
NICTA (formerly named National ICT Australia Ltd) was Australia's
Information and Communications Technology
Information and communications technology (ICT) is an extensional term for information technology (IT) that stresses the role of unified communications and the integration of telecommunications (telephone lines and wireless signals) and computer ...
(ICT) Research Centre of Excellence and is now known as CSIRO's Data61. The term "Centre of Excellence" is common
marketing
Marketing is the act of acquiring, satisfying and retaining customers. It is one of the primary components of Business administration, business management and commerce.
Marketing is usually conducted by the seller, typically a retailer or ma ...
terminology used by some Australian government organisations for titles of science research groups. NICTA's role was to pursue potentially economically significant ICT related research for the
Australian economy.
NICTA was structured around groups focused primarily on pure research and implementing those ideas within business teams. When its funding ceased, NICTA merged with ''Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation'' (
CSIRO
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is an Australian Government agency that is responsible for scientific research and its commercial and industrial applications.
CSIRO works with leading organisations arou ...
) to form a new entity named CSIRO's
Data61 on 28 August 2015.
History
In 2002, NICTA won a competitive selection process to be established as Australia's national centre of excellence in information and communications technology (ICT) research, under an
Australian Government
The Australian Government, also known as the Commonwealth Government or simply as the federal government, is the national executive government of Australia, a federal parliamentary constitutional monarchy. The executive consists of the pr ...
policy initiative to promote science and innovation called
Backing Australia's Ability. The creation of the centre was intended to address a formerly identified weakness in long-term strategic ICT research in Australia. NICTA was officially opened on 27 February 2003.
The founding members of NICTA were the
University of New South Wales
The University of New South Wales (UNSW) is a public research university based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It was established in 1949.
The university comprises seven faculties, through which it offers bachelor's, master's and docto ...
,
Australian National University
The Australian National University (ANU) is a public university, public research university and member of the Group of Eight (Australian universities), Group of Eight, located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton, A ...
, the
Government of New South Wales
The Government of New South Wales, also known as the NSW Government, is the executive state government of New South Wales, Australia. The government comprises 11 portfolios, led by a ministerial department and supported by several agencies. Th ...
(NSW), and the
Australian Capital Territory Legislative Assembly
The Legislative Assembly for the Australian Capital Territory, known in short as the ACT Legislative Assembly, is the unicameral legislature of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT). It sits in the Legislative Assembly Building, Canberra, Leg ...
(ACT). NICTA later acquired other university and government partners. In January 2003,
The University of Sydney
The University of Sydney (USYD) is a public university, public research university in Sydney, Australia. Founded in 1850, it is the oldest university in both Australia and Oceania. One of Australia's six sandstone universities, it was one of the ...
became a partner. In July 2004, the
Victoria State Government and
The University of Melbourne became partners. In January 2005, the
Queensland Government
The Queensland Government is the state government of Queensland, Australia, a Parliament, parliamentary constitutional monarchy. Government is formed by the party or coalition that has gained a majority in the Queensland Legislative Assembly, ...
, the
University of Queensland
The University of Queensland is a Public university, public research university located primarily in Brisbane, the capital city of the Australian state of Queensland. Founded in 1909 by the Queensland parliament, UQ is one of the six sandstone ...
,
Griffith University
Griffith University is a public university, public research university in South East Queensland on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of Australia. The university was founded in 1971, but was not officially opened until 1975. Griffith ...
, and the
Queensland University of Technology
The Queensland University of Technology (QUT) is a public university, public research university located in the city of Brisbane in Queensland, Australia. It has two major campuses, a modern city campus in Gardens Point, Brisbane, Gardens Point ...
became partners. The
University of Melbourne
The University of Melbourne (colloquially known as Melbourne University) is a public university, public research university located in Melbourne, Australia. Founded in 1853, it is Australia's second oldest university and the oldest in the state ...
and the
Victoria State Government became members in May 2011.
Since foundation NICTA created more than six new companies, collaborated on joint projects with a range of ICT industries, developed a substantial technology and intellectual property portfolio and supplied new expertise to the ICT industry through a NICTA-supported PhD program.
Australian Federal Government funding of NICTA was due to expire in June 2016 and there was a concerted effort to secure a merger with
CSIRO
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is an Australian Government agency that is responsible for scientific research and its commercial and industrial applications.
CSIRO works with leading organisations arou ...
