Canberra Welcomes Our Robot Overlords

James Kavanagh, CTO Microsoft Australia started his keynote at the 21st Australian Computer Society Annual Canberra Conference by mentioning that today Microsoft announced that Microsoft Azure will be provided from Canberra Data Centres (CDC) for Unclassified and Protected government data.

Conference chair, Tim Turner from UNSW Canberra,  opened the conference by welcoming our robot overlords (the theme is AI). From looking at the program, that will be the only humor today, on the topic of AI, until Anh Do does the closing plenary. I will be speaking on "Designing Professional e-Learning" at 2:20 pm.

Australian ICT 2020

Andrew Johnson, ACS CEO just asked the delegates at the Australian Computer Society 2016 Conference to consider ICT in the world of 2020. In amongst driver-less and flying cars, Andrew asked if we would be able to provide Internet access to all the Australian population and have sufficient students with the required STEM skills. 

It happens that I wrote "Canberra 2020: World Information Capital" for Informatics Magazine (September 1993), helped run the "Foundations of Open: Technology and Digital Knowledge Local 2020 Summit" for Senator Lundy in 2008 and wrote "Australian Higher Education in 2020" (2013). One thing I have learned from a previous attempt at future history, "Australia: The Networked Nation" (2005 from 1996), was how wrong such predictions can be.

Rather than just predict the future, I suggest ICT professionals are in the business of making the future. At a number of venues before the end of the year I will be speaking on the future of education, as it can be. This is starting with "Learning to Teach On-line with an E80 Blend" at the Australian National University, in Canberra, 7 September 2016. Other times, cities and countries to follow.

Computing is about people

The theme emerging from the Australian Computer Society Canberra Branch Conference is "Computing is about people" (suggested  by Jeff Mitchell). This emphasis on people was in Jon Cumming, ACT Chief Digital Officer, plenary keynote, then Maria Milosavljevic, Chief Innovation Officer at AUSTRAC and now Loise Smith from ACS is now presenting on Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA).

ACS Canberra 2016 Conference

Greetings from the ACS Canberra 2016 Conference.

8.30	9.00	Arrival Tea & Coffee (BALLROOM FOYER)
9.00	9.05	Conference opening (BALLROOM) - Conference Chair, Dr Tim Turner
9.05	9.25	Conference Address Data Fuels Innovation and the Digital Economy; But who owns and controls Data? Anthony Wong President, Australian Computer Society
9.25	10.15	Plenary Keynote (BALLROOM) Drones, Droids and Robots - Which one are you? Jon Cumming Chief Digital Officer, ACT Government
10.15	10.35	Tea & Coffee Break and Exhibition (GALLERY FOYER)
		Security (Derwent Room)	Leadership (Fitzroy Room)	Education (Murray Room)	The Future of Work (Swan Room)	Data Management (Torrens Room)
10.35	11.15	Session 1	Session 1	Session 1	Session 1	Session 1
		James Turner	Zoe Routh	Dr Maria Milosavijevic	Flavia Nardini	Chris Bradley
5 minutes		Change over
11.20	12.00	Session 2	Session 2	Session 2	Session 2	Session 2
		Ambarish Natu	Gill Savage	Chris Hamling	Mark Stevens	Glen Bell
12.00	12.40	Lunch
12.40	1.30	Plenary Keynote (BALLROOM) DDR, IWAR, HIoT – what more do you need to know? Dr Trish Williams
5 minutes		Change over
		Professionalism (Derwent Room)	Leadership (Fitzroy Room)	Education (Murray Room)	Analysis and Design (Swan Room)	Data Management (Torrens Room)
1.35	2.15	Session 3	Session 3	Session 3	Session 3	Session 3
		Denver Bunzel	Anna Perdriau	Tim Bell	Haydn Thomas	George Mouratidis
5 minutes		Change over
2.20	3.00	Session 4	Session 4	Session 4	Session 4	Session 4
		Dr Richard Lucas	Sharyn Csanki	Dr Therese Keane	Mandy Slater	Lloyd Robinson
3.00	3.20	Tea & Coffee Break and Exhibition (GALLERY FOYER)
3.20	4.00	Session 5	Session 5	Session 5	Session 5	Session 5
		Louise Smith	Michael Hawkins	Su-en Williams	Mia Horrigan	Dr Alexander Hall
5 minutes		Change over
4.05	4.55	Plenary Locknote (BALLROOM) Robotics, AI and the future of work: Public policy in the second half of the chess board Miguel Carrasco Partner and Managing Director, The Boston Consulting Group
4.55	5.15	Conference Address Robotics and the Future of Work Andrew Johnson CEO, Australian Computer Society
5.15	5.30	Closing Remarks Dr Tim Turner Conference Chair
5.30	7.00	Cocktail reception (GALLERY FOYER) - Social networking drinks
7.00	10.00	Gala Dinner (BALLROOM) Conference Dinner Address Andrew Barr MLA ACT Chief Minister
Conference End

Droids Roll into Canberra Next Week

The Australian Computer Society (ACS) 2016 Annual Conference is Tuesday 23 August. The conference program has sessions on Security, Leadership, Education, Future of Work and Data Management.

