[LINK] RFID in Govt, and in People

[Tom Worthington]

At 10:09 AM 10/3/2006, Roger Clarke wrote:
>... [If anyone has any knowledge about what BAH thinks the 21 
>departments think they plan on doing with RFID, a posting to the 
>list, or an off-list note to me, would be appreciated.  There are a 
>few potential applications, e.g. in Defence Materiel ...

Two Defence examples are:

* "A Request For Tender For The Provision of Australian Defence 
Organisation (ADO) Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) Systems 
Analysis." Number:  RFT-COOD/1605/2/0003 Closing Date:  29 Mar 2005 
<https://www.tenders.gov.au/federal/shared/rftdetail.cfm?p_id=977&p_criteria=RFT%2DCOOD%2F1605%2F2%2F0003&p_advert=1>

* "To Provide Maintenance Support For RFID Enabled ADFITV Capability. 
... To Track And Manage Australian Defence Force (ADF) Stores In 
Transit ..." RFT COO-MISD/6134/2/10, 06 Feb 2006 
<https://www.tenders.gov.au/federal/shared/rftdetail.cfm?p_id=2146&p_criteria=RFT%20COO%2DMISD%2F6134%2F2%2F10&p_advert=1>

A web search for "RFID" found for Australian government "gov.au" web sites:

Vic:      852
Qld:      191
NSW:      100
WA:         62
SA:         54
NT:         48
DCITA:   45
Defence: 31
Tas:       19
ACT:         9
Total:  2,080

>but most agencies don't actually do the kinds of physical things any 
>more that RFID is potentially useful for] ...

Yes. Having attended the CSIRO RFID reading group 
<http://www.ict.csiro.au/staff/Michael.Sheng/rfid-reading.htm>, I 
think I see what this is about. RFID applications range from simple 
replacements for barcodes in stock control, through digital wallet 
e-commerce applications to smart sensor networks.

Mostly of the interest seems to not be generated by the RFID 
technology itself, it is more about standardizing business processes 
and having a glamorous sounding technology as an excuse to get 
funding to redo your IT system.

I am helping supervise an Honours project at ANU on "RFID 
implementation and privacy" <http://cs.anu.edu.au/honours/topics.html>.

ps: A reading group is a book club for researchers. Once a week you 
get together and discuss the papers you have read and eat cake. :-)



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                http://www.tomw.net.au/
Director, ACS Communications Tech Board   http://www.acs.org.au/ctb/
Visiting Fellow, ANU      Blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/atom.xml