BioSIRT Log - June 2010

Collaboration

Fruit Fly Rollout 2010

The Fruit Fly Rollout is moving along at a steady pace. All jurisdictions have now provided trap site data and geospatial information and these will be loaded onto the DAFF server in the next few days. Our technical team is working on an extract/transform/load process that will allow the information to be provided back to each jurisdiction in a format that will allow them to upload onto their local instances. Four jurisdictions have been trained in the routine surveillance use of the fruit fly template and are in various stages of deployment. Our next big challenge will be collecting historical data (from 1 July 2009) from each jurisdiction.

National Fruit Fly Rollout: AOI upload

Automated upload of fruit fly trapsite AOIs (Areas Of Interest) is a key component of the National Fruit Fly rollout. With some Jurisdictions having several thousand trap sites, the upload will avoid errors and time delays associated with manual entry and hence assist adoption of BioSIRT for recording fruit fly trap data.

All Jurisdictions have sent spreadsheets to NCT listing locations of fruit fly trap sites, with additional info about trap types and what sort of tree they are hanging in.

The NCT has transformed this data into a format suitable for Jurisdictions to upload to their CRIS 'AOITARGETPOINT' and BioSIRT 'AOI' database tables. At a national level, a spatial map layer will show all trapsites. The NCT has developed a step-by-step protocol that each Jurisdiction can use to load their AOI data. It uses the DataPump application written by Tim Beattie (Biosecurity Queensland).

Jurisdictions will manually create ‘trap run’ AOIs (lines), which are sequences of trap sites (points). Collection events will be recorded against trap runs. Collection data can either be entered manually or from spreadsheets using the existing data upload button in the BioSIRT observation form.

In a future edition of BLog, we will discuss aggregation of fruit fly data.

Recruitment

Rochelle Christian has been appointed acting Program Manager for the BioSIRT National Coordination team during the recruitment process. It is expected that the vacancy will be filled as soon as possible.

Request for Tender (RFT)

On 4 June 2010, the NCT published the Request for Tender (RFT) for the provisions of ‘BioSIRT Hosting, Support and Development Services’ on AusTender for a period of 3 years with the possibility of renewal of the contracted services for another three years (Tender No. DAFF 173/10). It is an open tender to procure restructured, long-term contractual services for BioSIRT application replacing the old warranted contractual term.

The RFT has two categories of requirements: the first category, ‘support services’ includes:

1. BioSIRT hosting and support
2. remedial maintenance of BioSIRT application issues
3. implementation and management of version releases.

The second category, ‘additional services’ includes:

1. crystal report development
2. data migration and conversion
3. application enhancement and miscellaneous development services.  

The closing date for tenders is Friday 2 July 2010 followed by the selection of and negotiation with preferred Tenderer continuing from mid July to early August. As per published schedule, a new service provider is expected to commence in August 2010.

The Application

The National BioSIRT Development Committee has set up a working group to pursue the enhancements for the next release of BioSIRT. The group has representatives from multiple jurisdictions and members are reviewing all enhancements lodged up to early June.

The approach of this working group is to use a multicriteria decision analysis to determine the best combination of enhancements for the release. The group is receiving assistance from the Australian Centre for Excellence in Risk Analysis in customising the approach for our needs.

The agreed enhancements chosen will support one or more of the objectives laid out for the future direction of BioSIRT. 

Training

There are ten fresh new BioSIRT Administrators out in jurisdictions ready, willing and able.

Administrator training was hosted by the BioSIRT NCT and delivered in Canberra on the 11th, 12th and 13th of May. There were representatives from Queensland, South Australia and the BioSIRT NCT.

The next round of training will be in Darwin on the 3rd, 4th and 5th of August. If you have any nominations please call 02 6272 3933 and ask to speak to Kymme Hoadley.

We have a new course under development. We are piloting the Advance Administrator Course, covering reports, mapping and administration of the Administrator in August to a small group so that feedback can be sought to ensure a rigorous course is developed. Delivery is planned for later this year for any interested Administrators. Stay tuned!

Farewell

Debra Riddell

“Are you sure you wish to log out of BioSIRT?”

The answer was, Yes.

On 21 May 2010 we farewelled Debra Riddell from the BioSIRT NCT.

Debra has worked on the BioSIRT National Coordination Team as the Program Manger for almost three years. She made a fantastic contribution to the program and worked hard to deliver to our jurisdictions.

Debra has decided to take some time to lie on a beach, travel to some exotic locations and spend some quality time with her family.

We wish her all the best.

What’s going on in Queensland?

There is movement aplenty in Queensland with their BioSIRT Implementation project.

This month Queensland has gone to a complete production server for BioSIRT with state wide CRIS loaded. This means they are ready to load templates and populate with live data.

On their Test instance, Queensland have loaded a response template for Asian HoneyBee (AHB) and will now move the template to the production server and start populating with data collected in far north Queensland during the response. Queensland also intend to use its production server to load historical data from a small response to Hendra virus (HeV) conducted in May this year. They will use these data to test their locally produced HeV template, post response.

Queensland have also undertaken a major project to actively migrate four prioritised routine systems for surveillance activities that currently exist in various forms. The project will migrate the functionality from the other systems and where possible, the historical data into BioSIRT, then provide specific training for those staff involved.  The rest of the Implementation project will focus on building Queensland’s emergency response capacity within BioSIRT and continuing to migrate existing systems.

There has been an enormous amount of work that has come together to achieve this outcome.

If you would like to feature what your Jurisdiction is up to in the BLog please call 02 6272 3933 and ask to speak to Kymme Hoadley.