Govt Agencies Sharing Info And Saving Money?

VicHealth and other state government agencies are finding that sharing information when developing an app can save money, writes Liz Tay.

Cross-jurisdictional Discussions

CeBIT Conferences/Trade Shows showcase digital IT and telecommunications solutions for home and work environments and at the recent Melbourne event VicHealth’s web communications manager Geraldine O’Sullivan reported that:

“Unnamed agencies were discussing ‘new ways of working together’..

There is dialogue occurring in a cross-jurisdictional setting to look at new ways of working together and leveraging the benefits of what’s already there..

It’s early days yet, but that conversation has started and it’s a very reasonable one to have..

VicHealth is considering sharing health-related web and mobile content with its peers in other states to extract more value from the cost of creating such data.”

‘Better Health Channel’ Mobile App Development

The developers of a VicHealth mobile app, released in September 2011 after six months work, took a ‘layered approach’ drawing together data from various sources.

They found that it was the health data that cost the most to create. The app ‘surfaced’ data which offered users advice on ‘healthy living approaches’, illnesses, conditions, treatments and first aid.

The Better Health Channel manager David Haubenschild said:

“Health information is expensive to make because you require all the different experts to be involved to make sure that all the information is absolutely reflective of latest research and clinical practice..

It doesn’t make sense that every jurisdiction has to repeat that so we’re in general talks about that being spread across other jurisdictions.”

David said that contrary to the more traditional government method of planning for around 12 months then building a monolithic system, they took ‘an opposite approach.’

IT making inroads into government thinking?