Jon Cumming, Chief Digital Officer of the ACT Government will open the conference and Andrew Barr, ACT Chief Minister will speak at the dinner.

ps: The conference theme is Drones, Droids and Robots and Dr. Tim Turner Chairman of ACS Canberra, quipped in B2B magazine that Daleks were his first memory of a robot. But this is technically incorrect as Daleks are not robots, they are cyborgs: part organic and part mechanical. ;-)

The Myth of the Service Economy and Individualism

Greetings from the ACS Canberra Branch 2015 Annual Conference where Chris Vein, CEO, Dome Advisory Services is giving the Plenary Keynote, on "Innovating Innovation – Creating the Next Generations of Empowerment". He asserts that there will be new companies in the service industry and they will provide technology for empowering the individual. I have no doubt that there will be such companies, but Mr. Vein seems to forget that mobile wireless services depend on having physical mobile devices. The world will still need engineers who work out how to make things and a manufacturing industry to make them. Mobile phones are an example of a very carefully engineered mass produced product.

Mr. Vein also suggested that on-line services will empower individuals to make their own choices. However, those choices will be constrained by the choices made by the service designer. We need trained ICT professionals, with a ethical framework, to make good choices. Otherwise there is the danger of a dystopiain future where citizens lives are controlled through their smart phones. Imagine a fixture where you want to go to meet someone to discuss concern over a corporation, or a government, and your phone will not make a transport booking for you because it is not interests of the corporation, or the government, controlling your phone service. This may sound like si-fi but already if you are an on-line punter and you win too much, the company will simply suspend your service, as it is not in their interests for you to win.

One suggestion from Mr. VeinI did agree with was about education. He suggested that companies would take in new staff direct from school and train them in-house, rather than recruiting college and university graduates. However, I suggest this is not a new concept, these are called "apprentices" or "cadets". This approach has been applied in large government and non-government organizations for decades. About the only change is that apprentices are now typically trained in partnership with Higher Education institutions. The apprentice obtains a formal educational qualification as well as work experience (some employers are registered to issue their own qualifications).

In Canberra, the Australian Public Service has ICT Apprenticeship and ICT Cadetship programs. The apprentices work full time and study part-time for a Certificate IV or Diploma in ICT (payed for by the employer). The cadets work part time and study at university (receiving a study allowance). The apprentices and cadets make excellent students, as what they are studying can be immediately applied in their day job.

There will be a place for advanced university degrees. A PHD is, in effect, a form of very high level apprenticeship for researchers. We will also see more professional doctorates, orientated to the needs of the workplace, to solve the world's most difficult problems.

Shaping the Future Through ICT

Greetings from the National Convention Center in Canberra, where the Australian Computer Society Canberra Branch 2015 Annual Conference just opened. The theme of the conference is
"ICT Shaping our Future", but in his opening address Andrew Johnson, ACS CEO, suggested it should be "Shaping the Future Through ICT". An often forgotten aspect of this is that computers and telecommunications do not just happen somewhere else in the world and arrive in Australia, we help make this happen (WiFi being a good example). There are two hashtags for the conference: #ACSCanCon and#ICTShapingOurFuture

Engaging Islam Online to Combat Terrorism

Greetings from the ACS Canberra Conference, where Dr Kim Blackmore from the Australian national University is discussing ANU's Engaging India online course. This is the first edX MOOC to be conducted in two languages (both English and Hindi). The course looked at culture, politics, nationalism and economics and was available free online. 

I suggest that the approach used by ANU could be applied to a course "Engaging Islam" to help bring wider understanding in the community and help combat some of the origins of terrorism. As well as being for the Australian community in English, this could be provided in languages in the Indo-Pacific region and those of the Middle East. The view that "The West" does not understand Islam could be directly challenged in this way. Also those who have adopted a violent ideology thinking this was endorsed by a mainstream religion could be shown that there is a peaceful alternative.

