The Mixed Reality Lab will offer a multiplicity of industries – most notably from manufacturing, mining, health and agriculture – the opportunity to build virtual replicas, or 'digital twins', of physical objects and systems, allowing components to be tested and validated in a simulated environment.

The new facility will provide the DHS with “a scientific, technically advanced and secure facility” to analyse digital evidence to aid in criminal fraud investigations.

Its remit will cover in-house investigations through the DHS’s own Taskforce Integrity operations, as well as lending its hand to other federal agencies’ anti-fraud activities, including the National Disability Insurance Agency and the Australian Federal Police.

Brisbane will play host to the new DHS forensics team, four years after the launch of its first lab in Canberra.

WA remains only one of two states in Australia, alongside South Australia, that lacks comprehensive privacy protection and information sharing laws. NSW, for instance, enacted its Government Information (Public Access) Act 2009 a decade ago, creating the all-important Office of the Information Commissioner (OIC) in the process (succeeded a year later by the Information and Privacy Commission NSW).

The Authority, first announced in October last year, will give the NZ Government the ability to screen visa-waiver travellers offshore for border and immigration anomalies before gaining entry to the country.

“[When] people don’t have to apply for visas, we only learn about them once they are en route to New Zealand,” the Government said on its announcement of the eTA scheme last year. “We are unable to screen these travellers in advance for border and immigration risks and have a reduced ability to make entering New Zealand smoother and faster as technology evolves.”

The role extends the Chief Strategy role previously held by JB Rousselot, incorporating an all-important transformation component. Rousselot announced he will step down from his role in October after six years at NBN.

Rousselot held a number of senior positions at the company, serving as chief strategy officer, chief network operations officer, and head of strategy and transformation across his half-decade tenure at NBN Co.

Developed over a three-year public consultation process, the TDIF serves as a national standard for digital identity, setting “rules and requirements” for organisations that employ a digital identity validation system.

The launch of the whole-of-government digital ID recovery service, developed by not-for-profit identity and cyber support service IDCARE, marks the NSW Government’s first tangible step to meeting a core commitment from its 2018 Cyber Security Strategy – namely, to support customers whose identities have been compromised as a result of a cyber breach.  
 
The partnership deal will provide all NSW Government departments, agencies and customers with direct access to IDCARE's data recovery and support service. 
 

Beating out a rival bid from Accenture, IBM's 18-month, $95.5 million deal is just the first phase of an extensive multi-year project to “modernise” and “optimise” the DoD's information systems. 

Minister for Government Services Stuart Robert has given Hoffman just six weeks to deliver a comprehensive strategy for the new all-in-one citizen services offering. 

Research conducted by the DST’s biometrics team sought a new method to enhance facial recognition algorithms for use in "adverse environments", such as poorly lit alleyways and distances over 250 metres.

The algorithm can be also be tweaked interactively to adjust for changing environmental conditions.

“As the user moves the sliders the output will be updated in real-time, allowing a tailoring of the algorithm to get the best results for a particular environment," the DST revealed in a statement.

A first for Victoria, the project, to be headed by the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Spatial Data Infrastructures and Land Administration (CSDILA), will collaborate with various industry and research bodies to collect, manage, and visualise complex digital information on cities and infrastructures. CSDILA's first assignment will be to digitally map the Fishermans Bend area – a 1.5km² (480 hectare) precinct directly adjacent to Melbourne's CBD, considered Australia's largest urban renewal area.

By contrast, the ANAO commended ASC and the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) for their “effective” cyber risk management practices, having proactively implemented controls within their critical systems which fully align with the Australian Government Information Security Manual. The RBA also went a step further than the Manual's recommendations, deploying machine learning and analytics tools to spot cyber threats.

The Government has pledged NZ$8 million to implement its revised cybersecurity strategy, alongside an extra NZ$9.3 million allocation to support the country's national cybersecurity response centre, CERT NZ.

“Our cyber security system is maturing. New institutions like CERT NZ have been established and all our government agencies with cyber security responsibilities are building significant connections across the system, both domestically and internationally,” the report said.

The project, known as Advanced Connected Vehicles Victoria (ACV²), will leverage artificial intelligence to monitor VicRoad’s traffic camera system and identify potential hazards, transmitting real-time notifications to a vehicle’s dashboard over Telstra’s 4G mobile network.

As machine learning (ML) technologies increasingly pervade Australia's public agencies and private enterprises, the CSIRO has acknowledged the potential vulnerability of ML algorithms to adversarial attack – with malicious agents triggering small, carefully designed changes to trick its algorithm into reaching fake conclusions or incorrect predictions.