Senator Kate Lundy did this video to launch the new Australian Agriculture Natural Resource Online website as she couldn’t participate in person due to parliamentary duties.
Transcript
Hi. I’m Senator Kate Lundy and I’m really pleased to be able to official launch the wonderful AANRO website. I’m really sorry I can’t be there in person but the Senate is sitting today and I have been unable to get the requisite leave to be able to get down there in person.
That said it is still a great opportunity for me to talk about this initiative. There’s nothing I like more than seeing a fantastic Gov 2.0 initiative launched. It’s even better when I get to launch it myself, and I’d like to start by congratulating everyone that’s involved in this online portal.
It is going to change the life and work experience of the researchers involved in this space and can I say the involvement of some 40 agencies makes it quite a logistic achievement as well.
One of the reasons I’m so impressed by this portal is that it really engages with a whole series of very important principles relating to openness, transparency and focus on the individuals being able to access a wide range of information.
And these principles include trying to leverage the power of the Internet for a collaborative environment and where better a place to start than a research field as important as climate change.
I think we spend a lot of time talking about collaboration and innovation online. It’s rare that we get to see such an exemplary example of a website that achieves this in real terms. And I think that the result will be that the quality of research, the capacity to collaborate and therefore the outcomes will be that much stronger, that much more innovative and that much more on the leading edge on this kind of important research.
It’s also wonderful to see some of the core principles of open government being deployed. Open standards and certainly open metadata standards, the use of geospatial data and geocoding and also the ability to aggregate data in the way that you have. Again going back to how many agencies are involved this is proof that collaboration across agencies can work and again I acknowledge the effort that this must have taken to get everyone on board for this particular initiative.
The proposal itself I think takes a leadership role in its own right. Other organisations, other areas of research will look at this initiative and see how it’s done. In this way they will in turn innovate with their own ideas. But you’ve done it first in a very big way. Pulling together so much data in a way that researchers can use it effectively.
So finally I’d just like to once again congratulate everybody involved. The Australian Agriculture Natural Resource Online website is a genuine Gov 2.0 innovation, and is a leader now in how the Australian Government can go about doing things new and differently. And truly leveraging the power of the Internet and more importantly the power of the people who can use this resource to further their particular area of research.
So congratulations to all, I officially launch the AANRO website. Thank you.
