The Systemic Infrastructure Initiative was announced by the Government of Australia in January 2001 as part of Backing Australia's Ability – An Innovation Action Plan for the Future.
These committees were to formulae further broad projects to be considered for SII funding in the following year.
The Final Report of the Higher Education Information Infrastructure Advisory Committee was completed in November 2002.
As part of SII the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Dr Brendan Nelson, MP established the Australian Research Information Infrastructure Committee (ARIIC) in August 2003 to advise the Government on the information infrastructure requirements.
[1][2] Over the course of the SSI program, many improvements to the national backbone were funded: In 2003, ARIIC funded four Federated Repositories of Online Digital Objects (FRODO) projects [3]: On 22 August 2005 the Hon Dr Brendan Nelson announced funding for nine projects collectively known as the Managed Environments for Research Repository Infrastructure (MERRI) projects, involving over 30 Australian universities.