Canberra Innovation Network

Greetings from the ACS Canberra Conference, where Sarah Pearson, Interim CEO is talking about the "CBR
Innovation Network". Sarah had much news about the development of new high technology products in Canberra.One example was "DataPod Modular Data Centres" and another was IntelleDox. Sarah mentioned numerous other successful Canberra based high tech products  which most of the audience had never heard of. One way to promote Canberra as a centre for such innovation could be simply to let people know what has already happened. One way would be to have better websites with details of these, the problem being that companies are reluctant to mention they are in Canberra and the ACT Government has tended to build websites which are not well indexed by search engines. At the moment I am mentoring a team of ANU students competing the the "Innovation ACT Competition" sponsored by the ACT Government. My suggestion for promoting Canberra was in: "Building Arcadia: Emulating Cambridge's High Technology Success". Recently in Vancouver for ICCSE 2014 I dropped in on Philippe Kruchten at UBC Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is involved with the "New Venture Design" course (APSC 486), where engineering and business students learn to produce a business plan for a product. The students are encouraged to enter a innovation competition or program as part of the course.

Sarah said CBR  Innovation Network would have a simple one page website and then look at how to build a system for matching up people. My suggestion would be to use a free open source text web software, so that the information is well indexed (it does not have to look good). How to link up people is not a solved problem and the organisation should not waste too much time on complex software (SpaceCubed in Perth use Yammer, as do CSIRO).

I asked Sarah if "Canberra" was a good brand for selling high tech products in Australia, particularly to the Federal Government which prefers to buy imported products.  She replied that CBR Innovation Network was building on the ACT Government's "CBR" brand (which I had never heard of). It may be that the Canberra Innovation Network needs to have two promotional strategies: one for within Australia which does not mention Canberra, and one for international use which does.

The use of the abbreviation "CBR" in marketing Canberra  makes no sense for high technology products and would be of very limited use even for tourism. The Wikipedia lists dozens of meaning of CBR, including Chemical Biological and Radiation weapons. One near the bottom of the list is the international airport code for Canberra International Airport. That is not going to be much use to an international tourist, as there are no scheduled international flights to Canberra. In contrast I find that people have heard of "Canberra" as being a government city, even if they think Sydney is the capital of Australia.

• The network will deliver services, programs and support to a wide cross section of growth oriented companies and entrepreneurs;
• The network will have a physical location and will also have a charter of outreach that establishes multiple delivery points or partner delivery arrangements;
• It will be managed by the stakeholders under a governance structure shaped and agreed by the stakeholders. Potential stakeholders include the ANU, CSIRO, NICTA and the University of Canberra and other partners who want to join the network. The ACT Government will also have representation on the management body for the network;
• The network will be structured so that smaller players are able to have a role in the direction of the network;
• The ACT Government will contract the network to provide a range of services to potential high growth businesses, including mentoring, access to capital, skills development, managerial skills and links to international supply chains amongst many;
• The network will provide a 'triage model' for all entities that contact it, but with services that engage quite deliberately and effectively with potential high growth businesses; and
• The services of the network will be made available to all potential high growth companies, not just companies spun out of research institutions or ICT companies.

From: CBR Innovation Network: promoting innovative businesses, 09/04/2014

Security a Growth Area in Canberra Says ACT Treasurer

Greetings from the Relam Hotel in Canberra where Andrew Barr, MLA, ACT Treasurer, is speaking to the conference dinner. He said "The 9 to 5 ACT government shop-front has a limited future" commenting that it costs $5 to $10 per translation for face to face service. On-line alternatives will require an upfront investment, but make savings in the long term. He saw a growth area in federal government investment in security in the ACT in coming years. The ACT Government also wants more data open access, with a combined public and private cloud service.

Governance Standard for Government ICT

John Sheridan, the Australian Government Chief Technology Officer, at the ACS Canberra Conference, described the development and use of the ISO/IEC 38500 Corporate governance of information technology Standard.  One aspect not covered was who was training ICT professionals in how to implement the standard. I did find numerous mentions of the standard on Australian university websites and some papers.

Just a Knife and the Internet Needed for Terrorism

Greetings from the Realm Hotel, where Tim Turner Chair of the Australian Computer Society Canberra Branch, just opened the ACS Canberra Conference. He commented that technology is ethically neutral, but professionals could not be. One example was that now just a knife and the Internet was needed for terrorism. FPCON CHARLIE  (Force Protection Condition "C"). This requires increased security checks and limited access. This is admittedly a minor inconvenience, but an effect of Internet transmitted terrorism in Canberra. I will speaking at the ACS Conference Wednesday morning on "Rolls-Royce Education on a Mini Budget".
This is not just an abstract concept, I am attending a conference later in the week at a dual use civilian military facility, which due to the terrorist threat is now at

Future of Canberra and ICT

Andrew Barr, Deputy Chief Minister of the ACT gave the ACS Conference dinner speech. He commented he had just been suspended from the ACT Assembly for three hours and was happy to have an audience which would not throw home out. He mentioned the Canberra Digital Challenge as an initiative, but I found the first projects for this to be lacking in vision.

