Smart infrastructure starts with data

COLLECTING and managing data is a key component of the infrastructure information revolution. How data is stored and accessed is a question that is vital to the productivity gains that smart infrastructure can bring.

Tomorrow, the Infrastructure and Communications Committee will meet with representatives of the National Archives of Australia.

In its submission, National Archives highlights how Smart ICT is transforming government and industry business models, resulting in the creation and collection of large volumes of data.

Smart ICT technologies include data analytics, optimisation, modelling and software systems, networked sensors, mobile device integration, and new ways of gathering data.

According to National Archives, “Data provides new insights into how infrastructure investments are made, how infrastructure is developed and deployed, maintained and used, what future infrastructure demands might be and where efficiencies might be gained. It also ensures the accountability of government and industry decision-making.”

Committee Chairman Jane Prentice MP (Ryan, Qld) said that collection, storage and accessibility of data have been identified as vital components in the development of smart infrastructure.

“The Committee’s role is to identify what government and industry can do to ensure data is collected and made available in forms that are useful and enduring, and that the data component of infrastructure lasts as long as the steel and concrete it supports,” Mrs Prentice said.

Hearing details

Date: Wednesday, 16 September 2015

Time: 8:00 am–9:00 am

Witness: National Archives of Australia

Venue: Committee Room 1R3, Parliament House, Canberra

The public hearing will be webcast live at http://www.aph.gov.au/live

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