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Articles by Byron Connolly
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NBN revenue hits $1.4B
NBN Co on Thursday reported a doubling of year-on-year revenue to $1.4 billion on the back of ‘solid progress’ on construction and activations during its third quarter ending 31 March.
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Feds to pump $70M into Perth’s supercomputers
The federal government will shell out $70 million to replace tech infrastructure at the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre in Perth.
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Telstra to pay $10M for misleading 10,000 customers
The Federal Court has ordered Telstra to pay a $10 million penalty for making false or misleading statements relate to its third-party billing service.
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LINX backs Boomi to glue its clouds
Young Australian logistics company, LINX Cargo Care Group, has deployed a new integration platform to connect its cloud infrastructure and support the creation of a data lake that provides more visibility into its supply chain.
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Stephen Fontana new Vic Police CIO
Veteran cop Stephen Fontana has been appointed as the new chief information officer at Victoria Police following Jack Blayney’s decision to retire later this year.
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Top tech workers likely to get salary increases this year
?The Australian employment market is suffering through slow wage growth but if you’re a top tech worker, you’ll likely get a pay rise this year.
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People are buying faster NBN speeds
NBN Co claimed on Monday that the number of Australian homes and businesses connected to higher speed NBN plans has more than doubled with more than a million people upgrading their speeds in the last four months.
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Mark Gay joins CrownBet as CDO
Former ME chief information officer Mark Gay has been appointed as CrownBet’s new chief digital officer and will start work on April 18. His appointment comes just one month after the online betting site paid $300 million for the Australian arm of wagering giant, William Hill.
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AI, robotics to drive Visy’s future
Packaging giant Visy sees a future where its boxes have the intelligence to be self-monitoring, according to its billionaire boss, Anthony Pratt.
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Australian tech industry at a crossroads: Daniel Petre
The Australian IT industry is at a crossroads and it has a choice: participate as a producer of the world’s greatest applications and services or just be a user, former ninemsn founding chairman Daniel Petre said on Wednesday.
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‘Culture and education’ key to meeting gig economy standards: Airtasker chief
Culture and education is far more powerful than control to ensure licensing and safety standards are being met by across the ‘gig economy’, says Airtasker founder and CEO, Tim Fung.
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Killer robot boycott ends
A boycott of Korea’s Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) – led by Australian AI expert Toby Walsh – has been called off after the university’s president committed to not develop lethal autonomous weapons.
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Government backs new U.S. cloud law
The Australian government has backed the United States Congress’ CLOUD Act which enables American law enforcement agencies like the FBI to access data, with a warrant, that is stored on servers in the U.S. or overseas.
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Privacy Commissioner launches investigation into Facebook
Australia’s privacy commissioner has launched an investigation into Facebook after it was revealed that information about more than 300,000 users of the social media network here may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica.
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Gamification may help defeat cyber crooks: report
Gamification in the workplace is the key to beating cybercriminals at their own game, according to a new report.
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Paul Budde weighs in on Morrow’s departure
Bill Morrow is leaving NBN Co at perhaps the worst time: just as the 2019 federal election looms, according to prominent telecommunications analyst Paul Budde.
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University of Technology Sydney is on a ‘Mission to Mars’
The University of Technology Sydney (UTS) has just knocked over the first phase of tech transformation and is likening the next stage to a ‘Mission to Mars.’
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NBN boss Bill Morrow to quit in 2018
NBN chief Bill Morrow will step down from the position in 2018, the company said Wednesday.
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Broadband services just falling short of peak quoted evening speeds
NBN broadband services from iiNet, Optus, Telstra and TPG are delivering between 80 and just over 90 per cent of the maximum plan speeds in the evenings, a new ACCC report has found.
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CBA CIO David Whiteing out in exec restructure
The Commonwealth Bank’s chief information officer, David Whiteing, will leave the bank next month following an executive team restructure announced on Monday morning.
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Claudine Ogilvie joins Youi board
Jetstar CIO Claudine Ogilvie has joined the board of insurance organisation, Youi.
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NBN launches ‘simulation labs’ for workers
NBN will use network simulation labs to train more than 2000 field telecommunications workers on how to deploy, activate and maintain the national broadband network.
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“Very little detail’ on new visa scheme rules: ITPA
The Information Technology Professionals Association (ITPA) has weighed in on the government’s new pilot visa scheme, saying it’s concerned that there is “very little detail” on how the applications will be checked and the rules enforced.
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PC market boosted by education deployments
Australia’s PC market in Australia posted year-on-year growth of 2.2 per cent for the fourth quarter of 2017 buoyed by major deployments in the education sector, according to IDC.
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Huawei Australia appoints new CTO
Huawei Australia has appointed 5G expert Dr David Soldani as its new chief technology officer.
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Rohan Penman quits Adairs for T2 role
Adairs Retail Group’s head of technology, Rohan Penman, is leaving the organisation after seven years in the role. Penman is moving to Unilever’s retail tea business, T2 as global head of technology.
