The NICTA eGovernment Initiative: Delivering Research Impact to Business and Government Professor Ro

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The NICTA e-Government Initiative Delivering
Research Impact to Business and
GovernmentProfessor Ross JefferyProgram
Leader, Empirical Software Engineering
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Background

• National Research Laboratory
• Established in 2002
• Currently funded until 2011
• NICTA Staff 409 (359 FTE)
• Students, approx 650 total
• Five objectives centred on
• Research
• Commercialisation
• People
• Education
• Linkages

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Mission

• To be an enduring world-class information and
  communications technology research institute that
  generates national benefit.

• Research Objectives
• Focus research efforts toward areas of importance
  to Australia
• Conducting research to the highest standards of
  excellence
• Provide NICTA researchers with world-class
  research facilities and equipment

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Locations

• Research Labs
• Brisbane
• Sydney ATP
• Sydney Kensington
• Canberra
• Melbourne

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Research Structure

• Themes
• Embedded Systems
• Networked Systems
• Making Sense of Data
• Managing Complexity

• Business Areas
• Biomedical and Life Sciences
• Intelligent Transport Systems
• Environmental Management
• Mobile Systems and Services
• Safety and Security
• Software Infrastructure

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Software Infrastructure Research Project Map

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Semantic interoperability
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• LIXI Projects
• Process Handbook
• Reference Architecture
• Process Modelling and Analysis
• Industry Ontology

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Software Infrastructure Example

• e-Government (E-Gov) Initiative
• e-Government refers to the government's use of
  information technologies to exchange information
  and services with
• Citizens (cit-to-gov)
• Business (bus-to-gov)
• other arms of Government
• (gov-to-gov)

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The NICTA e-Government Initiative

• This major project brings together - Government
  agencies - Industry - Researchers -
  Educatorsto provide holistic solutions to the
  challenges that e-Government presents.
• Provides research leadership and coordination
  through a major project of national benefit.
• Combines ICT expertise from key discipline areas
  including
• software engineering,
• information systems,
• enabling technologies (e.g. knowledge
  representation, logic, and spatial technologies)

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The NICTA e-Government Initiative

• Established January 2007
• Focus Benefit-oriented e-Government for
  industry and citizens
• Customers - Federal and State agencies and
  ministries - IT Companies working in the public
  sector - Communities and community clusters
• Staff - 3 with project focus e-Government -
  app. 20 over NICTA programs
• NICTA Value Proposition - Wide range of
  competencies - Neutrality - Standards -
  Internationality
• Trials of innovative technologies (software
  methods and tools) with collaborating government
  agencies is a key mechanism for realising the
  benefits of ICT research in the practice of
  government.

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NICTA e-Government Focus

• Many governments around the world have
  e-Government initiatives, many of these
  initiatives focus directly on the points of
  interaction with citizens and business

• Key focus of NICTAs E-Gov research is upon the
  processes and systems inside government
• Aim is business process improvement inside
  government through controlled deployment of
  innovative software, methods and tools

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e-Government Objectives

• Creation of an e-Government Network to provide
  information flow and collaboration between
  stakeholders.
• Use-inspired research outcomes attained through
• Successful outcomes from existing projects
• identification and selection of new projects
• Industry-wide educational outcomes
• research training
• professional development (seminars and short
  courses)
• specialised award courses in e-Government
• International linkages with research institutes
  in e-Government.
• Facilitate the establishment of a National
  Institute for e-Government Research

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e-Government Top-down and bottom-up
Identifying e-Government potential in government
and industry
Developing benefit-oriented and
industry-specific e-Government solutions
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e-Government potential
Determination of e-Government Potential
Relevance
e-Government suitability
Productivity and growth
Frequency
Effort
Customer perspective
Potential of optimization
Financial perspective
Room for improvement
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e-Government Research Areas

• IT Infrastructure and Planning Methods and tools
  to support strategic planning in areas such as IT
  capacity planning, the development of SOA's, and
  integration/interoperability of legacy systems.
  This work is being applied to large service
  delivery agencies in federal government.
• Business Process Transformation Methods and
  tools to manage business processes in government,
  for both individual agencies and from a whole of
  government perspective. Specific research topics
  include frameworks for cross-agency
  interoperability, and the alignment of government
  agency business goals with business processes and
  IT system requirements

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Example Completed Projects - DSTO

• Software architecture knowledge management
• Tool development and implementation (now
  available for broader application in business and
  government)
• Repository of design knowledge
• Future-proof against turnover of key staff
• Retain critical IP and system knowledge
• Middleware architecture evaluation
• Apply NICTA methodology for systems architecture
  evaluation
• Assess performance and other characteristics of
  defence systems
• Transfer capability to DSTO software architecture
  personnel
• Use knowledge management tool to retain design
  decision history

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Assessing e-Government Service Architectures

• Devise methods and tools for evaluating
  e-Government service architectures
• Devise processes for helping government agencies
  model and improve end-to-end service delivery
• Evaluate end-to-end performance and scalability
  of Medicare Tax Statement (MTS) service
  architecture
• Multi-layered network queuing model
• Result Confirmation that existing system can
  accommodate over and above anticipated peak
  workloads (ie., 31 October, 9pm!)

