Extrata™ was developed by the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD), WA in response to producers’ concerns about the security of storing and sharing sensitive commercial and research data.
The department is seeking interested early adopters to participate in the Extrata™ pilot in coming months to help refine the product and its useability.
Farmers increasingly rely on digital data collected from weather stations, soil moisture probes, harvesters, drones, sensors and other automated systems to make informed onfarm management decisions to improve productivity and profitability.
This information is typically stored on individual cloud-based systems, which can be shared with data service providers, like consultants or research institutions, to ‘crunch the numbers’ and run analysis to produce reports and decision making aids.
DPIRD’s new Extrata™ service securely transports this data, encrypted end-to-end, providing farmers with confidence that their sensitive agricultural data is supplied to the intended recipient only and remains confidential.
Extrata™ employs the highest data security protocols and was recently accredited for compliance with the Food Agility Cooperative Research Centre’s (CRC) Best Practice Data Policy.
DPIRD eConnect+ project manager Darren Gibbon likened the new Extrata™ platform to a trusted digital data courier service.
“Digital information and data collection has become a key component of modern primary production but it is nothing unless you make that data work,” he said.
“To do that, information must be shared and analysed so farmers can make evidence based, data-driven decisions that can improve agribusiness performance.
“Extrata™ acts as a trusted courier to transfer that information between the producer, the data collector and the data service provider, with confidence that the bundle of information remains secure, backed by multi-factor authentication.
“Unlike other data sharing services, Extrata™ does not retain the data at any point, merely couriering the information to a destination with whom the producer has a third party sharing agreement, which can be suspended at any time.”
DPIRD is using the Extrata™ platform to help devise a new liming strategy, as part of a Food Agility CRC project, in collaboration with the Grower Group Alliance, AxisTech and Curtin University.
“Extrata™ will help to simplify the process of getting data from the farmer to the model and back, making the experience quicker and more efficient,” Mr Gibbon said.
The free Extrata™ pilot is open to all producers and service providers involved in the broadacre, intensive grains, livestock, horticulture and aquaculture industries in WA and across Australia.
For more information and to register to participate in the Extrata™ pilot visit www.agric.wa.gov.au/econnect or email econnectedgrainbelt@dpird.wa.gov.au.
Picture caption: DPIRD eConnect+ project manager Darren Gibbon shows off the department’s new Extrata™ data sharing platform.
