The Australian Government's Innovation Report

Construction time and cost can also be significantly cut because of easier transporting and lifting of the prefabricated
HySSIL panels. The panels are impact and fire resistant, and can be nailed and painted directly without
rendering.
The HySSIL technology has helped CSIRO partners enter the global construction industry and target the wall
market, whose total value is estimated at US$125 billion a year.
HySSIL wall panels are made using an energy-efficient process that does not require expensive and energyintensive
curing equipment. Coupled with the added benefits of recyclability and improved thermal efficiencies,
this technology can potentially reduce greenhouse impacts.
Smart information use
Harnessing technological aids: The Defence Science and Technology
Organisation (DSTO) is exploring different aspects of the
way in which information is used in the command and decision
processes through the Livespaces project.
The aim of this work is to harness technological aids for decisionmaking
that are intuitive to use and reduce the cognitive effort
required for human-machine and human-to-human interaction,
thus enabling decision-makers to direct their efforts to the tasks
at hand.
The Livespaces project is bringing together a range of future command
and control applications, ubiquitous computing technologies,
telepresence systems, and new and innovative human interaction
approaches in support of advanced teamwork activities. While
the focus of the work is exploring the military application of these
concepts, the work is also applicable to enabling increased collaborative
interaction in the civilian context.
Livespaces technology in use. Photo credits: DSTO
Livespaces is one part of a cognitive and social informatics research programme. Cognitive informatics explores
the application of information science and technology to enhance intelligence and computation processes in
humans. Social informatics studies the design, uses and consequences of information technologies, taking into
account their interaction with institutional and cultural contexts.
The informatics research is drawing on and extending these discipline areas to enhance the abilities of both individuals
and teams involved in sense and decision-making.
Improving the quality of health and welfare statistics: Enhancing the quality of national statistics
collections through innovative use of electronic data standard technologies has been a key priority for the
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare during 2005-06.
Data standards are crucial to data quality because they enable all those collecting, using and exchanging data
to have the same understanding of it and its meaning.
Historically data standards have been viewed in document form with relevant details manually entered into
data systems, an inefficient and potentially erroneous process. In the interest of improving this process, the
institute has enhanced its online registry of Australia’s health and welfare data standards (known as METeOR)
to enable the electronic transmission of machine-readable data standards.
This innovative development means that data systems across Australia can refer to the latest national data
standard when collecting, validating, exchanging and presenting health and welfare statistics. Over time this
will transform the way in which statistical collections are undertaken and boost data consistency and quality.
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