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Spatial Information

• GIS and Spatial Technologies Multi-criteria
  approaches to the analysis of complex issues in
  environment decision systems have found wide
  application across business, government and
  communities around the world.
• VISTA_at_NICTA has two projects of analysis of
  spatial information in collaboration with the ACT
  Planning and Land Authority (ACTPLA) and the
  Australian Bureau of Rural Science (BRS). The
  project incorporates Computer aided
  Multi-criteria decision support tools to model
  multiple types of evidences for intelligent
  environmental query and land planning, and
  supports a decision making process.

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Impact of e-Government Research

• In Australia there are opportunities for ICT
  research to make an impact in large projects of
  national benefit in economic sectors such as
• Water and the environment
• Public and private transport systems
• Mobile communications
• Safety and security
• Effective, efficient, robust, transparent, and
  well managed business processes in government
  (federal/state/local) are essential for national
  projects such as these to succeed.
• NICTAs process-focused, software-based research
  in e-Government complements the NICTA programs
  and projects delivering hard technologies in the
  field.

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Example Delivery Projects (STaR)

• Intelligent Transport Area
• Smart Transport and Roads (STaR) Project
• research collaboration with Roads and Traffic
  Authority of New South Wales (RTA)
• traffic sensing and surveillance,
• reliable and secure communications over wide area
  wireless mesh networks,
• new algorithms and models for traffic control
  and
• multimodal user interfaces to streamline control
  room operations.
• Impact
• Reduce travel times without building new
  infrastructure
• Improve efficiency of public transport
• Improve safety

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Example Delivery Projects (SAFE)

• Safety and Security Area
• Smart Applications for Emergencies (SAFE) Project
• The SAFE project focuses on new technologies,
  systems and services that will provide
  significant improvements to emergency and
  disaster response management working with key
  government agencies.
• SAFE involves collaboration with user
  stakeholders
• in the emergency response community,
• industry groups supplying products and services
  to that community,
• NICTA research groups developing technologies
  which will complement those of the NICTA QRL SAFE
  team.

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Example Delivery Projects (SAFE)

• The project emerged from the Safeguarding
  Australia projects in the Queensland laboratory
  and now operates as a large project using a
  demonstrator as the mechanism to focus four work
  packages.
• SAFE will save lives and help minimise the
  economic impact of natural and man-made disasters
  through world class RD in Information and
  Communications Technologies for disaster
  prediction, response, and recovery co-ordination.

Sources of Data and dataprocessing SAFE
SENSORS
Information processing and
human understanding SAFE
INFORMATION
Modeling and Agents SAFE
AGENTS
Secure and autonomic
networks SAFE NETWORKS
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Example Delivery Projects (WIN)

• Environment Management Area
• Water Information Networks (WIN) Project
• Around the world and in Australia around 70 of
  water is used for agriculture, 20 for industry
  and 10 for domestic supply.

In agriculture, close to half of the water is
wasted. For domestic use, close to half is
wasted and in some cities in Europe this is a lot
higher. UNESCO believes we have enough water
its a management issue. WIN addresses part of
this problem by addressing efficiency in
agriculture particularly in irrigation systems
and finding out where water is in many different
environments.
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Example Delivery Projects (WIN)

• The WIN vision is to provide ICT tools to manage
  water in the most efficient manner in
• irrigation systems,
• on farms,
• surface to ground water,
• water balances,
• catchments
• urban water systems

• WIN is setting up test-beds in all these areas.
• NICTA has been working closely with partners
  such as Melbourne Water Research Centre, e-Water
  CRC, CSIRO, and State Governments

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Example Delivery Projects (WIN)

• The WIN project has been running for about 18
  months.
• The value proposition for Australia is that some
  simple ICT infrastructure plus some clever
  monitoring, and control algorithms that are
  running on that infrastructure, can release
  enough water to continue farming at the levels we
  do now and maintain logical flows in the rivers.
  The water is there and you can get it by
  increasing efficiency on farms by a small amount.