Government, Health and Education

[Jane B]

Students to get training on ERP and BPM in preparation for careers in IT

Tim Lohman (CIO) 09 September, 2009 10:21

In a sign of the growing link between universities and business, the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) has signed on to teach SAP skills to undergraduate and postgraduate students.

As part of the software giant’s SAP University Alliances Program (UAP), USQ will train students on SAP’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Business Performance Management (BPM) software suites as part of their University degrees.

The initiative was rolled out as a pilot in July this year with about 15 on-campus and 140 distance education students. Full roll out is slated for July 2010.

SAP subjects will be offered across the undergraduate Bachelor of Information Technology and the postgraduate Master degree in Information Technology (Professional).

Students will receive 20 hours of SAP practical experience and more than 20 hours of theory on SAP as part of the new course subjects. The university is also looking at offering a SAP Business Objects Business Intelligence module next year as it seeks to better prepare students for a career in IT.

The SAP University Alliances program, launched in 2007, runs in 900 campuses across more than 40 countries. USQ is the 19th university in Australia to become part of the program.

In August IBM announced it had partnered with Monash University on a new $1.2 million Future Leaders Scholarship program aimed at developing IT leaders versed in both technology and business.

Along with funding a number of degrees with majors in business and information technology, the program will allow for CIO :: Monash students to participating in leadership camps, public speaking, mentoring and a 22 week internship at CIO :: IBM or one of its partners.

In May USQ announced it was increasingly turning to social media tools and virtual environments to attract students and improve its services. The university is using the conversational power of social networking tools such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter to build relationships with potential and existing students.

[Steve Bennett]

iTWire by Peter Dinham
Monday, 07 September 2009

An Australian-developed healthcare information system is to be deployed at a major teaching hospital in the United Arab Emirates in a deal secured by InterSystems with the yet-to-be completed state-of-the-art Sharjah Teaching Hospital.

InterSystems will deploy the web-based TrakCare health IT system in all areas of the 210-bed hospital which is in the final stage of completion and expecting to receive its first patients in the first quarter of next year. Situated adjacent to the Medical and Health Sciences campus of the University of Sharjah, and the Sharjah Medical Excellence Cluster, the hospital will provide the residents of Sharjah, the UAE, and the region with access to leading medical experts and the applications of the latest developments in medical research.

Robert Long, business development manager for InterSystems Middle East, said Intersystems’ HIS would allow the clinicians and other clinical staff at the hospital “immediate secured access to the seamless integrated electronic patient information from all departments and laboratories, at all times. The system will also streamline all aspects of patients' admission and discharge through the online accurate processing of all the relevant information associated with each patient.”

The director of information technology at Sharjah Teaching Hospital, Dr. Yaseen Hayjaneh, said TrakCare would improve patient outcomes and service by “effectively and efficiently automating and streamlining hospital operations.

“It will have a major impact on processes such as results reporting and order entry as well as provide access to diagnostic images and patient information coupled with electronic documentation. In addition, it will lead to improved communication between clinical and administrative staffs of the hospital. We look forward to the system's full implementation and to reaping the benefits of this investment."

Special advisor to His Highness the Ruler of Sharjah, Dr. Amr Abdel-Hamid, said the teaching hospital would be “a beacon for quality healthcare services in the region”.

"The buildings are magnificent and the selected medical facilities are outstanding by all standards. Our team conducted a very thorough analysis of all the offers we received from the leading suppliers of patient management systems and found TrakCare to be the most appropriate for our needs. The signing of this agreement is the climax of major efforts by many specialists from both sides during the last twelve months."

InterSystems’ Robert Long said that when the company opened its offices in the UAE last year, it took direct responsibility for negotiating with the client team at Sharjah Teaching Hospital which was “essential to properly share their vision, and we now look forward to continuing our work with their specialists to fully implement the system."

Long said InterSystems will work closely with the hospital team over the coming months to implement the solution. He said Sharjah Teaching Hospital has no legacy HIS systems but TrakCare will need to be “integrated with some additional essential applications, including a document management system, a Picture Archiving and Communications System (PACS) and core back office applications.

“This integration is key to realising one of the primary benefits of TrakCare: its detailed business intelligence and management information,” Long said, adding that “TrakCare is renowned globally, and the business intelligence it provides helps hospitals improve patient outcomes. We believe this will be of significant value to Sharjah Teaching Hospital as it seeks to analyse its performance on clinical and administrative issues to improve care and reduce costs."

[admin]

iTWire, by Stephen Withers
Thursday, 17 September 2009

The Singapore Government is sponsoring up to 100 people to gain SAP skills via a postgraduate course offered by Australia's Victoria University.

Up to 100 adult learners will receive course fee funding from the Singapore Government to undertake Victoria University's graduate certificate course in ERP with a specialisation in SAP.

