News & Media

Around 60 people attended the Sharing Government Data Forum in late April, with large contingents from NSW Government agencies and the research sector – universities, CSIRO and NICTA. Headline speakers included Deirdre O’Donnell, NSW Information Commissioner, Stuart Coleman of the Open Data Institute, UK and Pia Waugh, Director Gov 2.0, Federal Department of Finance.

Government agencies outlined key data initiatives currently being developed, and researchers presented examples of government data being effectively used and analysed in environmental sciences, emergency services, building data, weather, housing and modeling Australia’s geothermal energy.

Key questions addressed were how to:

• identify and prioritise high value data sets of interest to research
• investigate value the research sector can bring to use of government data
• assist in data release and use initiatives, and
• identify mechanisms to enable closer research – government collaboration.

Intersect and the NSW Department of Trade and Investment jointly hosted the forum to identify how opening NSW Government data to university research can provide value to both researchers and NSW State agencies.

Intersect will continue to engage researchers to identify government data the research sector would like access.  This will be provided to the Department of Finance and Services as they develop a pipeline of data release. Send any requests for data to researchdata@intersect.org.au

Sites of interest include: http://data.nsw.gov.au/, www.lpi.nsw.gov.au, http://www.services.nsw.gov.au/ict/

Intersect’s new supercomputer Orange has been launched by NSW Chief Scientist and Engineer Professor Mary O’Kane. Assembled by SGI and hosted at IC2, Orange will support world-class research from the universities of NSW. 

“Intersect has become an absolutely pivotal part of the State’s research infrastructure and of the State’s research”, Professor O’Kane said. “All sorts of new research has happened, as researchers in the humanities, creative arts, medical areas see what you can do with eResearch and eResearch platforms”.

 “People think of Intersect as the servant of research, providing the high computing power but I’ve seen Intersect lead people into new research areas by showing them things they can do, by somebody seeing one platform could move across to another field. So it’s actually been a creator for enabling and leading the excellence of research in NSW. It’s wonderful that this computer gives us so much increased power for eResearch in this state”, Professor O’Kane said.

Orange is funded through the Australian Research Council's Linkage Infrastructure, Equipment and Facilities (LIEF) scheme. The LIEF grant, led by the University of Sydney’s Professor Leo Radom is supplemented by investments from the University of Sydney, UNSW, UTS, Macquarie University, the University of Newcastle, the University of Wollongong, Southern Cross University and the University of New England.