News & Media

18 August 2012 OzChase system expands

State and Territory Greyhound Authorities in the Northern Territory, South Australia and Tasmania went live this month following the Phase 2 rollout of the new greyhound racing system OzChase. The OzChase system is being developed by Racing and Wagering Western Australia (RWWA) in a joint venture arrangement with Greyhound Racing New South Wales (GRNSW). The RWWA Information Services Division is designing, building, hosting and maintaining the system here in WA.

The development of the OzChase system commenced in 2010 when RWWA and GRNSW entered into a joint venture charged with the objective of creating a multi state-enabled Greyhound Racing System fully supporting the licensing, registration, grading, racing and breeding services of Australian greyhound jurisdictions.

Phase One included functions such as registration of all people involved in the greyhound industry, licensing of these persons, recording of breeding services, recording of pups from those services, registration and naming of pups, ongoing tracking of the pup through to adulthood and into retirement and recording of offences and penalties against people.

The Phase 2 rollout includes the additional core functionality required by the Northern Territory, South Australia and Tasmania to conduct racing operations in their jurisdictions. GRNSW has been using the licensing and registrations part of the OzChase platform since May 2011.

RWWA General Manager Racing, Ken Norquay said "RWWA is proud of the efforts and collaboration being shown across the country to enable a synchronised racing system that will ultimately benefit all industry participants with the ease and practicality of a centralised operation."

"OzChase is a significant project in its third year of development and we will continue to invest in an operational system that will reap long-term benefits for decades to come," Norquay said.

Mr Matthew Corby, CEO of Greyhound Racing South Australia Ltd, speaking on behalf of the 3 new OzChase user jurisdictions, was extremely pleased to commence operations on the new system. "The introduction of the new OzChase platform is an essential undertaking in terms of the need to upgrade our management of racing services. The launch of the program is an important step towards a virtually national framework, and one which will deliver industry benefits to the various states and jurisdictions that have partnered on the initiative. It makes pragmatic sense to collaborate on issues of commonality, and this project is a prime example of such an opportunity," he said.

Attention now moves to Phase 3 of the project, which will see grading and race meeting operational areas expanded to include additional racing-related requirements and specific functionality required by the joint venture partners GRNSW and RWWA. This phase is likely to be completed and operational in early 2013.

In association with the OzChase development, a separate project commenced in late July to make the OzChase system compliant with the new National Data Repository (NDR), a separate computer system nearing completion for the national peak body Greyhounds Australasia (GA). The OzChase NDR Project will deliver functionality that will allow OzChase to consume data automatically from the NDR and GA’s internal systems. This will see data such as the naming of greyhound pups, frozen semen breeding service details and national sire registrations all saved directly into OzChase via a data feed.

Additionally, all licensing and registration details and racing-related information from non-OzChase jurisdictions can be saved into OzChase via this feed, making the new system a pseudo-national greyhound racing system in its own right. The OzChase NDR Project is due for completion by 30 November 2012.

The final phase of the OzChase development will see any specific requirements built for the greyhound controlling authority in Queensland, so that they can transition onto the OzChase platform during 2013.

Media Contact:
Mark Bottcher
Manager Greyhound Racing
(08) 9445 5287