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Inquiry into RACP online exam fail begins
Ferrier Hodgson will undertake an inquiry into the technical glitch that caused the cancellation of an online exam being taken by students at RACP.
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Unions NSW calls for gig economy to be regulated
Unions NSW has begun a national push for a new body to regulate the ‘gig economy’ after an unlicensed asbestos removal was done through job posting website, Airtasker.
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How virtual reality is transforming learning at the University of Newcastle
The University of Newcastle is using virtual and augmented reality technologies to transform how nursing and midwifery trainees learn and plans to tap the blockchain to support students attaining ‘micro-credentials.’
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Richard Webby new tech director at Scentre Group
Scentre Group, which owns and operates Westfield shopping centres in Australia and New Zealand, has nabbed former Walt Disney Company senior tech exec Richard Webby as its new director, technology.
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Sharing the stories of the CIO50 2017: #6 Rob Craig, icare
Rob Craig is chief operating officer at icare, an organisation formed in 2015 to create new ways to deliver insurance and care services to employers and their staff. He is the central leader in a market disruptor that protects 3.4 million workers and $190 billion of the state’s assets. It also provides $2 billion in benefits to injured workers.
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Sharing the stories of the CIO50 2017: #7 Steve Hodgkinson, Victorian Department of Health & Human Services
The history of public sector agencies is littered with the wreckage created by CIOs with a ‘grand vision’ but an inability to create meaningful and sustainable change through people, says Steve Hodgkinson, CIO at the Victorian Department of Health & Human Services (DHHS).
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UNSW appoints Nicola Dorling as new digital strategy director
Former Sydney Trains senior tech executive, Nicola Dorling, has joined the University of New South Wales as its digital strategy director.
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Sharing the stories of the CIO50 2017: #8 Kerry Holling, Western Sydney University
You can’t estimate the power of goodwill when it comes to achieving your objectives. This is one of the biggest lessons long-serving CIO Kerry Holling has learnt over his career.
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Sharing the stories of the CIO50 2017: #9 Simon Noonan, Sportsbet
“When I first started working at Sportsbet, I wasn’t sure what to expect,” says CIO Simon Noonan.
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Sharing the stories of the CIO50: #10 David Hackshall, Cochlear
“Cochlear is one of Australia’s most famous innovators,” says David Hackshall, chief information officer at the world-leading hearing implant technology provider.
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Creating a digital society: Can Australia learn something from Estonia?
Australia’s economic future will depend a lot on our ability to digitise key government services. Lately we haven’t been doing so well and it’s often hard to understand why. Maybe the Estonians have the answer.
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Kiwi retailer Foodstuffs to dump checkouts, deploy new AI tech
Forget Amazon Go, real retail innovation is being rolled out by our friends across the ditch. Grocery shoppers in New Zealand will be the first in the world to trial new artificial intelligence technology that removes the need for checkouts at a Four Square store in the Auckland suburb of Ellerslie.
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La Trobe rolls out Fitbits for farm animals
Wearable motion sensors are being attached to sheep and cows on farms across Australia to provide powerful insights into the health and wellbeing of these animals.
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Where ‘silicon meets sandstone’: Sydney Uni’s transformation two years on
Sydney University CIO, Mike Day, discusses how his technology group is helping deliver on the university’s four-year transformation plan.
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Educators tap iPaaS to boost cloud integration
Sydney’s University of Technology (UTS) and Study Group are turning to an integration platform-as-a-service (iPaaS) offering to ease the transition of their key applications to the cloud.
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IT in disability sector not up to scratch
Disability service providers and other not-for-profit organisations are under-investing in IT with many using systems that aren’t working well enough to provide efficient services, according to new research.
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Cyber scammers targeting real estate sector: researcher
Cyber scammers have figured out that the Australian real estate industry is a potential gold mine for social engineering attacks, according to Alex Tilley, a senior security researcher at SecureWorks.
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Data61 and ZongMu to give autonomous vehicles human-like sight
CSIRO’s Data61 and Chinese firm ZongMu Technology are developing technology that will help overcome one of the biggest technical challenges in autonomous driving – giving vehicles human-like sight.
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NSW government to subsidise cyber training
The NSW government said on Monday that it will offer subsidised training in cyber security for the first time to address a critical shortage in skills in this area.
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Telstra opens 5G Innovation Centre
Telstra on Monday opened an innovation centre where it will test next-generation mobile technologies in Australian conditions to support the early commercial deployment of 5G services across the country.
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‘Radelaide’ gets smarter following Cisco investment
Cisco is investing $1 million in smart city technology for Adelaide to help cut traffic congestion and create the foundations for the rollout of autonomous vehicles on busy roads.
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New tech uses telco network to help scientists gaze into space
Australian scientists have uncovered a way to use the telecommunications network to synchronise radio telescopes, which help scientists peer into deep space.
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