Systemic Infrastructure Initiative

The Systemic Infrastructure Initiative was announced by the Government of Australia in January 2001 as part of Backing Australia's Ability – An Innovation Action Plan for the Future.

The Government announced that $246 million would be allocated over five years "to upgrade the basic infrastructure of universities, such as scientific and research equipment, libraries and laboratory facilities" to support research and research training.[1]

Those eligible to apply are restricted to universities and other higher education institutions specified in Table A of the Higher Education Support Act 2003, Bond University and the University of Notre Dame Australia.[2]

Early committees

In 2002, as part of the SII funding, the Minister committed $250,000 to two committees, the Higher Education Information Infrastructure Implementation Steering Committee (HEIIAC) and Higher Education Bandwidth Advisory Committee (HEBAC). These committees were to formulae further broad projects to be considered for SII funding in the following year.

The Final Report of the Higher Education Information Infrastructure Advisory Committee was completed in November 2002.

Australian Research Information Infrastructure Committee

As part of SII the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Dr Brendan Nelson, MP established the Australian Research Information Infrastructure Committee (ARIIC) in August 2003 to advise the Government on the information infrastructure requirements.

2002 round

Facilities and equipment

Network

Over the course of the SSI program, many improvements to the national backbone were funded:

  • Tasmanian Research and Education Network
  • Victoria Education and Research Network (VERN)
  • Marine Research and Education Network
  • Australian Research and Education Network (AREN)
    • contribution towards accessing the AREN from the Charles Sturt University campuses at Wagga Wagga and Bathurst
    • interim solution (for 3 years) for high bandwidth connections from the Sunshine backbone to campuses in five regional centres in Queensland (JCU Cairns, CQU Mackay and Gladstone, USC Sippy Downs and USQ Hervey Bay)
    • high bandwidth links between the AREN and Murdoch University's three campuses at South Street, Rockingham and Mandurah
    • AREN Regional Light Up
  • 2.5 Gbit/s backbone network from Brisbane to James Cook University in Townsville
  • South Australian Broadband Research and Education Network (SABRENet)
  • AARNet
  • 1Gb inter-university network in Adelaide over the Electricity Trust of South Australia bandwidth for 15 years
  • provide access to two fibre pairs on the Nextgen Networks for the Australian higher education sector and wider research community[6]

FRODO projects

In 2003, ARIIC funded four Federated Repositories of Online Digital Objects (FRODO) projects :

MERRI projects

On 22 August 2005 the Hon Dr Brendan Nelson announced funding for nine projects collectively known as the Managed Environments for Research Repository Infrastructure (MERRI) projects, involving over 30 Australian universities. The funded projects are:

References
  1. Commonwealth of Australia (January 2001). Backing Australia's Ability: An Innovation Action Plan for the Future. ISBN 0-642-72133-5. ISR 2000/223.
  2. "Systemic Infrastructure Initiative". Retrieved 2007-02-06.
  3. http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate_Committees?url=eet_ctte/estimates/sup_0607/dest/e671_07_att1.pdf
  4. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.88.997&rep=rep1&type=pdf
  5. http://www.rcc.uq.edu.au/rcc-news/2007/articles/APAC-Press-Release-4-July.pdf
  6. AARNet 20 Year Book Chapter 6
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