Digital Transformation in Government Insight #35:
Government standouts at the IoT Awards

What are the IoT Awards?

The Australian IoT Awards are run by the IoT Hub, which is a website dedicated to the Internet of Things (IoT) in Australia. This is the first year that the Awards have been run.

The IoT Awards called for nominations in five categories — Government (e.g. smart cities), Primary Industry (e.g. mining, agriculture), Secondary Industry (e.g. industrial), Professional Services (e.g. healthcare) and Education & Research.

A little bit of context...the IoT

If you’re across the IoT skip this bit...if not, here’s a really quick rundown. The IoT refers to a collection of physical and virtual objects that all connect and communicate with one another. The IoT enables high-tech developments such as driverless cars, ‘smart’ cities, robot-controlled factories and self-managing buildings. It’s got a lot of potential here in Australia, in terms of changing our way of life and its economic impact.

There’s also a peak body set up, the IoT Alliance Australia (the Alliance is also currently running its first IoT award, the IoT Impact Award).

You can read more about the IoT and its potential impact in our IoT blog from last year.

The government finalists

So, the government finalists for the Australian IoT Awards are:

• Wyndham City Council for its WynLens project, which allows council stakeholders to examine future works and existing infrastructure using mixed reality technology. Specifically, the project incorporates holographic images to provide a clearer representation of a building/design. Read more about this project.

• Ipswich Council for its LoRaWAN network, which is being set up for its smart city rollout. (LoRaWAN stands for Long Range Wide Area Network and is a type of network that will allow a host of devices to communicate with each other, thereby enabling IoT.) See the Ipswich Council’s article for more information.

• Object Consulting set up internet-enabled energy monitors in 300 low-income households (this was an initiative from the Low-Income Energy Efficiency Program, which was funded by the Federal Department of Industries and Science). Energy bills for the 300 households decreased when compared to a control group. Read more about this project.

• Waverley Municipal Council for its internet-connected smart bins that self-compact (using solar power) and send an SMS message when they’re full. Read the Waverley Council article on the bins for more information.

The winner

The winners were announced at an awards ceremony in the Gold Coast on 8 June. Congratulations to the winner of the Government category, Waverley Municipal Council, for its smart bins; and to the overall winner, The Yield, for an oyster-farming IoT project.

For a full list of winners please see the IoT Hub announcement.

Salsa Digital’s take

As we highlighted in our IoT blog last year, the IoT has a huge potential here in Australia, especially in government through smart cities and a range of other projects. The finalists above are great examples of some of the government applications of the IoT.

The IoT Hub’s Awards (and the forthcoming IoT Alliance Award) are the first of what we’re sure will become a thriving area in Australia...no doubt we’ll be covering these awards next year!