Australian Computer Society

The theme of the conference was "The New IT Workplace: The effects of Internet and other innovations on the environment of IT Professionals". There were about 90 delegates to the conference. Two themes which emerged from presentations were the effect of the Federal Government's economy drives and the increased use of the Web in Government.

In my talk I proposed moving the federal bureaucracy onto the Internet and to set up an industry in Canberra to support it. This would be to meet the Government's demand for cost savings and create a new industry for Canberra.

Senator Kate Lundy in "Industrial Relations issues in Teleworking" talked about her personal experience as a teleworker, as well as the background to industrial agreements in Australia. She explained that the Federal bureaucracy had requested many of the requests from employees, but the federal agreement on teleworking had become a model for the private sector.

The afternoon provided a change in pace with a panel session on Erotica in Cyberspace - does it need to be regulated?" chaired by Andrew Freeman, Director ACS Community Affairs Board. This featured:

• Ann Byrne, President, PC Users Group (ACT) Inc.
• Roger Clarke, a member of the ACS Economic, Legal, and Social Implications of Computing (ELSIC) Committee
• Fiona Patton, President, EROS Foundation

Fiona Patton described the EROS Foundation as "like the Farmers Federation, but for the Sex industry", which is not something you usually hear at an IT conference. ;-)

The issue of Internet regulation was discussed at length, between the panel and with comments from the floor. It was interesting, but as expected we didn't reach any universally agreed conclusions.

It was remarkable the change which had happened in the attitude to the Internet in the twelve months since the previous conference. Then we had talks from mostly academics and on what the Internet's potential was. This time we had talks from Government and industry people on how they were building Internet applications.

The issue which wasn't planned as part of the conference, but which emerged, was the effect of the Government' proposed reduction in public spending and how we might address that through IT. I will be raising that as a topic for discussion in ACS and Canberra newsgroups.

The following day I gave a talk to the Australian Science Festival on "Cyber Tour of the world of the Future via the Internet" at the same venue (the National Convention Centre). This was attended by about 200 members of the public.

Tom Worthington MACS
ACS President
21 April 1996