Technology in Government in Canberra

Greetings from the National Convention Centre in Canberra where Technology in Government started today. The best part of such a conference is wandering around the exhibits (a pass for this is free) and meeting people. Of the products on show I found most interesting:

• Read Speaker,  text to speech software for web pages. I was discussing with Richard Ings from Read Speaker, having my e-textbooks speak.
• CloudEra,  big data services. I discussed with Linda Morris if some of their materials could be used in teaching big data courses at university (real universities not the "Coloudera University").

Speculation amongst the delegates on the floor was over how many Government CIOs would be needed with the rationalisation of government IT. If departmental IT is consolidated into a few clusters (such as security, community services, industry and science), then fewer people will be needed to run these.