Teaching Online Working to Public Servants

Greetings from the Australian Computer Society's Green ICT Special Interest Group  Environmental Issues Discussion in Canberra. This is an informal discussion of possible areas for the ACS to address.  Much of the discussion was around green ICT being a by-product of business efficiency initiatives, such as teleworking. National Telework Week is 12 to16 November 2012 and perhaps ACS should join in.

One aspect of teleworking is the new skills which staff need to work online. It happens I am looking at how to teach such skills to postgraduate university students and staff. The same courses could be also offered to public servants and office staff generally.

Another issue which came up at the meeting was the question of where federal government agencies were with sustainability reporting environmental metrics in their annual reports ("Australian Government ICT Sustainability Plan"). However, these reports do not appear to being extracted and summarised to give an overall view of how the Australian Government is doing with sustainability. Perhaps the ACS could extract the details from all the published annual reports and publish the results. Those agencies doing well can then be recommended for an award in recognition. Where an agency fails to perform, or report, the Minister responsible can be alerted to replace the senior staff.