Julian Bajkowski

Senior public servants rarely shed tears in public, yet several had trouble concealing their emotions when Australian Department of Immigration, Multiculturism and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) outgoing chief information officer Cheryl Hannah took the stage at a government IT conference in Canberra last week.

Australia's federal government CIO, Ann Steward, has used her first public speech to make all the right political noises and warn government CIOs and IT managers they must clean up their own backyards and learn to share infrastructure with their peers without quarreling.

E-Health initiatives have medicos fuming over time-consuming software and parents traumatized over automatic rebates that not only don't arrive but disrupt childcare arrangements. Parents applying for automatic rebates from Medicare-funded childhood immunizations are out of pocket and chasing paper, as relations between the medical lobby and government over the implementation of eHealth initiatives sink to a new low.

After a month-long campaign to find out from Australia's Immigration Department the source of temporary IT workers coming into the country, Computerworld Australia has finally obtained the figures for the countries of origin. Australian Department of Immigration Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) records show that IT workers from India currently account for almost half of all temporary, skilled ICT visas issued into Australia -- more than double the number of visas issued to the next country down the list, the U.K. for 2004/2005.

Computing professionals permanently migrating to Australia are the nation's single largest source of skilled migration, again raising serious questions about how the Department of Immigration Multiculturalism and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) calculates its permanent migration targets and temporary skilled visa numbers.

As the Commonwealth Bank and its big four peers contemplate offshoring IT to India, a Sydney-based banking systems vendor almost universally snubbed by the local financial sector has added another Indian bank to its client list.

A blistering speech by Australian Health Minister Tony Abbott has shocked the IT health community and caused a bitter parliamentary rift over whether Australia's electronic health records should be held on a single massive database.

The Australian Communications Authority (ACA) is going for its first public collar under the Spam Act putting a Perth man before the Federal Court on July 20 for allegedly distributing 56 million unsolicited e-mails and harvesting people's e-mail addresses.