Communications minister, senator Stephen Conroy, has released the Regional Telecommunications Review Committee report saying it has confirmed that the NBN will be vital for regional Australia, but ignoring its call for the government to facilitate expanded mobile coverage where it is not commercially viable.

The New South Wales Government has released a second round of funding under its Collaborative Solutions program, this time putting up $1 million to encourage development of new mobile solutions for the public sector.

A “light touch” cloud certification programme will be introduced by the Federal Government. Although no timeframe has been revealed, Glenn Archer, the first assistant secretary of the Australian Government Information Office (Agimo), today confirmed that the Government would move forward with its cloud certification plans.

The Department of Human Services will later this year start trialling delivering video services to citizens in regions with National Broadband Network connections. According to Senator Stephen Conroy, minister for broadband, communications and the digital economy, video consultations will be available for people seeking information and advice about Centrelink, Medicare and Child Support services.

A deal has been done between the federal government’s Department of Human Services and WorkVentures, whereby the government will supply laptops to the not-for-profit company to be refurbished and sold at a discount price to Centrelink concession card holders, low income earners, schools and other not-for-profit organisations.

Despite the federal government’s budget cuts, including a significant cut to overall public service staff numbers and cuts to capital expenditure and the increased efficiency dividend, one leading technology analyst firm strikes a positive note, believing that there will also be some big opportunities for government CIOs flowing from the budget.

The 2012 Federal Budget is a “budget of opportunity” for IT vendors – as long as they can follow the money.

The winners from Wayne Swan’s Budget 2012 are Australia’s battling classes. Technocrats got less of a look in.

The aged care and disabled sectors are in line for two of the biggest IT programmes unveiled in Treasurer Wayne Swan’s Budget 2012 which was otherwise fairly light on in terms of new ICT initiatives.

Not content with investing $36 billion just to build the National Broadband Network, the Federal Government has set aside additional funds in the 2012-13 Budget to demonstrate its capabilities.

In 2011 the Bureau of Meteorology attracted more than 3.3 billion page views – more than some porn sites. Not surprisingly the Government wants its cut of the digital dollar.

Just one in every ten Australians is expected to opt for a personally controlled electronic health record (PCEHR) over the next two years, despite the Government’s hefty $467 million investment in the programme.

Four plum ICT jobs with salaries of more than $199,000 each are on offer in the NSW Government as the State works out how to implement its brand new ICT strategy which was unveiled in Sydney on Friday.

The federal government is merging the operations of seven older data centres into a new data centre to support the operations of the Department of Human Services in a move which the government says will save about $5 million in power costs and reduce the department's ICT carbon footprint by 50 percent.

The federal government has promised safer and faster payments of Medicare benefits with today's announcement of the national roll-out of an electronic Medicare benefits payment system.

The Department of Finance and Deregulation has released a second draft of its ICT Strategic Vision, foreshadowing changes to the Australian Government Information Management Office (AGIMO).

The Federal Court has ruled that the Optus TV Now service infringes copyright.

Just days after the Australian Information Industry Assocation chastised the expert panel reviewing the $10b Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) for failing to give any acknowledgement to the role of ICTs in clean energy development, the International Telecommunication Union has issued a 'call for action' to get greater recognition of the role information and communications technologies can play in sustainable development.

The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) has produced, in conjunction with Ernst & Young, a manifesto as part of its bid to bring broadband connectivity to the whole world.

Global technology R&D giant SAIC has committed to providing 50 new jobs over the next three years while focusing on initiatives around the National Broadband Network with the establishment of a a regional cyber security research and development centre in Melbourne.