Australian companies are now more likely to hire ICT contractors than permanent ICT staff, with demand for ICT contractors stronger than in any other profession, a survey suggests. [ + ]

Amazon Web Services will select three local governments and four application developers to share in a prize pool of US$250,000 worth of credits for projects that use the AWS cloud to benefit citizens. [ + ]

Researchers from the University of Sydney are working on a mobile app designed to allow public transport users to rate their experiences and for operators to respond in real time. [ + ]

The Victorian Government has teamed up with Nextgen for a project aimed at improving infrastructure diversity in south-west Victoria to avoid a repeat of the Warrnambool outage of 2012. [ + ]

One analyst feels that Symantec's decision to fire CEO Steve Bennett - the face of the company's turnaround efforts - is a "major black eye". [ + ]

As the date looms for the first copper phone lines to be supplanted by the NBN, NBN Co has set up a register to help users of medical alarms ensure these services remain operational. [ + ]

Michael Malone last week resigned as CEO and board director of ISP iiNet, in order to focus on other projects. [ + ]

The Communications Alliance has lauded telecommunications changes in the Omnibus Repeal Day (Autumn 2014) Bill, which was introduced into federal parliament yesterday. [ + ]

Cybercriminals are using the mystery surrounding missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 as a way to infect unsuspecting internet users with malware. [ + ]

Although three in four companies have suffered a security incident in the last two years, just 17% are fully prepared for a future breach, a survey suggests. [ + ]

Adopting GS1 supply chain standards and the National Product Catalogue (NPC) could help the Australian healthcare industry cut down on $30m-$100m of wasteful spending a year, a report asserts. [ + ]

The rapid proliferation of 'Internet of Things' devices and the large volumes of data they generate will transform data centres from centralised systems to distributed environments, Gartner predicts. [ + ]

NBN Co chairman Dr Ziggy Switkowski has warned that if TPG and other telcos are able to roll out competing fibre infrastructure to the NBN, it will have a “severe impact” on the economics of the project. [ + ]

Small businesses typically lack the resources to manage complicated on-premises storage environments, but there are several options that can help ease the burden. [ + ]

A third of companies have made IT-enabled business transformation a top priority and are more likely to invest in the development of new applications, products and CEM strategies, a survey shows. [ + ]