APEC Cross-border Mobility of Universities, Researchers and Students

The 20th APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in Vladivostok has agreed on "Promoting Cross-Border Education Cooperation". The aim is to allow students and researchers to work at institutions in each others countries and allow institutions to provide courses across national boundaries. This will require considerable work on quality assurance and accreditation. But it should be noted that this will not necessarily require students or staff to physically travel between countries, as study and research collaboration is increasingly being done on-line.

Australia already has an education agreement with India, signed by the then Minister for Education, Julia Gillard,in 2010. However, there appears to have been little progress on implementation. Australia is also a signatory to the "Bologna Accords") for standardization of higher education qualifications with Europe. The only other APEC countries to sign the accords are NZ and USA, making implementation of a regional agreement more difficult. Also the mix of government and commercial education providers will complicate the process.

Promoting Cross-Border Education Cooperation

Education is the pre-eminent source of economic development in the 21st century, creating more and higher quality jobs and bolstering productivity growth. Education is also a fundamental component of economic activity. Cooperation in the education sectors of APEC economies fosters innovative growth as students, researchers and education providers build scientific, technological and linguistic communities.
All APEC economies stand to gain from enhancing collaboration on cross-border education. Many developing economies in the Asia-Pacific region are rapidly moving into higher value-added manufacturing and knowledge intensive industries driven by innovation. Access to a wide range of quality higher education services is critical for sustainable growth on this development pathway. The APEC region also contains some of the world’s largest exporters and consumers of education services. Facilitating the flow of students, researchers and education providers, and reducing the transaction costs involved provides opportunities for a significant expansion of cross border education services to the benefit of all economies.
Increasing cross-border student flows will strengthen regional ties, build people to people exchanges, and promote economic development through knowledge and skills transfer. High quality cross-border education equips students with the 21^st century competencies they need for their full participation in a globalized and knowledge based society.
Therefore, we, the APEC Leaders, agree that strengthening collaboration among APEC economies is crucial for facilitation of the work on specific policies, including those relating to quality assurance, accreditation, cross-border exchange and data collection. Such work will have a significant impact on the education sector in APEC economies. Important steps were made by economies in 2012 to enhance practical and sustainable educational cooperation, exploring a number of proposals for cross border education within the region as well as research, information, and knowledge sharing. We encourage further development, on a voluntary basis, consistent with individual economies' circumstances, of cross-border education cooperation and facilitation of exchange in education services within APEC in the following areas:
a) Enhancing the mobility of students. This may be achieved, but not limited by the following:

• identifying, comparing and implementing best practices among APEC economies for course accreditation and quality assurance systems, as well as targeted capacity building projects;
• developing models to guide reform and implementation of good regulatory practices, drawing on case studies of domestic education providers;
• exploring ways to increase the transparency of student visa requirements.

b) Enhancing the mobility of researchers. This may be achieved, but not limited by the following:

• developing existing academic exchanges and joint research activities between and among universities in APEC economies;
• exploring ways to improve the mobility of the academic workforce.

c) Enhancing the mobility of education providers. This may be achieved, but not limited by the following:

• exploring ways to enhance transparency of regulation of foreign providers and to remove unnecessary barriers to market access;
• mapping of existing regulations for the establishment of foreign providers;
• benchmarking and identifying best practices in APEC on quality assurance systems.

d) Enhancing the existing network of bilateral agreements. This may be achieved by, but is not limited by the following:

• examining issues related to the flexible design and delivery of educational content (such as online courses) among APEC economies;
• enhancing availability of data on educational programs in APEC economies.

We instruct Ministers and officials to take forward these priorities on cross-border student, researcher and education provider mobility to develop cross-border educational cooperation in the APEC region while taking into consideration the circumstances of individual economies.
From: Promoting Cross-Border Education Cooperation, Annex D of the APEC 2012 Leaders' Declaration, (the "Vladivostok Declaration: Integrate to Grow, Innovate to Prosper"), at the 20th APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in Vladivostok, Russia, 9 September 2012

International Standards for Data Centre Metrics

Greetings from DC GreenTech in Sydney. Graeme Phillipson from Connection Research talked about recently attended an international meeting on standards for data centre metrics at the APECTEL 42 Meeting in Brunei (August 2010) and reported some results. He claimed that electricity costs in Australia would double in the next few years and that electricity was the most rapidly increasing cost for data centres. What I found interesting was that unlike most "green" speakers he did not mention climate change. This was appropriate given the audience was made up of people who run data centres which consume large amounts of electricity.

