The majority of Australian teachers agree that using technology to help teach saves them time and brings them closer to their students, but they are also concerned that technology in the classroom causes distractions. [ + ]

The University of Adelaide is deploying a HPC system based on Lenovo's System x NeXtScale platform to help support its thousands of research staff and students. [ + ]

The WA Department of Water is replacing its legacy IT water management system with a platform based on Microsoft software being delivered by NEC Australia. [ + ]

University of Melbourne has secured a $9.1m loan from the government's Clean Energy Finance Corporation for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects. [ + ]

Angus Taylor's appointment to the Cities and Digital Transformation portfolio may be an opportunity to reinforce smart city agendas emerging as drivers for improvement of government services. [ + ]

By 2018, a third of digital government projects will treat any data as open data, according to Gartner. Research director Rick Howard outlines the steps required to move down this path. [ + ]

Governments of all flavours are seeking to improve the ways in which they interact with the public, with the aims of streamlining processes, lowering costs and avoiding duplication of effort. [ + ]

Fuji Xerox Australia has relocated its Canberra office to the Parliamentary Triangle as part of efforts to play a close role in the government's digital transformation. [ + ]

Treasury has implemented Avaya's software-defined network architecture to help its staff fulfil key roles including producing the Federal Budget. [ + ]

A trend towards growing internal skills in analytics is proving tricky as the market struggles to feed the hunger of eager big data adopters and demand rapidly outstrips supply. [ + ]

An unnamed hacker has reportedly stolen databases including the names and contact details of US FBI and Department of Homeland Security employees, and has already leaked one of the lists. [ + ]

The federal government is reportedly evaluating a deal to outsource the processing of over $50bn in Medicare, PBS and aged-care payments to a private company. [ + ]

The Federal Treasury has moved almost 1000 desktops to a virtual environment, boosting efficiency and mobility. We speak with CTO Ricardo Alberto. [ + ]

A new breed of enterprise-class, cloud-based storage platforms is offering new hope for storage-weary administrators. [ + ]

The government has announced a $1m project to upgrade the technology at Sunshine Coast Airport to better accommodate international flights. [ + ]