Nine small to medium sized businesses will share in $8.75 million in grants to help them develop and test their innovative solutions to public sector challenges, through the Turnbull Government’s Business Research and Innovation Initiative (BRII).
BRII allows government to tap into leading edge thinking to find innovative solutions to important challenges in public policy and develop new ways to deliver government services.
Each of these solutions from the businesses selected seek to address the five nominated government policy and service delivery challenges:
- On-the-spot technology for measuring pyrethroid surface residue;
- Tracking the effect and value of information products;
- Digitally enabled community engagement in policy and program design;
- Improve transparency and reliability of water market information; and
- Sharing information nationally to ensure child safety.
The businesses are among a group of 20 which received initial funding in March this year to complete feasibility studies on their innovative ideas under the first stage of BRII.
BRII is a National Innovation and Science Agenda initiative that is designed to ensure that government procurement fosters innovation. It provides opportunities for small and medium businesses to develop innovative products and services which have genuine commercial potential.
Government agencies will have the option to purchase these solutions at the end of the proof of concept stage, while the businesses will keep the intellectual property rights to their solutions for future worldwide sales.
A list of grant recipients can be found at www.business.gov.au/BRII