Victoria’s Department of Justice flagged plans to hire a slew of senior information technology staff as it attempts to flesh out its newly restructured IT department. The department late last year and this week advertised for more than a dozen senior roles, with responsibilities ranging through enterprise architecture strategy, application and product management, development team leadership, vendor management, overall ICT strategy management and more.
ZDNet.com.au news editor Renai LeMay (Credit: CBS Interactive) commentary Among the flurry of press releases issued by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy just before Christmas (there were three on the 23rd, and three the week before that), one stuck out like a sore thumb. And I’m not talking about the internet filter project, which we have already discussed in great depth . I refer, of course, to the insertion of yet another former partner of management consulting firm McKinsey deep into the bowels of the National Broadband Network Company.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has put feelers out for an executive to guide its $116 million IT transformation program. According to the commission’s job advertisement for the position, the new executive will have a strategic focus, helping the commission to meet its business case by leading program streams across all the projects within the IT transformation program. ASIC was allocated $116.7 million in May 2007 to upgrade its core systems which had been put under pressure by the public making more requests to find out company information.
Chinese networking vendor Huawei has backed the Rudd government’s plan for an open-access National Broadband Network. The company that will build and operate the $43 billion network — NBN Co — is expected to announce early next month a shortlist of prospective partners to join the project. Huawei Technologies, which has been involved in the rollout of similar networks in the UK, Singapore and Malaysia, is seen as one of the frontrunners to make the list
You can save money and reduce carbon emissions with smart meters that monitor your energy usage and smart grids that manage your electricity consumption. But could connecting cheap wireless devices to the electricity grid open up security holes in our critical infrastructure? Security consultant Crispin Harris thinks so and, as he explains in the first Patch Monday podcast for 2010, he’s not alone.
The Federal Government’s Productivity Commission has found that chief executives in Australia’s listed IT industry are amongst the worst paid on paper compared to their peers in other sectors, while telco CEOs are paid among the best. The report was commissioned following concern that executive pay levels had gotten out of hand, with top-tier employees taking large payouts when leaving companies, such as former Macquarie Bank chief Alan Moss who departed from the finance giant in mid-2008 with a $50 million golden handshake.
A Brisbane employee who stole almost $3 million from the Bank of Queensland (BOQ) and then spent it like “Monopoly money” on cars, jewellery and holidays has been sentenced to nine years’ jail. Reecson (Reecson) Wentworth Denford, 24, of Ascot, pleaded guilty in the Brisbane District Court late last year to one count of fraud over a 20-month period totalling $2.935 million. The court heard Denford illegally made hundreds of transactions between November 2006 and August 2008 while working for EDS, which is employed by BOQ for onsite accounting and computer services.
Air passengers across Australia have endured delays because a computerised check-in system malfunctioned on Sunday morning, a Qantas spokesman has confirmed. The Amadeus check-in system, used across the globe, was paralysed by a server problem which meant airlines were forced to check in passengers manually.
Retail businesses across the country have lost thousands of dollars over the long weekend because a computer glitch left shoppers unable to use the Bank of Queensland’s (BOQ) EFTPOS terminals. BOQ’s machines skipped ahead six years when the clock ticked over to January 1 and started date stamping January 2016
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has announced the appointment of two new board members for NBN Co, one of which is an ex-McKinsey director, bringing the number of ex-McKinsey employees on the board to three. New appointee Clem Doherty was a director of McKinsey and Company, heading up the Asia Pacific telecommunications, electronics, media and multimedia segment, until 1996. He was also co-leader of the global telecommunications sector and a member of the Asia Pacific board.
in brief Oracle Australia last week announced on Twitter that Commonwealth Bank of Australia would be the first local customer to deploy its new Exadata V2 Database Machine for the bank’s online transaction processing (OLTP). An Oracle spokesperson confirmed the deal but could not provide any further details, while Commonwealth Bank was unavailable for comment at the time of publishing. Oracle’s Exadata V2 Database Machine is a joint project with Sun; the storage solution utilises Oracle’s software and Sun’s memory hardware to process and store data for a range of applications, including enterprise data storage
commentary An IT service provider failed in its claim to recover compensation from its customer, in a recent Victorian Supreme Court decision which emphasises the importance of robust IT tender processes and the need for comprehensive contracting practices. The facts Ipex ITG Pty Ltd (Ipex) successfully tendered in 2000 to supply the Melbourne Water Corporation (MWC) with outsourced IT services, including help desk services. During the preparation of the tender, MWC had supplied potential bidders with information including as to the number, type and category of help desk calls previously made by its staff
New South Wales upper house member Penny Sharpe has become the first Labor figure to publicly criticise Communications Minister Stephen Conroy’s announced plans for internet filtering legislation . In a post on her blog , Sharpe called Conroy’s announcement “a backward step that if adopted will be a triumph of fear and false promise over what works and good sense”. “The Federal Government’s proposals to filter the internet are a waste of time, a waste of money, a false promise to parents that will not stop kids being exposed to undesirable content online and a move towards censorship that a democratic and free nation like Australia should reject,” she said.
