NSW Government Minister for Customer Service, Victor Dominello, has laid out the thinking behind the state’s Smart Places Strategy in his online keynote address for the 2020 IoT Festival.

The new strategy and Smart Infrastructure Policy seek to have the NSW Government build smart technology into infrastructure and buildings.

The policy sets minimum requirements for smart technology to be embedded in all government infrastructure projects over $10 million and ICT projects over $5 million, Minister Dominello said.

“With the NSW Government’s infrastructure pipeline of $100 billion, that’s a lot of smart technology delivering significant benefits for the people of our great state,” Minister Dominello said in his 2020 IoT Festival keynote video.

The policy covers such topics as cybersecurity, privacy, data intelligence, applications and hosting, and connectivity with sensors.

In his keynote, Minister Dominello also discusses the NSW Smart Places Acceleration Fund, which will draw on the state’s $1.6 billion investment in its Digital Restart Fund. The government will use the fund to partner with local governments and other place owners to accelerate development of smart places, Minister Dominello said. He said the government is working through the details.

He reveals that the fund will explore innovation challenges, smart and connected technology development, capability development programs and connectivity infrastructure and solutions, to help create value from data and communicate insights. A portion of the fund will target regional communities. Minister Dominello said more would be revealed about the fund in the coming months.

He also used his 2020 IoT Festival keynote talk to discuss other aspects of the NSW Government’s Smart Places Strategy, including the NSW Spatial Digital Twin.

“Over time, transport, utilities, planning, natural resource management, environmental management, emergency management data will all be added [to the Digital Twin]. The Spatial Digital Twin will help to streamline the delivery of infrastructure in ways that we can’t imagine. It will play an important part in helping NSW post-COVID economic growth and recovery,” he predicts.

And he discusses the government’s approach to picking and deploy smart technology according to the needs and ambitions of people and place.

Visit the 2020 IoT Festival Online site to watch Minister Dominello’s entire keynote address.