It’s hard to imagine a world without the internet. But, back in the mid 1990’s, dial-up internet connectivity was rolled out for the first time to many regional and rural Australian communities.
It revolutionised the way communities could connect and do business. Leading the way was the newly established Centre for eCommerce and Communications, which helped rural Australians navigate this burgeoning digital world for the first time by developing business websites, online portals, and building digital skills.
That Centre has come a long way since those humble beginnings 25 years ago.
It’s now the Centre for eResearch and Digital Innovation (CeRDI), based at Federation University, and is a global leader in information and communication technologies, data management and knowledge-sharing research.
But CeRDI Director Professor Helen Thompson says its core purpose hasn’t changed: “We support industries, communities, businesses and researchers to adopt and use new technologies in a way that has impact for them.”
That means building tech-driven infrastructure and systems that work in regional settings and big cities alike – while also navigating the social complexities of working with many different people and organisations.
The result? More than 100 long-term partnerships and an impressive line-up of projects that make data easier to use and access, like visualising groundwater and soils, helping citizen scientists monitor waterway health, or sharing agricultural research between farmers, community groups and researchers. The AgReFed Platform, which revolutionised how agriculture researchers handle data, is just one example.
“Researchers spent so much time just finding who to contact, getting permission to access data, then wrangling it, instead of spending that time working to answer specific questions or developing new science,” Prof Thompson says.
“We worked with a lot of institutions to build trust and develop standards so that data can be shared, and so people can use it to make better decisions.”
CeRDI’s impressive journey and rise to global leadership is proof that with the right connections – both digital and human – innovation can happen anywhere.
