has been ramping up its Myki roll-out. Brisbane has a working system.

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• ACT follows Perth's ticketing system
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Gary Pedersen, group general manager for finance and corporate services, has been appointed acting group general manager for IT, a spokesperson for the corporation told ZDNet.com.au today. The spokesperson was unable to say exactly when he took up the role or how long RailCorp intended him to fill it.

Coleman was stood down from her position to face an investigation by the Independent Commission against corruption last month.

Aside from Coleman, RailCorp also lost the use of two senior technology executives in the last few months. Its general manager of ICT strategy and architecture Jamye Harrison took a top post at Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu. He seems to have been replaced on an interim basis by a self-employed consultant, Stephen Smith, according to what appears to be Smith's LinkedIn profile. Smith has also worked for National Australia Bank and Westpac.

Harrison's departure followed that of the corporation's former general manager of information technology delivery Henry Tan, who left to take up the role of TransGrid CIO.

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• RailCorp stands down CIO Coleman
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Senator Minchin claimed, in a statement, that apparent delays in Tasmania were the latest to occur in the government's list of broken broadband deadlines. And given the debate over NBN funding between federal and state governments, it was unlikely that the Tasmanian network roll-out would start this month.

"We don't even know how much this project will cost or even what the governance arrangements will be. Vendors are also rightly expecting a tender for the supply of equipment and services to support the roll out, yet have been kept in the dark," the senator said.

Tasmanian consumer group Digital Tasmania has also called for more detail on the expected NBN roll-out.

The Tasmanian Greens has said that the state is being disadvantaged by not having a dedicated ICT minister — Tasmania missed out on the government's $250 million announcement to improve broadband black spots.

"The Rudd Government is hiding behind an implementation study, which is more than likely a delaying tactic to get it through the next election, while disadvantaged parts of the country are still waiting for the enhanced broadband services that the Coalition would have delivered this year had Labor not cancelled the OPEL project," Senator Minchin said.

The NBN company is currently without a headquarters pending the appointment of the company's board and chairman. A spokesperson for the office of Communications Minister Stephen Conroy did not immediately respond to a request to respond to Minchin's comments.

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Freshtel customers will be able to use their iPhones to call other Freshtel users free of charge, the company said today in a statement to the ASX. Calls to mobile, landline and international numbers using the application would be charged a "substantially cheaper rate" than normal mobile calls, the company said.

The company iPhone application is an extension of its existing Mobilelink software, which also runs on Nokia's platform, and is also being developed for the Google Android and Blackberry platforms, with Freshtel saying the new versions should be ready for release in the near future.

The news comes just weeks after Freshtel announced the resignation of its chief executive Rhonda O'Donnell.

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(Credit: Commonwealth Bank)

IBM was on the scene throughout the week to deal with an issue customers were having with the bank's online portal Netbank where they couldn't view their transaction histories in the way they normally did, according to a spopkesperson for the bank.

Instead of just being able to see past transactions easily by clicking on accounts via the home page, customers needed to do a date search to see the information. The problem, which was software related, was rectified on Sunday, the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson wouldn't comment further on what this meant to its relationship with the supplier or if any other companies were involved. "We're not going to discuss our relationships with our suppliers," the spokesperson said.

The software glitch had come as the bank was battling with other problems. Unusually large volumes of people attempted to log on and carry out transactions for the end of the financial year.

The volume of traffic, a higher than normal proportion of which was suspicious and needed to be quarantined, had forced the bank to take Netbank offline three times on Monday to deal with the issue.

Netbank recently received a facelift as the bank rolled out a new look portal.

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Telstra will use its Next G and Next IP to provide voice and data services to Visy's 140 sites in Australia, New Zealand, Asia and the US. A cloud computing platform is nestled in the network to support Visy's critical systems, such as its SAP software. Combining the telecommunications network and computing platform is expected to save Visy 30 per cent of its costs.

Telstra worked with Sun Microsystems and Hitachi Data Systems to meet Visy's needs. The new deal was more about making use of technology than just keeping the lights on, according to Visy CIO Ken Major.

"We challenged our incumbents [HP, according to the Australian] to provide us with our requirements, but the other offerings were in essence hybrids of our pre-existing model. Telstra was the only provider that could deliver world-class wide area network, voice, mobile, wireless, as well as providing us a full utility model for our computer server and storage needs, in its own on-shore enterprise grade datacentres," he said in a statement.

The company now pays a monthly fee on what it uses, not only for telecommunications, but also for computing and storage. "The capital that was earmarked for IT upgrades will now be better deployed into revenue generating assets across the business," he said.

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• Telstra, unions agree on bargaining principles
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About 100 experts from around the world are gathering in Brisbane on Tuesday for a high-tech crime symposium. Queensland Police Commissioner Bob Atkinson said fraud and corporate crime using the internet was getting worse.

"Cyber crime is a global phenomenon that can be expected to continue to rise exponentially around the world as the internet continues its roll out," Atkinson told a a press conference.

"It is for this reason significant effort has been made to bring together an ensemble of national and international speakers and presenters together to gain a broader appreciation of a unique crime environment. No-one nor any business is immune. If you own a computer or a phone you fall within the potential victim network."

Atkinson said scams were becoming more sophisticated, using not only email and the web but mobile phone text messages. "We see victims suffer not only embarrassment and humiliation but many victims are losing their home and life savings — everything," Atkinson said.

"Additionally, we see that corporate entities are becoming more often the individual focus of highly skilled hackers and cyber criminals." The conference has been organised for experts to share strategies and initiatives to crack down on net crime.

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