Graeme referred to the ACS ICT energy audit, which he authored. This found 2.7% of CO2e in Australia. More significant was that computers use 7.1% of the electricity in Australia. He gave a good explanation of scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions. The ACS study did not cover scope 3 emissions.

The largest ICT energy use is the cooling for data centers at 18.8%. This is followed by PCs 15.8% and Printers 15.7% and then servers 14.7%.

Graeme discussed the benefits and limitations of measures such as PUE. This measures how much of the power going into a data centre actually gets to the computer equipment. This is easy to calculate but only measures the efficiency of the data centre equipment, not what the computers actually do.

In response to limitations in PUE, the Green Grid have proposed Data Centre Energy Productivity (DCeP). This measures the ration of "useful work" from the computer to energy used. The problem is how to define what useful work is.

It seems to me that the computer industry has been struggling with computer power, in terms of the work produced, for decades. Rather than try to create a new measure, it should be feasible to create energy efficiency measures for each of the existing computer benchmarks. An overall figure could be created by a weighted average of the benchmarks.

EPA did a study which found that PUEs in real data centres follow an S curve and proposed an energy star standard in April 2010.

The EU produced a data centre code of conduct.

The Japanese Green IT Promotion Council (GiPC). The details of their DPPE will be released in a white paper next week. The Japanese approach does not include "useful work".

Graeme mentioned an "emerging Australian Standard". NABERS Energy for Data Centres work is being done. This is interesting as NABERS building standards are already in place for other types of buildings, such as offices. A standard for data centres is likely to be widely adopted as companies already understand the idea of having energy rated buildings.

Graeme is dong research for the NABERS standard and so far has data for 40 data centres. The standard was due to be out July 2010 and no is unlikely before July 2011.

On 5 April 2010 green grid announced "Global Harmonization of Data Center Energy Efficiency Metrics" with US, European and Japanese bodies has agreed to work on common international standards in a media release that US, European and Japanese bodies has agreed to work on common international standards. The aim is to come up with a global standard in 2011. In the interim PUE and DCiE are good enough to be worth going on with.

The Green Grid, the IT industry’s leading voice for advancing energy
efficiency in data centers, today announced that in an unprecedented global effort, the consortium along with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Save Now and Federal Energy Management Programs, U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) ENERGY STAR Program, European Union Code of Conduct, Japan Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry’s (METI) Green IT Initiative, and Japan’s Green IT
Promotion Council (GIPC) have collectively reached an agreement on the guiding principles of data center energy efficiency metrics. This agreement represents a significant achievement, as these
organizations continue working to ensure data center efficiency metrics, measurements and reporting conventions can be applied with clarity and consistency at the global level.

“The ultimate goal is to create a set of globally accepted metrics for data center energy efficiency. One of the first, and perhaps most important factors to successfully achieving this aim is establishing a unity of communication,” said Tom Brey, IBM representative and Secretary of The Green Grid. “The Green Grid is working with organizations around the world to develop a clear and well-defined language for the way we communicate about energy efficiency metrics, which will give us a common measuring stick for all
data centers regardless of their location. With that type of consistency, we can start driving behavioral changes in the industry.”

As the basis for these guiding principles, The Green Grid and the aforementioned organizations have designated Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) as the industry’s preferred energy efficiency metric. The group will leverage the guiding principles to help drive a universal understanding of energy efficiency metrics and generate dialogue to improve data center efficiencies. A global task force with
representatives from each of the above mentioned organizations will continue to move this initiative forward and reconvene later this year to evaluate progress. ...

From: "Global Harmonization of Data Center Energy Efficiency Metrics", The Green Grid, 5 April 2010.

APEC Symposium on Climate Change in Canberra

Greetings from the working group of the APEC Symposium on Climate Change at the ANU Canberra. About 20 delegates from around the Asia pacific are discussing issues in the lead up to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen December (UNFCCC CoP 15). I gave the symposium a presentation on "Technology transfer by collaborative online education for climate change mitigation" with the message that online collaboration and mentoring could be used to accelerate the distribution of knowledge of how to deal with climate change. I used the example of the postgraduate green technology course I run for the Australian Computer Society and the Australian National University. The deligates were particularly interested in the fact that the notes were available freely as web pages, as well as a paperback book and down-loadable e-book.

Also they asked about the role of mobile phones and traditional face-to-face teaching, so I was able to explain the course material was prepared in a format which could display on a smart phone and be printed. I was asked if this form of education could be expanded to a wider audience, not just postgraduate students. This would be feasible, but take much more work in preparing introductory material, and using multimedia. ANU is installing equipment and software for more easily developing multimedia and I am trialing this

The afternoon session started with a video linkup with the Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research in Japan. The technology worked for the connection, but there was confusion as to from which end of the link the slides would be displayed, which took some time to sort out. The event continues tomorrow with small groups preparing proposed initiatives.

