Ms Kylie Morrow1, Mr Joe Lipson1
1Atlas Of Living Australia (ALA) / CSIRO, Australia
Biography:
Kylie is an experienced tech professional who currently leads the coordination of digital content across the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA), CSIRO. Driven by a deep passion for biodiversity and technology, Kylie plays a central role in projects spanning UX/UI, software testing and user support to drive innovation across ALA’s digital infrastructure. Her work is informed by a diverse professional and educational background encompassing design, marketing, ecology, and genomics. Kylie believes in harnessing data and technology to inform transformative research and decision-making. She is actively committed to championing diversity and inclusion in STEM and across the product lifecycle.
Abstract:
The Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) is a nationally significant, open infrastructure platform that aggregates, enriches, and shares biodiversity data. With over 150 million species occurrence records, the ALA empowers researchers, policymakers, educators, government agencies, and the public—delivering open data and tools that drive evidence-based decisions and conservation efforts.
To address growing demands for performance, scalability, and security, the ALA has launched a multi-phase digital transformation: modernising both its platform and software systems through the Next Generation Cloud Platform initiative. This journey is centred on re-architecting ALA’s infrastructure and systems using containerised services, automated orchestration, and scalable, modular microservice patterns, paired with secure, responsive user interfaces to enable long-term flexibility and sustainability.
As this transformation continues, several key milestones have already been achieved, including:
– End-to-end CI/CD automation, streamlining everything from infrastructure provisioning to application deployment.
– A cloud-native frontend portal, powered by high-availability, low-latency storage systems.
– A centralised security and exposure management layer, providing unified monitoring.
– A modern identity and access management system using OpenID Connect protocol and MFA currently being piloted across core services.
We will share insights from this ongoing evolution, highlighting architectural advances, practical challenges, and real-world benefits already realised. These include improved deployment efficiency, reduced operational costs, and enhanced platform resilience, even as the system continues to adapt and scale.
By laying a robust foundation for interoperability, cloud scalability, and user experience, the ALA is building a future-ready digital ecosystem that will continue to empower Australia’s biodiversity science and conservation community for years to come.