Oconics claims 'Australian-first' website for SA government

Peter Dinham
Tuesday, 24 November 2009 10:30

IT Industry - Deals

Business software developer Oconics is claiming is has developed an Australian-first with what it says is “an easy-to-use website that dramatically simplifies finding services and information” offered by departments and agencies of the South Australian Government.

According to Oconics  founder and managing director, Jonathan Ruckert, the company, working with a dedicated team from Service SA and specialist agency staff, delivered the website “as an Australian-first,” plain language entry point to a myriad of public sector services.

Ruckert said that, as well as handling hundreds of thousands of visitors a month since it was launched in the middle of this year, “the new site will facilitate the processing of more than $800 million worth of government-related financial transactions during the current financial year.

“The website builds on the decade-long success of the previous SA Central website by simplifying language, bowling over bureaucratic boundaries and seamlessly linking to third-party services provided by the Australian Government and non-government organisations.”

According to Ruckert, Oconics has a well-established track record for ground-breaking work in putting the public sector online. Several years ago, it completed a project to publish South Australian Hansard on the Web, and it recently won a $3.8 million contract to redevelop and support the Hansard system that publishes proceedings of the Australian Federal Parliament.

South Australia’s director of e-Government, Jan McConchie, said the aim of the new website was to provide improved accessibility to public sector services. “On the site, government services are divided by topic areas rather than by departments. At Service SA, we provide the information architecture of the site, the publishing environment and writing standards. Content is written by agency staff in words that the public can understand. Accessibility is the goal.”

McConchie said the first release of the site contains comprehensive content relating to transport, services to the ageing, carers and people with a disability, with links to the rest of SA Government services and information, and will continue to expand as agencies prepare their material in the new format during the next 18 months.

Ruckert said Oconics developed the website as a Microsoft .NET application, providing a deliberately plain interface to speed up performance and minimise clutter, with the only graphics on the site relating to specific events or public campaigns such as the Readiness for Fire Season initiative. He said the website was a challenging exercise in simplicity, and it “epitomises the principle that less is more.”