Biosirt Blog October 2010

The National Coordination Team

Who you gonna call?

Matthew Tant Project Officer

I am responsible for many things across the BioSIRT program. Financial management is a large component of my role.

There are important responsibilities that come with managing public monies and we are constantly scrutinised.  I am also responsible for general administration for the team including recruitment, ministerial correspondence and Questions On Notice.  Currently, I provide the secretariat for the National BioSIRT Standards Committee which has brought me up to speed with the work of the National BioSIRT program.

More recently, I am reviewing the User Help Text for version 2.0 of BioSIRT.  This will make the Administrator training I’m booked in to do in December a breeze!

Nazre Sobhan National BioSIRT Development Manager

I manage the BioSIRT application versions development and release and the major contract with the third party supplier of IT services for the BioSIRT application, that is Spatial Vision (SV).

I also coordinate the resolution of application issues/enhancements submitted by Administrators through our Issue Manager on GovDex.

Currently, I provide the NBDC Secretariat which keeps me pretty busy and up to date with happenings with the BioSIRT program.

NBSC Update

The NBSC met in Brisbane in October.

Rupert Woods, the manager of The Australian Wildlife Health Network is a national initiative of the Australian Government managed under the Wildlife Exotic Disease Preparedness Program, delivered a presentation. AWHN have committed to using BioSIRT as the platform for the New electronic Wildlife Health Information System (NeWHIS), and the presentation covered the background, aspirations and forthcoming work to realise the project.

James Watson from the Australian Animal Health Laboratory gave a presentation on the Australian Biosecurity Intelligence Network (ABIN) Sample Tracking and Reporting System (STARS) proof of concept project. The project aims to have one Laboratory Information System online by the end of the calendar year. Phase III of the STARS project aims to link BioSIRT to STARS. Steve McMahon from ABIN gave an update on ABIN, revisting it mission and the current Proof of Concept projects and what they hope to achieve.

The release package for the National Fruit Fly Surveillance template was approved and is now loaded on the National Reference Library on GovDex for jurisdictions to use.

The NBSC was briefed on materials for Administrator training which have been updated for BioSIRT version 2 and two Advanced Administrator training modules - BioSIRT Coordinator in an Emergency Response and Administrator Oversight. These are available on GovDex.

It was a great opportunity to catch up with members and many thanks to QLD for hosting.

Spatial@Gov2010

Marg Coonan-Jones recently attended the two-day Spatial@Gov conference in Canberra. This was the second Spatial@Gov conference and included the APSEA award night.

General themes and observations from the conference were:

• Impact of the new Freedom of Information Act.
• Web 2.0 –include this or get left in the dust.
• Business Intelligence software is more commonplace to link disparate data that is in many forms.
• The term ‘spatial’ is being replaced with ‘location-based’.

International standards are increasing – Open Geospatial Consortium are interested in biosecurity standards

The Application

NBDC Update

BioSIRT application version development is progressing with the oversight of the NBDC. There is a busy time ahead for the NBDC and NCT members. Some milestones of BioSIRT v2.1 Development, Implementation and Release Project follow.

The NBDC endorsed the Project Plan on 7 October 2010. The Statement of Work was then exchanged with the Contractor, SV. On 19 November, SV will complete development and testing and deploy BioSIRT v2.1 to National Test Server. The NBDC Development Working Group, composed of jurisdictional testers and supported by the NCT, will then undertake User Acceptance Testing ending on 3 December.

By 17 December 2010, after completing release package testing, the NCT is scheduled to provide the v2.1 release package to jurisdictions. The NCT will then notify that the NBDC that project has been completed with a Project Closure Report expected in January 2011.

Enrol now for Administrator Training

BioSIRT Admin Training will be delivered in Perth on the 7-9 December. Any interested participants can contact their NBSC representative to enroll under the new training course page on GovDex or phone (02) 6272 5837 or email BioSIRT.

The two new modules for Advanced Administrator training, Administrator Oversight and BioSIRT coordinator in an Emergency Response will be delivered in Brisbane on 1 December 2010. This is a course for BioSIRT administrators.

Training

At the invitation of Biosecurity Queensland the NCT Training and Communications officer assisted at a BioSIRT Workshop in Cairns which delivered user training on their routine Asian Honey Bee workspace and their General Surveillance Plant workspace.

It was a great opportunity to get together with Queensland BioSIRT users and provide customized training on the templates that they use every day to enter data, including helping them understand the work flow and the flow of data through BioSIRT. This is the way of the future for user training and from all reports it was very well received. Thanks to BQ for the invitation.

David Cowland-Cooper from NAQS and Rochelle Boyce-Bacon, National Fruit Fly Project Manager with the NCT, were also present. David gave a demonstration and training on the newly approved national template for Fruit Fly Surveillance. The NAQS staff who are currently involved in fruit fly surveillance also attended and offered their feedback.

What is going on in South Australia?

This year’s locust program has provided a great opportunity for SA to use BioSIRT in a live response. Over twenty people have been trained to use BioSIRT and have so far entered over 1100 locust reports from a variety of sources. To do this South Australia is using part of the Australian Plague Locust template initially developed by Chris McIvor and Stuart McPherson from NSW. This was modified by Russell Elliott from PIRSA to match our current operations. BioSIRT is being used to record and manage locust reports from the initial phone call or fax through to targets being sprayed and notification letters being sent to land holders. BioSIRT has performed well under the circumstances and is being accessed from three locations, these being the Local Control Centres in Orroroo (approx 263 km from the Adelaide CBD), Loxton (252 km from CBD) and the State Control Centre at Glenside (5 km).

The server is located in Grenfell Street, Adelaide. Access speeds have been good from all three control centres, even over NextG internet and VPN. Over the coming months we are also keen to start using BioSIRT for more routine work. To this end, we are hoping to have the National Fruit Fly Surveillance template installed and more staff trained during the coming months.