Roadmap to Interoperability - 5 September 2023 - 5 September 2023

More than 50 delegates attended the break-out workshop Roadmap to Interoperability on 5 September as the SPAA Symposium concluded following two very engaging days.

Following a presentation from Bindi Isbister (DPIRD) on the interoperability journey so far, a panel session was held with John Deere’s Jake McHugh, Matt Stewart of NGIS, Nuffield Scholar Andrew Sargent and Phil Honey (Stirlings to Coast Farmers Group). The panel discussed the difficulties of multiple file formats, different interpretations of ISOBUS as a standard, format-agnostic data storage, mixed fleets with hardware of different ages and field reliability across the board before breakout sessions among the delegates. 

With a variety of sectors represented from research, government, software, manufacturing and precision ag consulting, the conversation on where the industry needs to get to was lively and productive. Major themes from the workshop facilitated by Julia Easton (CCDM, Curtin) included: 

• More operations included in one pass 
• Remove human error as a factor 
• Increase connectivity across the regions 
• Develop cost-effective, automated data collection 
• Single points of truth for data, including boundary runlines 
• Standards for data storage to allow cross-platform connectivity 
• The industry is capable of interoperability, it comes down to an issue of investment 

The next step in the project is publishing a discussion paper and identifying key stakeholders and recommendations to government and industry. If you would like to be involved in the project as it progresses, contact jennifer@southernforestsfood.com.