[LINK] IT matters of interest in the 2011/2012 Federal Budget

Tue May 10 21:13:28 AEST 2011

$9.8 million worth of Internet Filtering Grants have been removed from
forward appropriations due to a lack of interest by ISPs.

The Government will provide $19.9 million over four years to improve
internet amenities for Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel
deployed on operations. The measure will establish a single contract
that will standardise the delivery of internet service for ADF
personnel on operations with predetermined levels of service and
defined support arrangements.

The Government [through Attorney General's Department] will provide
$4.0 million over four years to improve access to legal assistance
services for people living in regional Australia through the use of
the National Broadband Network. Grants will be provided to legal
assistance providers to enable National Broadband Network based
delivery of legal services, and to attract and retain professional
staff in selected regional area

The Government will provide $4.2 million over four years to establish
and maintain an interactive MyRegion website. This website will aim to
provide information about regional Australia, including transport
infrastructure, health and aged care, education, social services,
communications and the environment. The website will enable users to
download data for further analysis and will provide them with an
opportunity to make enquiries and provide feedback to Government using
social media technologies.

On Tue, May 10, 2011 at 8:56 PM, Tom Worthington
<tom.worthington at tomw.net.au> wrote:
> Just about every year since the Australian Federal Budget was first put
> on the web, I have done a quick search though the documents to find
> matters of interest in information technology:
> <http://www.budget.gov.au/2010-11/>.
>
> This year budget web site worked fine at 8pm and kept working (last year
> the system failed at 7:53pm, reporting: "HTTP Error 404 - File or
> directory not found").
>
> QUALITY OF THE WEB PAGE
>
> Each year from 1996 to 2006 the budget web site got better. But by
> 2007-08 seemed to reached a stable design, also used for 2009/2010 and
> 2010/2011. The site is in the same HTML 4.01 Transitional, as the last
> two years and has not been changed to XHTML, or HTML 5, as used for
> newer web sites. The code is clean and efficient.
>
> As happened last year, the home page failed a W3C HTML Markup Validation
> test, with 4 errors. These are minor ones and the same number as last
> two years:
> <http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.budget.gov.au%2F2011-12%2F&charset=%28detect+automatically%29&doctype=Inline&group=0>.
>
> The home page scored a very poor 29% on the W3C mobileOK Checker, down
> from 35% last year. This is unfortunate, given the increase in the use
> of smart phones and tablet computers in the last year:
> <http://validator.w3.org/mobile/check?async=false&docAddr=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.budget.gov.au%2F2011-12%2F>.
>
> I was not able to conduct an automated accessibility test, but the home
> page seemed likely to pass at Level 1, as last year.
>
> As with the last two years, important tables in the overview are
> provided as blurry image files, while the detailed documents have better
> formatted HTML tables.
>
> IT IN THE BUDGET
>
> The budget search service responded promptly. References to "Information
> Technology" were down from 15 last year, to 5:
> <http://www.budget.gov.au/2011-12/search.asp?searchString=%22Information+Technology%22&Submit=Submit&Submit=Search>.
>
>    1. Budget Measures 2011-12 - Budget Paper No. 2 - Part 2: Expense
> Measures - Climate Change and Energy Efficiency : "Renewable Energy
> Target — implementation of legislative amendments ... This measure
> includes capital funding of $6.6 million over five years for information
> technology upgrades."
>    2. Budget Strategy and Outlook 2011-12 - Budget Paper No. 1 -
> Statement 6: Expenses and Net Capital Investment: "investment by several
> agencies in information technology including the ATO and the Department
> of Finance and Deregulation...".
>    3. Budget Measures 2011-12 - Budget Paper No. 2 - Part 2: Expense
> Measures - Treasury
>    4. Budget Strategy and Outlook 2011-12 - Budget Paper No. 1 -
> Statement 8: Statement of Risks
>    5. Education, Employment and Workplace Relations: "In addition,
> funding will be provided to enhance and improve the exchange of
> information between Centrelink and the Department of Education,
> Employment and Workplace Relations' information technology systems. This
> will improve the capacity of employment services providers and
> Centrelink staff to view and use appropriate material from each other."
>
> SOME IT HIGHLIGHTS
>
> The "National Broadband Network" continues to dominate government
> thinking on IT, with 24 mentions in the budget papers.
>
> The $4.3B over six years for regional Australia is likely to involve
> significant IT expenditure for hospitals and health services, education.
>
> The "Individual Electronic Health Record" (IEHR) system, which was a
> feature of last year's budget, was not mentioned.
>
> Comments on previous budgets:
>
> 1996 http://www.anu.edu.au/mail-archives/link/link9608/0096.html
> 1997 http://www.anu.edu.au/mail-archives/link/link9705/0315.html
> 1998 http://www.anu.edu.au/mail-archives/link/link9805/0174.html
> 1999 http://www.anu.edu.au/mail-archives/link/link9905/0265.html
> 2000 http://www.anu.edu.au/mail-archives/link/link0005/0358.html
> 2002 http://www.anu.edu.au/mail-archives/link/link0205/0318.html
> 2004 http://mailman.anu.edu.au/pipermail/link/2004-May/056673.html
> 2005 http://www.archivum.info/link@mailman.anu.edu.au/2005-05/msg00035.html
> 2006 http://mailman.anu.edu.au/pipermail/link/2006-May/066486.html
> 2007
> http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2007/05/it-matters-of-interest-in-20072008.html
> 2008
> http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2008/05/it-matters-of-interest-in-20072008.html
> 2009 http://blog.tomw.net.au/2009/05/it-matters-of-interest-in-20092010.html
> 2010 http://blog.tomw.net.au/2010/05/it-matters-of-interest-in-20102011.html
>
> More at:
> <http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/05/it-matters-of-interest-in-20112012.html>.
>
>
> --
> Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
> PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
> Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The
> Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/
> Visiting Scientist, CSIRO ICT Centre: http://bit.ly/csiro_ict_canberra
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