Benjamin Smith

Founder - Strategic Digital Consultant

Benjamin is passionate about delivering genuine solutions to improve societal outcomes. With 25 years of experience in providing IT solutions and support, he has worked across a range of industries for many clients; primarily government (Defence, Law Enforcement and Territory/State Government) with clients in the Education, Hospitality and Not For Profit sectors in the past five years. 

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Benjamin's experience involves reviewing existing operations, assessing and implementing new technologies, migrating & consolidating disparate IT infrastructures and leading bids to increase services delivered by private enterprises. He has played many lead roles in the IT solution lifecycle, including project scoping and delivery, technical design, solutions design, implementation, and ongoing support. Benjamin is highly focused onaligning a business' digital strategy with their overall business strategy, usually kept at arm's length from each other.

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Personal strengths include leadership and management of personnel, high-level attention to detail and a solid commitment to successful business outcomes. Benjamin has worked closely with the Executive Management Teams in the businesses he has been employed by or consulted to, ensuring the alignment of the overall strategic direction throughout. 

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Benjamin's career philosophy is to promote the understanding that digital technologies provide the means that enable people to transform businesses and society, rather than being the transformation.

Benjamin has been a member of the ACS since 2007 and is independently graded as a Certified Professional; an internationally recognised accreditation. 

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Benjamin was the Chair of the NT Branch of the Australian Computer Society from 2016 until 2020. During this period, in addition to holding the position of Branch Chair, Benjamin represented the NT on the Membership Advisory Board, National Fellows Committee, Treasury Reference Group, and ACS Congress. Benjamin has also been an independent consultant to the NT Government Minister for Corporate and Information Services through the Ministerial Digital Advisory Committee.

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Through his roles in industry, having attended many different awards nights throughout the country, Benjamin identified that the NT was significantly underrepresented (if represented at all) despite there being highly creative and innovative solutions built in the jurisdiction which, in his opinion, outshone those achievements attained elsewhere. Ultimately, this led to the development of a consortium of industry bodies and government to create the NT Digital Excellence Awards in 2017, which has resulted in an increase of one to zero nominations on the national stage to 20 in 2018 and ongoing ever since.

Industry Awards

Recognition from Peers

2021 – Good Design Award Australia

NightKey Biometric Identity Management

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2018 – SA/NT iAward 

Public Sector & Government Project of the Year 

Research and Development Project of the Year (Music Solution)

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2017 – NT Chief Minister’s Award

Innovation (Police Watchhouse)

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2017 – ACS Digital Disruptor

Gold Award (Police Watchhouse)

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2016 – National iAward Winner

Public Sector & Government Project of the Year 

Infrastructure Platform of the Year 

(Police Watchhouse)

Key Achievements

Career Highlights

• Solution Development and Management of the following:
   

• NightKey – Identity Management solution for the licenced hospitality sector
   

• Forensic Face – use of facial recognition algorithms to identify decomposing or bare skulls against photographs
   

• Police Watchhouse – Identity Management solution to quickly identify persons of interest, upon arrest, using facial recognition rather than fingerprinting
   

• NeoFusion – the ability for law enforcement to identify a person of interest, in the field, by using either finger or face. 
   

• Music Solution – The provision of a secure content delivery platform for Correctional Services to allow prisoners to purchase music
  
   

Successful coordination and on-time delivery of the following projects for the establishment of IT services at the brand-new ASC Shipyard complex and MSC Training Facility in Osborne, SA;
 

• Office Services (Multifunction Printing Devices, Facsimile, Scan to Email / Workflow)
   

• Audio Visual (Tele and Video Conferencing, Presentations, Executive Board Room fit-out)
   

• Shipyard Mobilisation (Relocation of services, assets and staff to new Shipyard facility)
   

• Network Services (Wired and wireless networking and related configuration requirements)
   

• Telephony (Cisco VoIP, Digital Radios)
   

• Standard Operating Environment (SOE for the ASC Shipyard and configuration of software)
   

• Miscellaneous Facilities Requirements (fibre reticulation, security systems, building management system, server room & communication room requirements).

Skills & Key Competencies

Career Highlights

• Business development
   

• Project management
   

• Business requirement analysis
   

• Solution development & management
   

• Strategic planning
   

• Talent identification acquisition 
   

• Proposal development & tender responses
   

• Account management
   

• Financial management
   

• Ease of collaboration with operational staff through to the executive