. This merger was to be with the CSIRO Digital Productivity Flagship and there was the potential for up to 200 redundancies due to funding cuts to both organisations. This ''merger'' was realised in due course as the option of last resort as NICTA lost all Federal funding and CSIRO had significant cuts.
Duane Zitzner (who replaced
Hugh F. Durrant-Whyte as CEO in December 2014 after Durrant-Whyte resigned suddenly due to a disagreement with the NICTA Board) left NICTA at the end of May 2015 in the hope that the merger with CSIRO would be completed by the end of June 2015. As of August 2015, the merger had not been finalized and Professor Robert (Bob) Williamson (who also headed NICTA's Machine Learning Research Group) was acting and terminal CEO.
NICTA formally merged with CSIRO to form a new entity called CSIRO's
Data61 on 28 August 2015. Mr Adrian Turner was appointed to head the merged unit. He reported to a Deputy Chief Executive of CSIRO and had the positional equivalence of a CSIRO CEO.
Organisation
NICTA research was focused in five scale Research Groups:
*
Software Systems
*
Mobile Systems
*
Machine Learning
Machine learning (ML) is a field of study in artificial intelligence concerned with the development and study of Computational statistics, statistical algorithms that can learn from data and generalise to unseen data, and thus perform Task ( ...
*
Computer Vision
Computer vision tasks include methods for image sensor, acquiring, Image processing, processing, Image analysis, analyzing, and understanding digital images, and extraction of high-dimensional data from the real world in order to produce numerical ...
*
Optimisation
NICTA focused on potential economic opportunities that related to the use of information and communication technology. NICTA was primarily funded by government and engaged in additional industry partnerships to augment its base funding. These included start-up corporations or other Australian government funds.
Four NICTA business teams were responsible for determining potential commercial or
economic
An economy is an area of the Production (economics), production, Distribution (economics), distribution and trade, as well as Consumption (economics), consumption of Goods (economics), goods and Service (economics), services. In general, it is ...
outcomes in the following domains for ICT:
*
Broadband
In telecommunications, broadband or high speed is the wide-bandwidth (signal processing), bandwidth data transmission that exploits signals at a wide spread of frequencies or several different simultaneous frequencies, and is used in fast Inter ...
and the
digital economy
*
Infrastructure
Infrastructure is the set of facilities and systems that serve a country, city, or other area, and encompasses the services and facilities necessary for its economy, households and firms to function. Infrastructure is composed of public and pri ...
,
transport
Transport (in British English) or transportation (in American English) is the intentional Motion, movement of humans, animals, and cargo, goods from one location to another. Mode of transport, Modes of transport include aviation, air, land tr ...
and
logistics
Logistics is the part of supply chain management that deals with the efficient forward and reverse flow of goods, services, and related information from the point of origin to the Consumption (economics), point of consumption according to the ...
*
Security
*
Environment
Also, the Engineering and Technology Development team helps to productize research outcomes.
Locations
NICTA had over 700 people (half of whom were graduate students) spread across four cities in
Australia
Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...
at its peak in 2012. This was drastically reduced as first the Victoria state government
and then the Federal Government defunded it.
*
Australian Technology Park Laboratory and Headquarters,
Sydney
Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...
* Neville Roach Research Laboratory, Kensington, Sydney
*
Canberra
Canberra ( ; ) is the capital city of Australia. Founded following the Federation of Australia, federation of the colonies of Australia as the seat of government for the new nation, it is Australia's list of cities in Australia, largest in ...
Research Laboratory
*
Victoria Research Laboratory
*
Queensland
Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...
Research Laboratory
The Neville Roach Laboratory was moved from its standalone location onto the
University of New South Wales
The University of New South Wales (UNSW) is a public research university based in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. It was established in 1949.
The university comprises seven faculties, through which it offers bachelor's, master's and docto ...
main campus in July 2015 as a cost saving measure.
In addition, NICTA collaborated with many Australian universities and research organisations, and had smaller numbers of staff on various non-partner (and non-member) university campuses around the country.
Funding
NICTA was primarily funded by the Australian Government as represented by the
Department of Communications and the
Australian Research Council. NICTA also received funding from industry and several state governments, and was supported by its member and partner universities.
References
External links
*
{{Authority control
Organizations established in 2002
2002 establishments in Australia
Research institutes in Australia
Information technology research institutes
Technology companies of Australia
Organisations based in Sydney