NSW Dept. of Primary Industries wants to eradicate weeds forever. Here is how A1 is helping.

About NSW Department of Primary Industries

The NSW Department of Primary Industries is part of the Department of Regional NSW.

The department delivers a broad range of initiatives across the State including research and development to grow our agriculture, fisheries and forestry sectors; and regulation and administration of biosecurity, food safety, animal welfare and hunting in NSW.

No Space For Weeeeeds

Project Engagement

The NSW Department of Primary Industries approached A1 Technologies in early 2021 to help them design and deploy a reliable CI/CD pipeline in Azure for their new weed scanning and documentation platform, code named No Space for Weeeeeeds. The Dept. of Primary Industries internal development team had extensive experience with Microsoft-based products and coding environments and so there was a level of trust with Azure straight away. What the team did not have was experience with Microsoft’s new Azure DevOps suite of products called Azure DevOps Services which included products such as Azure Pipelines, Test Plans, Azure Repos, and so on.

The Solution

The NSW Dept. of Primary Industries development team needed to host the web application on Azure to take advantage of not only the cloud infrastructure but also Azure AI. The Dept. of Primary Industries wanted to use Azure DevOps to support and automate the software development and deployment process.

A1 Technologies began the process with a discovery phase to understand their requirements then designed and implemented a solution using Azure Cloud and Azure DevOps.

A1 implemented multiple Azure DevOps components to support the software development and deployment process and provide the environment for them to build out their App and weed scanning platform.

Azure Board

To track work with Kanban boards, backlogs, team dashboards, and custom reporting. The board enables DPI to track ideas at every development stage and keep the team aligned with all code changes linked directly to work items.

Azure Pipeline and Repo

A CI/CD setup using the cloud-hosted repo and pipeline to enable DPI to develop and automatically deploy the WeedScan web application to the cloud.

Azure Artifacts

Fully integrated package management solution for continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines with single click deployments of the WeedScan application to the cloud.

The solution on Azure enabled DPI to take advantage of Azure Machine learning to identify weeds and weed patterns from images uploaded by the community throughout Australia.

DPI were new to Azure and Azure DevOps and wanted to ensure the environment was stood up correctly. A1 Technologies began the process with a discovery phase to understand DPIs requirements then designed and implemented a solution using Azure and Azure DevOps.

“A1 implemented multiple Azure DevOps components to support the software development and deployment process, and provide the environment for DPI to build out their applications.“

Clinton Shiels

Head of Solutions, A1 Technologies

The Benefits

The result has been a reliable and seamless DevOps pipeline that NSW Dept. Of Primary Industries has been able to rely on time and time again in the pursuit of realising their new application to eradicate weeds and help primary industries achieve healthier (and cheaper) production outcomes.

“You guys knew your stuff, had it all built for us on time, fun to work with and talk to. Couldn't see what could be better really”

Matthew Shillman

Lead Developer, NSW Dept. of Primary Industries

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