A Queensland man headed up one of the world’s largest online spamming operations that racked up as many as 140,000 reports, a court has heard. New Zealand-born Lance Thomas Atkinson, 26, has admitted to being involved in a large-scale spam-sending operation that delivered emails to internet users all over the world. On Wednesday, both his defence lawyer and the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) submitted to the Federal Court in Brisbane that he receive a $210,000 penalty for the offences, but Justice Andrew Greenwood reserved his decision until Tuesday (December 22).
The Australian Sex Party (ASP) claims popular sites Penthouse.com, Hustler.com and Redtube.com will be blocked under a mandatory ISP filtering scheme thanks to Australia’s x-rated rules. Fiona Patten, spokesperson for ASP, which is aiming for a spot in the Senate, told ZDNet.com.au today that Minister for Communications Stephen Conroy had backtracked on promises he had made to the party while in opposition. “He said, ‘Don’t worry, we’re not going to try and stop adults from viewing what they want
Google Australia posted a statement today on its official blog calling the government’s ISP filter “heavy handed” and outlining the search giant’s concerns about the scope of filtered content. Moving to a mandatory ISP filtering regime with a scope that goes well beyond such material is heavy handed Google Australia Google’s major concern is that the scope of filtered refused classification content is too wide, citing a recent report by Australian media academics, professors Catharine Lumby, Lelia Green and John Hartley
Pirate Party Australia has expressed its disgust at Communications Minister Stephen Conroy’s announcement of legislation to make internet service provider level filtering necessary, while the Greens have vowed to attack the legislation in the Senate. David Crafti (Credit: Pirate Party) The planned filter would see internet service providers (ISPs) block access to a blacklist of refused classification sites. Conroy yesterday released a report which said that blocking such sites would not significantly reduce internet speeds, but also acknowledged that the filter could be easily circumvented and that attempts to prevent that circumvention would cause speed loss
in brief TransACT has today signed an agreement with the ACT Land Development Agency that will supply fibre-to-the-premise services to over 1800 homes. TransACT chief executive officer Ivan Slavich said, “TransACT now has a significant number of agreements in place to provide homes and businesses across the ACT with our advanced FTTP network — and this number is growing by the day.” The service will be provided to medium density units (MDUs) and provide up to 100Mbps downstream internet, IPTV, telephony and radio frequency services.
The good Instant boot Includes number pad on keyboard Good battery life The bad Cheap plastic finish Low screen resolution Cramped keyboard Design When closed, the Asus UL50Vt looks very impressive, with a brushed aluminium lid and a relatively subtle (for Asus) logo embedded in it. It’s an illusion that’s a little shattered when you open it up and realise that the rest of the bodywork is a cheap glossy plastic. It’s one of our pet peeves, but the Asus UL50Vt’s use of piano black does mean that it’s a model that looks OK on a store shelf, but quickly becomes a smudge magnet in actual use
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Presenting a fresh appproach to tender writing in the planning, design and regeneration industry, Chief Coach Andy Spracklen explains and offers an invitation not to be missed – visit www.bidcoaching.com … “Tender writing” “winning bids” “regeneration work” “town planning consultants” tendering “how to bid” “town planning tenders” “proposal writing” OJEU “public tenders” “bid writer” “tender opportunities” “tender training” …
update The Department of Defence today released its 2009 ICT strategy paper , outlining how it intends to spend $940 million over four years, instead of $720 million over a decade, to deliver $1.9 billion in savings. The $940 million over four years plan announced today differs markedly from another plan released in July this year, in which Defence said it would spend $708 million over 10 years, hoping to deliver the same savings announced today — $1.2 billion over 10 years , followed by $250 million a year thereafter.
The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has commenced a final roll-out of two-factor authentication (2FA) systems that will see 400,000 customers of its NetBank internet banking service upgraded to the secure log-in technology. We paused it for a while as part of our internet banking upgrade and now we have resumed the program Drew Unsworth, CBA’s general manager for Online Banking 2FA systems improve the security of web applications by insisting on the use of a user’s password and a second password generated specially for each session. The second password is delivered to a device that users of an online service already possess