News

What lies below? Drones will tell us, definitively 

While Australians were celebrating the arrival of 2021, off the coast of eastern Australia the Schmidt Ocean Institute’s research vessel Falkor was busy mapping the seabed with a drone for a hugely ambitious global project, Seabed 2030, to produce a definitive...

WA invests in graphite manufacturing facility

The Western Australian government has granted $2 million to young company International Graphite which plans the state’s first micronising and graphite foil manufacturing facility for the former coal mining...

COVIDSafe report missing the one thing that matters

Like the villain in a bad horror movie, COVIDSafe refuses to die. It has been a staggering fall from grace for the contact tracing app, heralded as the “ticket”...

WA services minister vows to put people first

Western Australia’s new services and ICT minister Don Punch has vowed to keep citizens at the centre of the state’s rapidly transforming services program and to work more constructively...

Govt looks to new social media crackdown

The federal government will release draft legislation within weeks to further crackdown on social media firms, with a focus on improving transparency around the handling of user data. Representatives...

Gig Guide: Victoria poaches new digital chief

The Victorian government has poached Services Australia’s chief information officer to run its new centralised IT services entity Digital Victoria, while consulting giant Deloitte has hoovered up more high...

AI recognised as inventor in landmark case

An Australian Court has ruled that a machine can be named as the inventor of a patent. The world-first decision answers a key legal question being tested in several...

Cloud giants’ security a ‘deep concern’ to govt

Home Affairs Secretary Michael Pezzullo says government has serious concerns with the security posture of global cloud computing giants like Amazon and Microsoft, and warned tightening data sovereignty requirements...

Education embarks on $4m cyber probe

The Department of Education, Skills and Employment has handed more than $4 million worth of contracts to local firms to probe its cyber defences this year, as part of...

Q-CTRL and Sydney Uni in quantum control advance

Researchers at Sydney University and quantum control startup Q-CTRL have detailed a new way to identify sources of error in quantum computers using machine learning techniques which they say...

Govt releases overdue COVIDSafe app report

Fewer than 800 people who tested positive for coronavirus in Australia had the COVIDsafe app and shared its data for contact tracing, according to a long-overdue government report into...

Don Punch on WA’s innovation priorities

Western Australia’s new Innovation Minister Don Punch wants more IP kept in the state, government services reshaped around citizen needs, and to grow the local ICT sector through state...

BYD arrives to heat up local e-bus market

A number of companies are now lining up in a race to secure major orders for electric buses from states such as New South Wales determined to electrify their...