News

If gentlemen prefer blondes then, it would appear, intelligence agencies prefer Linux. Or at least so it would seem judging by downloads on offer at OnSecure, a joint portal of the highly secretive signals intelligence collection agency the Defence Signals Directorate and the spam-busting National Office of the Information Economy.

Revenues are booming for the state's premier collection agency which has had an 800 per cent growth in electronic business in the past 12 months.

In its latest move to protect critical infrastructure, the federal government yesterday launched a secure Web site to report information security attacks, but the initiative has raised the ire of Australia's Computer Emergency Response Team (AusCert) which has spent the last two years establishing a national reporting and alert system with a broad membership base.

University of Technology Sydney (UTS) has signed a global research partnership with Alcatel in a bid to increase local R&D and commercialisation activity, according to the director of the Institute for Information & Communication Technologies Professor John Hughes.

The Australian Senate has given the final nod of approval to the Spam Act 2003 following a move to nix Labor and Democrat amendments in the House of Representatives earlier in the week.

The Indian government went on the offensive last week on the contentious issue of the loss of US and European jobs to India due to outsourcing.

U.K. government is set to consider legislation next year for the establishment of compulsory biometric identity cards and a central database of all U.K. subjects, it was announced by the government last week.

The legal risks of adopting open source software may not be confined to intellectual property problems of the SCO-IBM type.

Department of Defence CIO Patrick Hannan will trade his fatigues for a Demons jersey after scoring the plum job of Victoria's first ever CIO after a rigorous executive search.

In a trend that will bring little joy to large outsourcers, the federal government is gradually in-sourcing many of its helpdesk services after enduring years of slow response times, a frustratingly limited understanding of its business needs and questionable value for money.

The Federal Government has committed $23.7 million to improving broadband access in regional Australia.

Drama surrounding the Australian Customs Service's Integrated Cargo System offers valuable lessons for those at the coalface of managing outsourcers.

Governments, after years of fruitless hysteria, are shifting their national security focus away from the threat of cyber attacks launched by terrorist groups to enhancing eavesdropping capabilities to monitor such groups, according to Gartner’s research director for information security and risk, Rich Mogull.

The full financial horror of the Australian Customs Services' massive Cargo Management Reengineering (CMR) Integrated Cargo System project was revealed last night at the Senate Estimates hearing.

Maintaining her role as Australia's outsourcing watchdog since 1997, Opposition IT spokeswoman Senator Kate Lundy used this month's Public Accounts committee hearing to expose serious flaws under current service provider arrangements between EDS and Customs.

Missing backup tapes from the Prime Minister’s office, cleaner’s removing PCs from the Attorney General’s department, laptops stolen from staff cars and homes while couriers mysteriously lose hardware in transit, are just a few of the extraordinary incidents a parliamentary committee heard last week.

South Australian Democrat Ian Gilfillan has delayed pushing for a final vote on his long-standing open source procurement bill and will endeavour to introduce another aimed at “safeguards” on RFID technology before the end of the year.

The New Zealand and Australian parliaments have demonstrated that closer economic relations apply to more than just the commercial realm.

One of the largest software developments in Australia's economic history is on hold again - much to the relief of industry.

Doctors are sick of being stuck in the waiting room as the federal government makes up its mind on Health IT, according to the chairman of the Australian Medical Association's (AMA) expert advisory panel on IT Allan Zemit.