Although Victoria University is based in Melbourne, Australia, the course will be delivered in Singapore in conjunction with local education provider Lithan Genovate. Victoria University also delivers ERP courses in Beijing as well as Melbourne.

The Singapore students will also perform a seven-month paid internship as part of the program.

"This commitment from the Singapore Government to subsidise the cost of study for interns in its Professional Skills Program confirms the worldwide demand for SAP skills and the role universities can play in satisfying this demand," said Paul Hawking, SAP academic programs director at Victoria University.

Students can also undertake SAP consultant certification in an elearning environment as an extension of their Master of Business in ERP Systems, Hawking noted.

[admin]

by Peter Dinham

iTWire, Wednesday, 23 September 2009

Sydney’s University of Technology (UTS) has selected IBM’s Cognos 8.3 as its new student management reporting tool which the university says will deliver information faster to its 33,000 students and, at the same time, improve productivity.

According to UTS’ Student Systems Implementation Project Manager, Miranda Brookes, the university is transforming the way they it uses information, allowing it to gain “valuable insight” about what is happening across the organisation to help drive smarter decisions.

Brookes says UTS Student Administration is responsible for managing information for around 33,000 students via the Student Management portal, from student applications and enrolments through to curriculum documents, examination results and alumni data, and to support this flow of data, UTS Student Centre staff process an average of 15 student inquiries per minute.

According to IBM, the Student Management portal application (also known as Ci) introduces .NET technology and
workflow management allowing for better student self management and staff to student interactions, overall giving staff more time to focus on business improvement.

The new business intelligence tool leverages the Student Management source system for reporting, “in turn providing greater flexibility of report format and prompting, audit capability to better understand usage, as well as integration with the Student Management portal application.”

Brookes says that “making IBM Cognos the common reporting platform across the University offers savings in
licence costs, savings in software administration and maintenance, and capitalises on the existing IBM Cognos skills within the university,” and she adds, “it also offers the future potential for a consolidated portal for all strategic university information.”

According to Brookes, the ability to generate customised reports and automate standard processes, makes it possible for UTS staff to conduct in-depth analysis versus manual report production, helping the University stay on top of critical daily operations.

IBM says the new reporting solution includes web services for greater flexibility in the delivery of reports to staff and improved auditing capabilities through recording of information such as who is using the system, which reports and queries are being run, and the cost of queries to system resources. It says that the university will also be using barcoding functionality to generate individual barcodes for each invoice prepared through the student management system.

Brookes said a major factor in the selection of IBM Cognos was UTS' extensive and successful experience
with Cognos over several years.

“At the same time, IBM Cognos Software Group Services demonstrated a successful prototype of converting reports using IBM Cognos 8.3. Using the IBM Cognos Services team in a quality assurance role has been a major help to the
project. They've been here in our offices every week giving fast responses to any queries or issues and helping us to understand best practices.”

Brookes said deployment of IBM Cognos 8.3 is now under way with the conversion of approximately 170
customised reports, with the project managed by UTS with support from IBM implementation partner, UXCPM and IBM Cognos Guardian Services.

She also said that after the system goes live at the end of September, UTS staff will begin development of dashboards and drill-down capabilities for more comprehensive analysis.

[admin2]

The Rust Report

A $A1.4 million grant to promote the development of semantic technologies has been awarded to Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT - RMIT University – Melbourne, Australia) and an industry consortium facilitated by Fuji Xerox. The grant was awarded by the Australian Research Council (ARC Home Page - Australian Research Council (ARC)) and the project will apply semantic technologies to sustainability reporting, explained Nick Kugenthiran, managing director of Fuji Xerox Australia.

"The project aims to develop systems that automate the sustainability reporting process and generate reports dynamically and in real time using semantic technologies to identify and analyse relevant data from multiple sources. If successful, this open source software solution could reduce the complexity and manual processes involved in sustainability reporting," Kugenthiran added. Copiers, Multifunctions, Printers, Colour Laser Printers from Fuji Xerox

[admin]

Government 2.0? set the data free

Governments should focus on setting data free as a catalyst for the co-production of public value, or risk being marginalised to the back benches of Government 2.0.

MIS Asia, By Steve Hodgkinson
27 Oct 2009

Governments should focus on setting data free as a catalyst for the co-production of public value, or risk being marginalised to the back benches of Government 2.0.


Governments appear to be in no hurry to let the Government 2.0 genie out of the bottle

Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 beget Government 2.0 – right? Many are of the view that it is only a matter of time before the serendipity of mash-ups, wikis, blogs and social computing nibble away at the perimeter of government.

