The Queensland Government has moved to open up communications on major ICT projects with the launch of a new quarterly newsletter, ICT in Focus.
Produced by the ICT Division of the Queensland Government Department of Public Works, the newsletter aims to keep the public up to date with progress in its whole-of-government information management and ICT initiatives.
“This newsletter will help explain the government’s direction, highlight our achievements and seek your input into relevant ICT matters for Queensland Government,” associate director-general Natalie MacDonald said in the introduction to the new publication.
In the first edition of the publication, the Government claimed its new whole-of-government email platform was one step closer following the signing of Phase 2 contracts for suppliers to CITEC’s Identity, Directory and Email Services (IDES) Program.
A new policy on the licensing of government information to promote its reuse had also been launched, the Government Information Licensing Framework, or as an unfortunate acronym, GILF.
The government also claimed that progress was being made in its ICT Consolidation (ICTC) initiative within CITEC. The project is aimed at building the foundation infrastructure to enable consolidation of the government’s CBD-based data centres, networks and infrastructure services to CITEC, the Queensland Government’s ICT service provider.
The Joint Contact Centre (JCC) initiative, aimed at providing the government with a disaster and business continuity service with more than 200 contact centre workstations, was also on schedule for a mid-year launch.
The launch of the publication follows an increase in the presence of Goverment 2.0 principles within the public sector, most notably at the federal level with the Finance Department’s blog.
The Department of Broadband, Communications and Digital Economy’s has also launched a Government 2.0 effort, a wiki asking for comment on the NBN Implementation Study.