New funding for ICT in Queensland

Start-ups and small businesses in Queensland are being encouraged to collaborate with the government on information and communications technology (ICT) solutions.

An additional $275,000 in funding is being provided by the Queensland Government to the second round of the Testing Within Government (TWiG) program.

“This Advance Queensland initiative is opening doors and creating opportunities to work with the Palaszczuk government and it takes our support for local start-ups and small businesses to the next level,” said Minister for Innovation, Science and the Digital Economy Leeanne Enoch.

“Government departments will benefit by having small, specialised firms apply innovative thinking to technology challenges, and TWiG participants get to work directly with end users to perfect their product and better understand how to work with large enterprises in the future.”

Under the first round of the TWiG program, launched in August 2016, four business problems were addressed, with each participant receiving $25,000. In round two, eight agencies will be involved in the search for innovative ICT solutions to 11 business problems.

Local start-ups and small businesses will once again work collaboratively with government officers — this time in police, education, health, transport, local government and planning, environment, state development and DSITI — over the 12-week TWiG program to test their ICT solutions against real business problems.

“At the end of the program, TWiG participants will showcase their solutions and capabilities to representatives from Queensland Government and private industry,” said Enoch.

FlowBiz CEO Terry Sinkinson — a previous TWIG participant who partnered with another local business, MacroGIS — said the program had been a great launch pad for the companies’ app to crowdsource mobile coverage data and had helped them refine some other products.

“We were really pleased with the support and level of openness and information sharing government officers gave us,” said Sinkinson.

“As a result, we have a much better understanding of what large organisations want in the IT arena and how to work with them on a solution — which would have been difficult for a small business like us to assess before this program.”

A TWiG information session will be held in Brisbane on 27 March.

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/Maksym Yemelyanov

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