Politicians have been fast off the mark applying the power of the new platforms to electioneering. It’s not hard to understand why. In electioneering the ‘buzz’, suitably directed, is a virtue in its own right in terms of harnessing passion to a cause. However, operational government does not necessarily welcome the unpredictability of devolution fuelled by social computing. Neither politicians nor agency heads are keen on serendipity when it comes to the business of government – especially when it leads to uncomfortable (and brilliant) innovations such as FixMyStreet.

Governments can see the value of the Government 2.0 genie, having benefited from its magic in recent elections, but are perhaps in no great hurry to let it out of the bottle at the bureaucratic level. One way to move forward cautiously is to create a taskforce.

Australia mobilises Government 2.0 Taskforce

Australia’s Government 2.0 Taskforce (www.gov2.net.au) has been running for a few months now. It is starting to surface some interesting illustrations of the potential benefits of Enterprise 2.0 via exemplars from federal, state and local government agencies along with many suggestions from passionate people from inside and outside the public sector.

The force’s task is wide ranging, covering publication and access to government information sources, citizen participation in government innovation and improved collaboration between agencies. Its aim is to consult widely and then to make recommendations before the end of the year. Many of the issues already raised are reminiscent of earlier e-government discussions, so it will be interesting to see if progress can be made on some of the fundamental barriers this time around. The taskforce’s website is worth a look to sense the pulse of Government 2.0 in Australia.

Governments should focus on setting data free

One challenge that is already apparent is that Government 2.0 is a much more subtle agenda of work than its e-government precursor. Government 2.0 seeks to enrol citizens and businesses in the co-production of public value, and this is much more vexing than the relatively straightforward application of technology to service delivery processes. Proverbially, Government 2.0 is about enabling citizens to fish (as an activity) rather than just handing out more fish (as a food).

This highlights an emerging Government 2.0 conundrum: which comes first, the platform or the data? Fixmystreet.com is a platform imposed on government by the people because government was asleep at the wheel. Should governments focus on avoiding a repeat experience by creating their own Government 2.0 platforms?

Most Web 2.0 and social computing success stories – such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube – are platform plays. The platform comes first, creating the social computing interactions that create and evolve the content. However, Government 2.0 ought to be the opposite way around if governments were awake to the opportunities – and threats. Much of the content for Government 2.0 already exists. The problem is that it is locked up in fragmented and inscrutable forms within government agencies. The most useful thing government can do to accelerate Government 2.0 is to set the data free – as opposed to attempting to create new government-owned platforms that citizens must access.

The market will produce platforms to reveal, unleash and combine data sources and mash up a storm of innovation. Government’s role should be to provide the authoritative and trusted data sources. This is one way that government can stay useful and relevant in a Government 2.0 world.

The longer that governments drag their feet on this, the greater the likelihood that independent platforms like Fixmystreet will emerge – creating new socially generated data and marginalising government agencies to the back benches of the Government 2.0 debate.

Steve Hodgkinson is the director of Ovum's government practice in Australia and New Zealand.

[admin]

Agency to consolidate its legacy database functions in tender to be released in December

Computerworld Staff 18 November, 2009 12:01

Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ) is looking to replace its legacy database with a new modeling and analysis platform.

The agency announced it will be releasing a tender in early December for the new system, which is set to be called 'Harvest'.

An industry briefing will be held on December 10, at the FSANZ office in Canberra with further information on the tender due to be released with the tender in the first week of December.

The Harvest system is expected to be deployed by June 2011 with existing database functions rolled into one application with consolidated data storage, mining, processing, analysis, modeling and reporting.

Work on the new platform is forecast to being in March, 2010. No further information was available at the time of publication.

[fgeorge]

$47.2 million in the red and running years behind

Computerworld, Tim Lohman 26 November, 2009 12:46

The auditor-general, Peter Achterstraat, has flagged several IT project cost blowouts and delays at Sydney Water, including an overspend of $34.3 million on a customer management system.

In the auditor-general's report to parliament 2009 volume seven, which focuses on Environment, Climate Change and Water organisations, Achterstraat identified Sydney Water’s Customer Management System Stage 1 had overshot its original $21 million budget and was now forecast to cost $55.3 million.

The delivery date for the project, which aims to improve customer service, reduce reliance on multiple unsupportable systems and reduce operating costs, had slipped from August 2009 to February 2011.

The significant increase in budget, Achterstraat said, was due to the system integrator costs. Although Sydney Water sought quotes from prospective service providers, the Stage 1 project budget was found to be inadequate.

The change in service delivery date was due to extending the design phase to incorporate proof of concept and extensive review cycles, he said. Extended procurement phases for both content management system (CMS) software and system integrator services also contributed to the variation in schedule.

The organisation’s Maximo consolidation project — aimed at replacing Sydney Water’s current asset management systems — also had significant budgeted overspend. Originally set at $18.4 million, the revised budget had leapt to $31.3 million and its deliver date had fallen behind from August 2009 to October 2010.

