Telecentre Support Branch

Helping Telecentres to reach out and offer a wider range of services to people in remote and rural settings is the Western Australia Telecentre Support Branch. Located within the State Government's Department of Local Government and Regional Development, the branch provides promotion and operations support for the Telecentre Network. The Telecentre Support Branch works closely with other organisations that are also striving to provide opportunities and quality services to regional communities. For example: Universities- with help from the support branch a university has agreed to share premises with a Telecentre. Other government departments- agency staff in remote areas now have wider opportunities through Telecentres for professional development and training. The support branch can broker agreements to provide services for government and businesses through Telecentres. Industry, shire councils and others- a wide range of regional business and government service providers have benefited from services provided to their staff through local Telecentres. Co-location of services- a number of other services are co-located with Telecentres such as libraries, community groups and government offices.

• Providing advice to government and acting as liaison between government and Telecentre Management Committees
• Day-today support, research development and planning
• Implementing policy for the Telecentre Advisory Council
• Help to establish new Telecentres
• Negotiate on behalf of the Network for on-going funding, salary support and project grants, equipment, joint ventures
• Co-ordinate network wide service provision, marketing and special events
• Identify 'jobs of work' suitable for Telecentre including the provision of agency services for government departments and/or commercial organisations eg Centrelink and the Australian Tax Office
• Promotion of post-secondary education programs to the Network
• The roll-out of up to seven Modular Interactive Telecommunications Environments (MITES) into communities more than 500km from Perth
• Roll out of up to 75 Telecentre Access Points (TAPs or Internet booths) which will provide small rural communities with public Internet access
• Roll out videoconferencing facilities for all Telecentres with facilities to support the medium
• Maintain the Telecentre Extranet and expand the use of this communications medium by the Network