I am delighted to congratulate the Award winners of this year’s Australian Government ICT Awards – these Awards include the Excellence in eGovernment Awards, ICT Professional of the Year Award and Government 2.0 (Gov 2.0) Innovator Award.

The Award winners were presented with their Awards at the CeBIT Australia ICT Celebration Dinner last night in Sydney. I’d like to thank Senator Kate Lundy for standing in for me and presenting the awards.

The National Library of Australia’s project Trove won the 2011 Excellence in eGovernment Award, as well as the Service Delivery Category Award.  The Trove search engine shows how Government is harnessing digital technology to improve service delivery, linking Australians to millions of resources available online, and in Australian libraries, cultural institution and research collections.

At the touch of a button Trove allows Australians to access full text books, historic newspapers, images, music, video, maps, websites, letters, archives and more. It’s also interactive. Users join together to correct details in newspapers, tag articles and add photos using Flickr.

Kym Charlton, Director of Media and Public Affairs of the Queensland Police Service, won the Gov 2.0 Innovator Award for her Gov 2.0 leadership during the devastating floods and cyclones that faced Queensland in 2010 and 2011. The Police used Facebook and Twitter to communicate urgent information to the public during the floods and cyclones. Kym was instrumental in introducing this approach.

Kym took responsibility for streaming media briefs with the Premier, the State Disaster Coordinator and other high-ranking officials live to the internet, in order to keep the community up to date and accurately informed.

The ICT Professional of the Year Award was won by the team from J6 Branch, of Headquarters Joint Operations Command in the Department of Defence. The team demonstrated superior leadership in delivering ICT support for Australian Defence Force operations in Afghanistan.

Working under extremely difficult circumstances in a challenging terrain, the team’s delivery of leading edge technology was instrumental in supporting the Australian Defence Forces’ mentoring efforts with the Afghan people, making a substantial contribution to national and international goals.

In addition to these three Award winners, the other Category Award winners for the Excellence in eGovernment Awards were:

• Applications Development – New South Wales Department of Education and Training – Essential Secondary Science Assessment Online Practical Component project;
• Geospatial – Department of Sustainability and Environment, Victoria – Positioning Regional Victoria project;
• Government 2.0 – Queensland Police Service – Social media for emergency management, communications and public relations project;
• Project Management – WorkCover Corporation, South Australia – Project Harry; and
• Service Delivery – the National Library of Australia’s discovery service ‘Trove’;

Further information about the winners and finalists initiatives is available on the Department of Finance and Deregulation website.

I would like to thank every agency that participated in the Awards, which are a tribute to the excellent work that Government does. The Awards really showcase how the Government is using digital technology to better connect with the people that we serve.