The ACT is to launch a digital action plan next month. It is disappointing the ACT Government is taking an outdated party political approach with this plan, where they keep it secret until release date, rather than take the community into their confidence and develop it openly on-line with community input.

The Minister mentioned the $42M budget cut to NICTA as an area of concern. However NICTA has now had many years to demonstrate benefit to the community and that benefit is not clear to me.

It was disappointing the Minister did not mention Innovation ACT or the Inspire Centre at University of Canberra, which are two of their more successful investments.

IT Accelerating Government

Graeme Philipson, IT Wire, is talking at the ACS Canberra Branch Conference on how IT is accelerating business. But I suggest this equally applies to the business of Canberra, which is government. Graeme mentioned me in the talk, I suspect to see if I was paying attention.

IT for Australia's Defence

Peter Lawrence, the relatively new CIO of the Australian Department of Defence talked at the ACS Canberra Branch Conference just now. He talked about the challenge of maintaining millions of lines of code in the new F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and what form of IT support to provide in the new warships now being built for the Australian Defence Force.

Peter said how IT needs to be something organization leaders need to worry about more. In my time at Defence there were few senior officers who were comfortable with IT. Hopefully this can be changed, with senior military personnel now being trained at ANU.

An interesting question from the audience to Peter was about the difficulty of international IT students getting a security clearance to work on defence projects. Peter explained that security requirements had to be conformed with. However I have found there are ways to address this. I have had international students  working on IT defence projects. In some cases they were just doing prototype software and research which was not intended for a real system, in others their work was compartmentalized from the sensitive parts of the system.

Future of IT in the Australian Government

Greetings from the Australian Computer Society 2013 Canberra Conference at Old Parliament House in Canberra. The conference topic is "ICT Shaping Our World", but as always the topic of the ACS Canberra conferences is IT in the Australian Government and in organizations supporting government. The conference comes at an interesting time for Canberra, with the public service adjusting to a new government which has an agenda to reduce cost by working in new ways. This is one of the few general computing conferences still run, which is not about a particular company's products or piece of software. This is a place to take the temperature of the IT industry and see what the trends are. It is also an opportunity for academia to report what they have been working on and is ready for transfer to the workplace. First speaker for the day is Nick Tate, President of the ACS, on big data and edible computers (a serious medical application). MOOCs at ANU also got a mention as part of the trend to on-line education.

The hashtag for the conference is "acscancon" and I will be blogging during the day.

Conference Program

                                                                                                                    

Conference - Wednesday - 30 October 2013
8:30	9:00	Arrival Coffee
9:00	9:10	Conference opening - Michael Hawkins, Conference Chair
9:10	9:30	Welcome address - Nick Tate, Australian Computer Society
9:30	10:05	Peter Lawrence, CIO, Department of Defence
10:05	10:40	Sakkie Janse van Rensburg,   CIO,University of Cape Town
10:40	11:00	Coffee Break and Exhibition
		Your World	Our World	Informing Your World	Governing Your World
11:00	11:40	Nathanial Maras, Department of Immigration and Citizenship	Graeme Philipson IT Wire	Jamie Azzopardi, Canon	Steve Bittinger
11:45	11:50	Change over
11:50	12:30	Nick Tate, Australian Computer Society	Jeff Mitchell, Australian Computer Society	Brett Anderson	Damian Brady, .NET User Group
12:30	1:00	Lunch & Exhibition
1:00	1:40	Dr Ian Oppermann, Director, CSIRO
1:40	1:45	Change over
1:45	2:25	Ian Doyle, Austraining International	Kevin Noonan, Ovum	Paul Taylor, iCognition	Matthew Hodgson, Zen Ex Machina
2:25	2:30	Change over
2:30	3:10	Gerald Kuehlich, Geosciences Australia	Charles Palmer, ACT Health	David Williams, ACTKM	David Eade, Objective
3:10	3:30	Coffee Break and Exhibition
3:30	4:10	Roehl Oringo, SME Gateway	Peter van der Made Author of BrainChip: Artificial Intelligence	Vladimir Videnovic, Oracle	Nigel Phair, CREST Australia
4:10	4:15	Change over
4:15	4:55	Mark Toomey, Infonomics Australia
4:55	5:00	Conference Close- Alan Patterson, Australian Computer Society
4:55	5:00	Closing Remarks - Jeff Mitchell, Branch Chair
5:00	7:00	Networking Drinks
7:00	10:00	Conference Dinner

eLearning at Barcamp Canberra 2012

Greetings from Barcamp Canberra 2012 "un-conference"at the ANU in Canberra. I gave a talk on eLearning, which worked okay.

