Australian Technology News

NOKIA has today officially launched its online store Ovi with news.com.au as the Australian news provider.

Representatives of Australian critical infrastructure providers have expressed concern that delivering information to the government under its amended National Broadband Network legislation could be costly and conflict with anti-terrorism rules.

Australia's critical infrastructure providers are clamouring to meet with the Department of Broadband Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE) to discuss the practical implications of its amended telecommunications bill, introduced into parliament last week.

Utilities are concerned that delivering information to the government under its amended telecommunications bill, which expanded the government's information gathering powers to all utilities, could be costly and conflict with anti-terrorism efforts.

Of particular concern to the water sector is the requirement under the legislation to provide information within three days. "That could be a big ask, when you think about the thousands of kilometres of water mains across Australian cities and towns. And getting it together is not without cost," Ross Young, executive director of the Water Services Association of Australia (WSAA) told ZDNet.com.au yesterday.

Young said the water industry had, since the September 11 bombings, been forced to restrict what information on assets it provided. It also had concerns over the confidentiality of the information it provides the government.

"We'd be looking for some assurance that the information we provided is confidential given that urban water infrastructure is nationally critical infrastructure," he said.

Young said state legislators had typically brought in new laws in a consultative manner, but that in this case the Federal Government had not. The WSAA is now in the process of setting up a meeting with DBCDE.

It is not the first time critical infrastruture operators have complained about the ability of government bureaucrats to maintain confidentiality agreements.

Last year Bill Forbes, general manager of security and emergency management for Woodside Petroleum, noted at a conference that information shared with the government under the Attorney General's Department Trusted Information Sharing Network (TISN) initiative — aimed at protecting Australia's infrastructure — had been leaked to Woodside's competitors.

The association representing the energy sector, including the interests of ACT utility ACTEW and Tasmania's NBN deployment arm, state-owned utility Aurora Energy, is also concerned the government's information requests could "overreach" and add to the burden of requests by the Australian Energy Regulator.

"We have to ensure that we don't need to go through a fishing expedition. My sector requires certainty for it to function effectively. We need to be clear as to what's expected. But there are confidentiality issues at play and this is part of national critical infrastructure," Andrew Blyth chief of the Energy Networks Association told ZDNet.com.au.

The ENA is set to meet with department officials next week to discuss the government's energy efficiency initiative it announced in the budget and its role in the government's smart meter plans.

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THE New York Times teamed up with Wikipedia to keep news of a reporter's kidnapping a secret.

A MESSAGE posted on Britney Spears's Twitter page saying the singer had died has been blamed on hackers.

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has decided to extend its contracts with EDS for end computing and centralised computing services over a further two years.

The original contracts were set to expire at the end of June next year, but now EDS will be providing the services until 30 June 2012. "The extension will help us manage transitional issues associated with engaging any providers who have been successful in our phased procurement program for ICT services," ATO second commissioner David Butler said in a statement.

The public servant said that the delay in choosing a new provider would allow the office to make "significant savings relating to desktop computers", although he did not specify how. Butler added the delay would allow the ATO to expand the virtualisation of its datacentres. "This work will give us access to less costly and more adaptable technology," he said.

The $604 million extension value included the final year of the contract.

The ATO decided in 2007 to break up EDS' stranglehold on the agency's IT contracts following internal reviews by Boston Consulting Group. It broke EDS' $1 billion whole-of-agency deal into a managed network services contract, an end-user computing contract and a centralised computing contract.

CSC, incumbent EDS, Fujitsu-owned Kaz Group, Lockheed Martin Australia and Unisys are the companies shortlisted to take the reins of the end user computing contract once EDS' term finishes. It is worth around $60 million annually. The shortlisted vendors for the centralised computing contract, worth $160 million a year are Lockheed Martin, CSC, IBM and incumbent EDS.

Earlier this month, ATO announced that the third contract, for managed network services, had been granted to Optus, worth $186.5 million over four years.

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Consulting firm KPMG and technology consultancy Consultel have been awarded new contracts to provide the Federal Government investment and technical advice for the Tasmanian National Broadband Network roll-out.

The two new contracts, both valued at $410,000, were awarded last week by the Department of Broadband Communications and the Digital Economy, bringing the two companies' earnings under the project to $860,000 a piece. The contracts were disclosed as part of normal government contract procedures.

They follow two earlier contracts for the two companies' work in Tasmania between April and June, worth $250,000 each.

The government is currently pushing to meet its estimated start date of July for the construction of the Tasmanian leg of the NBN, though; besides these contracts it has revealed little else. A spokesperson for Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has said the Tasmanian and Federal governments were in advanced negotiations, but would not provide further detail on how it intends to proceed with the Tasmanian deployment.

The new contracts, however, extend KPMG's work in the state to February 2010, which is when the government hopes to see the report from its mainland NBN implementation study released. The spokesperson for Conroy was not available for comment on the contracts today.

"It looks like they either expect to take a while in selecting the lead advisor from their shortlist, or that the lead advisor really is going to have to work with consultants of the department's choice," Unwired's regulatory affairs spokesperson David Havyatt said today.

KPMG is one of several consultancies that are believed to have been shortlisted for the lead advisory role.

It's still unclear whether the Federal or Tasmanian government intend to issue a tender for equipment and services in relation to the Tasmanian roll-out. A spokesperson for state-owned energy utility Aurora Energy, which will deploy the network there, recently said a tender for equipment would be released. But given the proposed start date of next month there is growing speculation that Aurora will fall back on its existing supply arrangements.

It is also still unclear whether Aurora will own the network before selling it to the Federal Government, or if it will be contracted solely to roll it out.

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USERS are reporting burns and discolouration from overheating iPhone 3GS handsets.

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Sydney Water has decided to migrate its email platform from Novell's GroupWise to Microsoft Outlook/Exchange and is looking for a contractor to help implement the change.

The organisation's email and mail archiving components had "reached the end of their functional life" and were ready for replacement, according to background information on the request for tender released on NSW's tendering site.

GroupWise would be replaced by Exchange to create a "feature-enhanced" messaging platform across Sydney Water, the document said. Quest Archive Manager will be used for mail archiving.

The contractor would plan, design and build the Outlook/Exchange infrastructure and migrate the over 3000 email users at the Parramatta head office and at Homebush. The last task was to implement Quest and migrate around 1.2TB of existing archived storage. The contractor was also expected to provide training for technical and support staff. The tender closes on 16 July.

In total across all its sites, Sydney Water has over 4000 mailboxes in GroupWise, with 675GB of mail inside.

Sydney Water CIO Tim Catley has been ramping up Sydney Water's discretionary project spend, recovering from drastic cuts in the organisation's IT budget after a failed customer information and billing system project.

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in brief Former Visy Industries CIO Roland Spitty has joined the ranks of Australian supply and demand system vendor SolveIT Software.

Spitty will join SolveIT as the director of supply chain, based in Melbourne. Spitty left his former position at the paper and packaging company over six months ago, according to a Visy spokesperson. He had been replaced by an external candidate called Ken Major, although the spokesperson did not provide any details on where Major had come from.

Visy is one of SolveIT's customers. Other clients include ABB Grain, Rio Tinto and the Australian Defence Science and Technology Organisation.

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