Nadia Cameron

A new report on the Australian federal government's IT outsourcing policies has given credit to the role of the Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts (DCITA) in monitoring the effectiveness of its contractors, but says the government should increase the department's scope to ensure suppliers meet Australian industry development requirements.

Storing and maintaining the mountains of scientific data Australia's Antarctic researchers generate is not a job for the faint-hearted. But keeping tabs on each and every piece of information while making it accessible to the public is the challenge the Australian Antarctic Division (AAD) Data Centre's database management team has undertaken.

Simulating the Antarctic environment may involve a wealth of scientific know-how, but for the team involved with the Tasmania Partnership for Advanced Computing (TPAC), it's also about having the most advanced and steadfast computing power at your fingertips.

The increasingly influential role of open source software as an alternative to proprietary solutions has prompted the federal government to put together a new seminar looking at the demand for open source systems across departmental agencies.

A communications protocol which would provide users with a single number for both telephony and Internet services has sparked the release of a new discussion paper by the Australian Communications Authority.

Retrieving scientific instruments moored deep in the seas off Antarctica's coast was never going to be easy. But two weeks of hide-and-seek in the polar pack by the crew of Australian research ship Aurora Australis, using technical know-how, satellite technology and good old-fashioned ingenuity, ended in success.