Here is the program so far:

APEC Symposium on Climate Change

28th - 30th October 2009

Background

In the lead up to the Australia-Korea Leadership Forum in November and the UNFCCC CoP 15 in Copenhagen in December, the CCI, through AusAID sponsorship, is hosting a closed workshop consisting of APEC member economies....

Workshop Objectives

• Identify opportunities to promote collaboration between business, government and educational and
  research institutions in the Asia-Pacific region on climate change issues, including:
  • Identify mechanisms for technology development and transfer to support action on climate change
    mitigation and adaptation;
  • Technology underpinning knowledge creation and transfer; and
  • Turning research into outcomes.
• Identify impediments and solutions to effective collaboration around key issues, including:
  • IP challenges;
  • Knowledge gaps;
  • Capacity building; and
  • Governance.
• Where to from now?
• Identify achievable outcomes and timeframes; and
• Road map ahead. ...

Workshop Outcomes

Workshop outcomes will include:

• A road map for APEC economies to progress the challenges of knowledge transfer;
• High level plan to turn research into outcomes;
• Identification and potential solutions to impediments to effective collaboration;
• Opportunities for AusAID to provide continued support in the Asia-Pacific region;
• Road map ahead for follow up workshops / conferences; and
• Report of proceedings.

SESSION 1

9:00 – 10:45 CHAIR – Ms Octavia Borthwick
Assistant Director General, Asia Regional Branch, AusAID
Timing Speakers
08:45 - 09:00 Arrival and registration
09:00 - 9:05 Welcome and Introduction (Prof
Will Steffen) Executive Director, ANU Climate Change Institute
09:05 – 09:15 Ms Octavia Borthwick (Australia) ADG, Asia Regional Branch, AusAID
09:15 - 09:40 Dr Heesu Park (R Korea) Policy Advisor, Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA)
09:40 – 10:05 Prof Haibin Zhang (PR China) Director, Centre for International Organisation Studies, Peking University
10:05 - 10:30 Dr Nguyen Dai Khanh (Viet Nam) Director, Technology and International Cooperation, National Hydro-Meteorological Service, Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment
10:30 – 10:45 Questions & discussion
10:45-11:00 MORNING COFFEE & TEA

SESSION 2

11:00 – 12:30
CHAIR – Prof Will Steffen ANU Climate Change Institute
Timing Speakers
11:00–11:25 Dr Carmel Gacho (Philippines) Senior Science Research Specialist, Industrial Technology Development Institute, Department of Science and Technology, Philippines
11:25–11:45 Mr Tom Worthington, Green ICT e-learning Designer, ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science and the Australian Computer Society
11:45–12:00 Questions & discussion
12:30-13:45 LUNCH

SESSION 3

14:00 – 14:50 VIDEO CONFERENCE
CHAIR - Prof James Fox, Frank Fenner Building, ANU Medical School Director, ANU Korea Institute
Timing Speaker(s)
14:00 – 14:30 Mr Tetsuro Fujitsuka (Japan) Asia-Pacific Network for Global Change Research (APN), Japan
14:30 – 14:50 Questions and discussion ...

Thai Prime Minister at APEC in Sydney visiting Buddhist temple in Annadale

Thinking I was safe from the chaos of the APEC meeting in Sydney, I was barbecuing some kangaroo on the balcony in Sydney when a dozen motorcycle police came past and blocked the street outside. The Thai prime minister the arrived to visit the the Buddhist temple opposite in Annandale.

The scene involved security people in ill fitting suits and wrap around sunglasses talking into the cuffs of their coats, and even someone going past on a Segway.

Later on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, of the Kingdom of Thailand provided an official photo on their web site:

After the meeting, the Prime Minister along with Minister of Foreign Affairs and Minister of Commerce visited Wat Buddharangsee at Annandale in order to perform religious practices and met with more than 300 Thai people who are living in the vicinity areas. In this occasion, the Prime Minister talked to those who came to welcome him about current political and economic situations in Thailand. ...

From: Prime Minister of Thailand arrives in Sydney for APEC Summit, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, of the Kingdom of Thailand, September 8, 2007

ps: BBQ Kangaroo: Take one de-boned leg of kangaroo, place on a very hot BBQ plate with sunflour oil. Sear both sides. Add garlic, pepper and two cups of red wine. Reduce the heat, cover and simmer for ten minutes.