We have enough computers and telecommunications for a digital education revolution, but it is not just about connecting schools to the Internet and buying tablet computers for students. Teachers need to learn a new (or old) way to teach and students need to take responsibility for their , own learning. As a society we need t invest in the skills and systems to do this. ...

Effect of FOI reforms on ICT systems of government

The last talk I attended at the ACS Canberra Conference was Dr. James Popple, Australian Freedom of Information Commissioner, talking about the FOI reforms of government and what this requires of the information systems government uses.

The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner commenced 1
November 2010. This integrates information management, privacy and FOI functions of government.

The new approach is pro-disclosure, treating government information as a national resource. FOI requests can now be submitted by email with no application charges and lower processing charges. The AOIC can investigate complaints about FOI was well help agencies with their
processes.

The first review was "Crowe and NBN Co Ltd". This was a journalist complaining that NBN Co did not provide documents. The decision was that NBN Co. is not subject to the FOI act, as it is not a government agency.
The results are published on the AOIC web site and AustLii.

There are fewer exemptions under the new FOI Act. The seniority and potential embarrassment to senior government officials are specifically not allowed as reasons not to supply documents under FOI.

Documents relating to contract work by private companies are subject to the FOI act.

A disclosure log must be kept by each agency listing documents released (except ones which relate to personal information about individuals). Entries must be included in the log within ten days of release by the document. AOIC is seeking comment on how to do this and have a blog.

Also all agencies must publish information about the agency on their web site (IPS).

IPS may require agencies to publish hundreds of thousands of documents as of 1 May 2011. As Dr. Popple pointed out, agencies are required documents in an accessible format. But agencies may only have some documents on paper, which would need to be scanned in. The image format of the documents are not accessible. Dr. Popple indicated that the AOIC will expect agencies to set realistic timetables as to when and how they will make information available.

Dr. Popple pointed out that the new FOI requirements will require integration between previously separate FOI, records management and web publishing systems.

John Hilvert asked if the AOIC would have an FOI feed, the response was that they were looking at it.

I asked if the penalties in the FOI were sufficient to provide an incentive for staff in agencies to comply. Dr. Popple pointed out there was no penality to the agency, apart from being reported to their minister. However, there was a "no prejudice" provision to be inserted
as 1 May. This will mean that a member of the public can't be disadvantaged by something which should have been published but was not.

Dr. Popple pointed out that agencies could take the opportunity to streamline their operational and other documents. If agencies have a lot of cumbersome separate documents used internally, it might be worth combining them into a more logical structure before public release.

Dr. Popple pointed out that the FOI act uses the terms "document" and "information" almost "interchangeably". So the act most likely applies to collections of electronic data in databases, which are not structured as traditional documents. He suggested that agencies might take the opportunity to ensure information is understandable, but I wonder if some agencies may decide to make the information as unintelligible as possible. ;-)

Dr. Popple pointed out that there is no definitive list of agencies which are subject to the FOI act. So it is not possible for AOIC to have a definitive list.

ps: Dr. Popple is helping with the course COMP7420 Electronic Document and Records Management Technology, in his role as an Adjunct Lecturer at the Austrlaian National Unviersity

What works with electronic records management

The third talk I attended at the ACS Canberra Conference was by Colin Towns discussed his experience with installing Objective 7.5 at Department of Defence. One of the achievements at Defence was just to find the needed metadata and get it loaded into the system. He mentioned the P.O.P.I.T. strategy. The Institute for Information Management will be having a conference in May with more details.

Managing national digital archives

Next at the Australian Computer Society Canberra Branch conference I attended Christine Johnston's presentation on how the National Archives of Australia helps keep the nation's records in electronic format. This involves advising agencies on how to keep e-records and decide which should be transferred to the archive for preservation and for how long.

The process which was developed for paper records doesn't work for electronic ones. A new approach is needed for the flood of electronic records, the government information held on non-government systems and the push for e-government and open access.

I teach some of this in the ANU in the course COMP7420: Electronic Document and Records Management.