By Dr Helen Thompson, Director of the Centre for eCommerce and Communications (CeCC) at the University of Ballarat

 

New technologies have been adopted in areas including the timely dissemination of results of field trials to support better farming decisions, member engagement and most recently the piloting and adoption of web 2.0 technologies.

 

Seeding Victoria has transitioned from managing information for environmental management projects in an ageing access database to a fully online web-based seed supply system.

 

The benefits of off-site location were recognised in the aftermath of the 2011 floods in regional Victoria.

 

New online services are also being launched to support those wanting to undertake revegetation projects.

 

Once the site of the project is selected via an online map landholders can learn about and order location appropriate seed.

 

Grains Research and Development Corporation (GRDC) has been investing in research for 20 years, but the outputs of this research are currently stored in multiple formats and not easily available for discovery and reuse.

 

GRDC has identified a clear need for enhancing current processes and as a result delivering improvements in production, sustainability and profitability across the Australian grains industry.

 

Many of the organisations that CeCC worked with were increasingly seeing the benefit of developing and improving management environments, to ensure that data is interoperable, openly accessible and discoverable and the growing volume and complexity of data had emerged as a dominant driver of change.

 

The dividends from this will include greater efficiency and effectiveness and, at a more transformational level, new approaches to tackling problems of national and global significance.

 

Cancer Australia was implementing online workflow management systems to modernise the processes associated development, publishing — online and hardcopy — dissemination and maintenance of best practice clinical care guidelines for breast cancer.

 

The Australian Tourism Accreditation Program had worked with the University of Ballarat to develop and progressively enhance an online business skilling program for SMEs in the tourism sector. Participation in this program also leads to getting the tourism accreditation ‘tick’, she said.

 

The not-for-profit sector is also leveraging online technologies to achieve a more integrated approach.

 

One example in this area is Law 4 Community, an online decision support system to assist community workers to help their clients connect with ways to address challenges they may be encountering involving the law.

 

The National Association of Community Legal Centres is another great example where social media and humour are being combined to foster sector development through the use of blogs, twitter and other social media to promote sector collaboration and knowledge sharing.

 

The University of Ballarat Technology Park principally focused on fostering and supporting the growth and development of enterprises operating in the ICT sector.

 

The park is now the largest regional technology park in Australia with $65million in capital assets and hosting 30 enterprises employing more than 1500 people.

 

Every job in the park creates another within the region. The direct and multiplier economic outputs generated are in excess of $300 million a year, with an injection of $100 million in household income.

UBTP was positioned for further growth with plans to almost double its geographic size to accommodate eight major buildings and employ more than 1500 additional people with the goal of supporting further enterprise development, research and innovation.

 

Ballarat has been fortunate to have had entrepreneurial and forward looking local leadership that has guided policy and action.

 

IBM’s commitment to the region has been significant.

 

Investment by state and local government in supporting the development and growth of the Ballarat ICT Cluster has also been important.

Activities like the ‘Get into Games’ festival build awareness of viable careers in the ICT sector.

 

Partnerships across health, education and government foster innovation through projects which focus on the application of ICT to achieve social, environmental and sustainability goals.

 

Early rollouts of the National Broadband Network in Bacchus Marsh and Ballarat surrounds will create new opportunities for technologies to be used to develop a smarter and more sustainable region, for local businesses to reach new markets, for local government to deliver services in new way and to enhance services and practices in areas including environmental management, health and education.