TAFE NSW, NESA land tech funding in state budget
TAFE NSW and the NSW Education Standards Authority join NSW Police as big winners of technology-related funding in this year’s state budget. The state government unveiled a $342.7 million “essential capital” package for TAFE NSW, which it said provides “ongoing funding certainty” for several programs of work. One of these programs is the TAFE digital […]
How NAB unwound Teradata’s ‘tentacles’ to decommission it
NAB has detailed its 2023 Teradata decommissioning publicly for the first time, revealing how the data team rebuffed pressure to build a ‘like’ replacement, and its surprise discovery of “payments and lending processes” running inside Teradata instead of the core banking system. Image credit: Joanna Gurry/LinkedIn. The bank migrated data and “use cases” for that […]
SA Water plans ‘once-in-a-generation’ core technology uplift
SA Water is embarking on a multi-year IT transformation program focused on redesigning and modernising its core systems. Elise Vervetjes (SA Water) Known as the Core Systems Capability Transformation (CSCT) program, the six-year project will focus on replacing or “significantly upgrading” several ageing systems, including finance, asset management and CRM, among others. Speaking to iTnews, […]
WhatsApp banned on US House of Representatives devices
Meta Platforms’ WhatsApp messaging service has been banned from all US House of Representatives devices, according to a memo sent to all House staff. The notice said the “Office of Cybersecurity has deemed WhatsApp a high risk to users due to the lack of transparency in how it protects user data, absence of stored data […]
Victoria’s first government tech chief steps down
Victoria’s inaugural whole-of-government technology leader Luke Halliday has departed after three years. Halliday joined Digital Victoria in 2022 as its chief technology officer and was tasked with modernising government services and leading IT transformation initiatives. In 2023, his role transitioned to the newly formed Department of Government Services (DGS), which absorbed many of Digital Victoria’s […]
Insurer Aflac investigating possible data leak
Health and life insurer Aflac said it is investigating a breach on its US network that may have exposed customers’ personal information, making it the latest insurance provider to be targeted in a cyberattack. Aflac said the attack was identified on June 12 and carried out by a sophisticated cybercrime group. An Aflac spokesperson told […]
AT&T’s US$177m data breach settlement wins US court approval
A US judge granted preliminary approval to a US$177 million ($273 million) settlement that resolves lawsuits against AT&T over breaches in 2024 that exposed personal information belonging to tens of millions of the telecom company’s customers. US District Judge Ada Brown in Dallas said in a ruling that the class-action settlement was fair and reasonable. […]
WA Police Force to spend $30.8m on IT ‘optimisation’
The Western Australia Police Force will invest $30.8 million over four years in a wide-ranging ICT overhaul, as revealed in the 2025–26 WA State Budget. The initiative, dubbed the ICT Optimisation Program, will see an estimated $2.8 million spent in 2024–25 [pdf], with the remaining $28 million spread evenly over the subsequent four years. The […]
Australian Red Cross adopts data mesh strategy powered by Fabric
The Australian Red Cross is in the final stages of adopting a data mesh approach using Microsoft Fabric following a “false start” with a traditional centralised data lake model. The not-for-profit organisation began rolling out Microsoft Purview as its enterprise data platform during its multi-year transformation in 2023. However, it shifted course following the release […]
ASD signs $70 million AWS cloud contract
The Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) has signed a $70-million deal with Amazon Web Services, bringing the cloud provider’s renegotiated government-wide deal to around $364 million in total value. The new contract dwarfs the $6.3 million combined value of ASD’s previous 13 contracts with AWS, which date back to 2017, and come as AWS develops a Top […]