Revealed: 2012 e-government award winners

Government agencies including the Bureau of Meteorology, CSIRO and Queensland Health have been named winners of Australia's 2012 e-government awards at the CeBIT conference overnight.

The awards were presented by ACT Senator Kate Lundy at an 'ICT Celebration Dinner' in Sydney, alongside private sector awards, for which winners included software-as-a-service vendor Xero.

Queensland Health’s patient information management system, ‘The Viewer’, was named the top application development effort of the year.

The agency planned to share the project’s design principles with health agencies in other states, including Western Australia.

The Bureau of Meteorology’s ‘Next Generation Forecasting and Warning System’ was named geospatial project of the year.

The $30.5 million project allows users to obtain seven-day weather forecasts for their areas. It was trialled in Victoria in 2008 and is expected to roll out to all states by 2015.

Victoria’s Country Fire Authority won the Government 2.0 award for its use of social media during major emergencies.

The authority’s digital media manager Martin Anderson was named the Government 2.0 innovator of the year for playing a “critical role” in the effort.

The CSIRO’s information management and technology team was awarded for project and program management of its Research Data Service, which aimed to facilitate the capture, description, access and retrieval of the organisation’s research data assets.

The service has boasted “thousands of searches and downloads of data” since its initial release in 2011, which the Government hoped would “lead to new and unexpected discoveries being made”.

Meanwhile, the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC)’s consumer-focused MoneySmart website was named the service delivery effort of the year.

The site was delivered in 2011 with a range of tools and advice to help Australians manage their money.

Campbelltown City Council’s infrastructure and service desk team beat teams from the federal Department of Immigration and Citizenship and Department of Defence to be named the ‘ICT Professional of the Year’.

The team was awarded for implementing a voice over IP system that allowed staff to interact with customers in a way that could be easily monitored, managed and configured.