“The Corporation underestimated the complexity of the Maximo consolidation project and this is the main reason for the $12.9 million increase in the project budget,” Achterstraat said. “The Corporation advises that the Maximo project is on track to the schedule and budget revised in 2008.”

Its Field Resource Management Stage 2, which is aimed developing a geospatial information system and mobile documents capability, kept its original budget of $7.9 million. Its original delivery date of July 2009, however, had been pushed back to November 2009.

Sydney Water’s Information Management Program — aimed at replacing several disparate document management systems and delivering new systems to better access and share information — was on track for retaining its original budget of $24 million and delivery date of June 2011.

[admin]

The AustralianWED 09 JUN 2010, Page 009
Jobs axed under efficiency drive --- NSW BUDGET

By: Justine Ferrari

ABOUT 50 jobs will be lost from the NSW Education Department at a saving of about $5 million following an efficiency review to eliminate a duplication of services within government.
The review tackled ``empire building'' in the department and, as a result, two curriculum units within the department will shrink and merge to avoid duplicating work conducted by the NSW Board of Studies.
Over the years, the curriculum unit and the Centre for Learning Innovation had grown in size and while the board sets the curriculum, the units had been seen as competing with the board rather than providing resources to support its decisions.
The savings gained are still being finalised but the initial estimate suggests 52 jobs will be cut.
The Department of Education and Training was the first in NSW to undergo an expenditure review by the Better Services and Value Taskforce, set up to review government agencies one by one and identify ways of improving efficiency without affecting services.
The budget papers say the review, which also involved external consultants PricewaterhouseCoopers and the Boston Consulting Group, looked at eliminating duplication of functions, driving efficiencies in back-office systems and providing more targeted and timely information to decision-makers.
It recommended changes to the procurement practices of the department, eliminating activities that duplicated commonwealth functions such as the NSW Vocational Educational and Training Board which is expected to be replaced next year by a national VET regulator, and providing better management reports to principals.
The review also recommended the department look at centralising the savings made under its procurement system, which tries to maximise savings for schools by buying items in bulk.
Schools purchase what they need using their global allocation but when savings are made, they are able to keep the remainder.
The review recommended the department investigate whether savings made for schools using the centralised buying system could be centrally collected and then redistributed.
The department is also considering implementing a single, simple ``business intelligence system'' in all schools for the uniform collection of data as well as a financial management tool to assist principals in making long-term budgets and forecasts.
The budget also provides $3m to the Board of Studies for the implementation of the first phase of the national curriculum, which covers English, maths, science and history.

[admin]

The Age The Age, Edition 1
SAT 27 MAR 2010, Page 7

Crime database revamp delayed


By DAVID ROOD and PAUL MILLAR

THE $59 million revamp of Victoria Police's crime database has been put on hold due to cost blowouts, in the latest information technology blunder for the state government.
The six-month delay to the new software program comes on the back of the botched rollout of the myki ticketing system and delays to the $2 billion smart electricity metre scheme.
Announcing the delays to the new IT system, Deputy Commissioner Kieran Walshe rejected comparisons to myki but conceded police did not know what the ultimate cost of the new IT program would be.
"It's not a concern that it's a myki," he said. "The best thing for us to do is just to take a break, suspend it and get some advice. It's being responsible with the money that we've been allocated by government." The new LINK system, which is operating in Queensland, Britain and Canada, was to be rolled out this year, but has been suspended due to increasing costs and problems with the system working with more than 20 other IT programs.
Victoria Police IT director Michael Vanderheide said the suspension came after projections showed the project could take years to complete. Outside IT experts will now provide new analysis on how to finish the project in less time, he said.
The old Law Enforcement Assistance Program (LEAP) has been beset by problems since its introduction in 1993, including the repeated leaks of sensitive personal information, and has been damned in a series of independent reports.
A 2005 report by Ombudsman George Brouwer called for LEAP to be replaced, at an approximate cost of $30 million, saying it was obsolete and unreliable. Last March, another report by Mr Brouwer found official police records are under-reporting some crimes.
The report called on the police to ensure the progress of LINK and stated: "The weaknesses of the Victoria Police information technology systems include: incompatible systems, impeded information sharing . . . lack of common data standards and an inability to link business intelligence with factual information about incidents."
Responding to that 2009 report, Police Minister Bob Cameron pointed to the LINK system as the solution to improving the keeping of crime records.
Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu said the LINK delay showed the government was wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayers dollars and accused the government of releasing the bad news under the cover of the grand prix. "This is just another debacle in this government's IT rollout," he said.
Mr Cameron said yesterday he had been given assurances from Chief Commissioner Simon Overland that the police would seek expert advice during this six-month delay period to deal with integration problems.
The Police Association said officers had been waiting for a modern IT system for years.