Australian Computer Society

Report on visit to South Australian by ACS President

Introduction

This is to report on my visit to South Australia 27 to 28 March 1996. The purpose of the visit was to talk to the Annual General Meeting of the South Australian Branch of the ACS. The ACS SA Branch Chair also arranged meetings with the SA Department of Information Industries and Electronic Data Systems Also I was contacted by and met with Ralph Lenoard from the Teleteaching'96 program committee.

Electronic Data Systems

My first appointment was 10 am Wednesday, with Alan Scott, State Manager, EDS Australia. Ken Godson, the ACS SA Chairman, was keen to use my visit as an opportunity to sell the idea of ACS membership for staff to EDS. EDS were anxiously waiting to see how many of the current state government IT staff would decide to move to EDS. We outlined the benefits to EDS of having their IT staff as members of ACS and therefore able to participate in ACS training and development activities.

Part of EDS's deal with the SA Government is the promotion of IT export opportunities, particularly in Asia. Therefore the ACS's international connections, through IFIP and SEARCC were relevant. I suggested that EDS might organise a South Australian booth at IFIP'96 in Canberra and could consider some activities in the lead-up to SEARCC'98 in Darwin.

ACS SA Branch Executive Committee

At noon I attended a meeting of the ACS SA Branch Executive Committee (BEC). As well as sitting in on the usual BEC activities, I discussed decisions of the recent ACS Council meeting and listened to ideas from SA.

Teleteaching'96

At 4pm I met with Ralph Lenoard from the Teleteaching'96 program committee. Ralph is with the Open Learning Technology Corporation and I met him at a DPIE TeleCottage seminar some years ago. His role on the Teleteaching'96 committee is to look after the "virtual exhibition" and wanted to discuss some details of how this could be done.

The Teleteaching'96 conference is going to be very different from a conventional event, by being partly on-line and partly in Canberra. There is to opportunity for the product exhibition to extend from the exhibition hall at the National Convention Centre in Canberra, into cyberspace. Some of the concepts discussed were to provide an index of exhibitor's home pages on the Web and to provide a place for small companies who can't afford a booth to display their products on screen. The options for CD-ROM and/or Web use were discussed.

ACS SA annual general meeting

At 6pm I attended the annual general meeting of the SA Branch, as guest speaker. Before my talk I handed Fellows certificates to two of the three new ACS Fellows elected at the March Council meeting.

There was a minor problem with my talk as it was Internet based and none of the requested equipment (video projector, computer, modem and phone line) were provided. Intelligent Machines Pty Ltd (an Adelaide based PC retailer), loaded a LCD projection panel at short notice. I used my notebook computer and a GSM telephone with data adapter for the Internet connection.

The LCD panel came without a power cord, so I had to use the cable from my laptop and run from batteries. Allowing for the complication of my laptop shutting down every 2 minutes to save battery power, the presentation went well. There was particular interest in the ACS's contribution to Internet Regulation and how Defence were meeting security and information policy issues in using the Internet.

The GSM phone, with data adapter, proved its worth again after its use in the tally room and it has potential for mobile Internet access, for demonstrations and as a low speed backup for fixed data links. The Nokia 2001e GSM telephone and data adapter were loaned to me by Link Telecommunications as a gimmick to show during talks. I was not expecting to have to, or be able to, rely on it.

SA Department of Information Industries

On Wednesday morning Ken and I visited the newly created South Australian Department of Information Industries (DII) to meet with Ray Dundon, CEO. Mr. Dundon was called away on other business and we talked to Tim Waterhouse, (General Manager, Strategic Planning and Policy) and Peter Fowler (General Manager, IT Programs).

DII was created by bringing together the IT and industry development components of the SA Government. This appears to be much as ACS suggested at the federal level in the lead up to the recent election. However the SA Government has gone quite a bit further.

Put simply the SA model is for the Government people to package Government IT business and then contract it out to the private sector. Also industry opportunities for the state are identified and consortia of industry are encouraged to exploit the opportunities.

For a career public servant like myself, much of this approach comes as a shock. However it was useful to get the details, as the new federal government is likely to follow a similar approach.

Ken and I outlined the benefits of the ACS in helping SA development of the IT industry. As with EDS, the benefits both for development of the expertise of individual IT professionals and the ACS's global connections were discussed.

I raised some concers over some of the SA model. For example the SA government is contracting out its on-line "shop front" to one organisation to implement and exploit for commercial purposes. The idea is that the on-line Government services (such as paying your car registration via the Internet), will create a commercial opportunities (such as selling car insurance on-line). However I would argue this model is flawed, as it assumes that one large central organisation is needed to co-ordinate the service. The Web experience shows that a co-ordinated service can be created from a large number of small services, loosely co-operating. This provides slightly chaotic, buy more interesting and vibrant service, which is not held captive by any one large organisation.

While there is room for debate over the SA approach, it is worthy of study by the rest of Australia. I suggested the ACS SA Branch might organise some forums to inform the rest of Australia of it. Unfortunately most of the information about the South Australian initiatives are on paper, not on-line, and is inaccessible to most of the Australian IT community.

Conclusion

My visit to SA was worthwhile, for the ACS, myself and my employer (who gave me a day off to go). South Australia has a very active ACS branch and vigorous IT industry. Unfortunatly I couldn't stay for the ACS sponsored CALS Australia'96, coordinated with Department of Defence, 1-3 April.

Tom Worthington MACS
President of the Australian Computer Society
3 April 1996

PS: My next visit is Perth and the WA ACS Branch, around 24 May. Any suggestions on who to visit or what to do?

About the ACS

The Australian Computer Society is the professional association in Australia for those in the computing and information technology fields. It was established in 1966. The Society has over 16,000 members and on a per capita basis is one of the largest computer societies in the world.

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