The Australian Computer Society (ACS) have issued a Call for Expressions of Interest for committees in 2019.
Nominations are open for theProfession Advisory Board and these committees:
Diversity and Inclusion Committee
Artificial Intelligence Ethics Committee
Blockchain Committee
Data Sharing Committee
Internet of Things Committee
Ethics Committee
ICT Educators Committee
Accreditation Committee
For the last year I have been on the Blockchain Committee. This involves some face to face meetings, teleconferences and much interesting discussion of issues and directions. The committee, like others, provides advice to ACS, and through it to the community, industry and government.
"It's with deep sadness that I let the Link community know that our dear colleague and friend of many years, Brenda Aynsley, passed away quietly this morning in Adelaide, after a long illness. Many here will know Brenda from different paths in the IT community, and those of us who were lucky enough as a true friend. I will miss her more than I can tell.
There is to be no funeral, but if I get word of other wishes, I will pass them along."
From: Sad news - Vale Brenda, Jan Whitaker, Link list on Australian network policy and communications, 12 August 2018, 12:49:51
"... totally absorbed by and committed to the Internet and technology,
not because of the nature of the toys and tools, but because both
provide the means of facilitating effective communication between
citizens of the world. ..."
Her work was global, but I knew Brenda as a fellow member of many ACS committees, and one of my successors as ACS President. Brenda changed the direction of my professional work, as one of the team training myself, and others, to teach computer professionals (Lindley, Aynsley, Driver, Godfrey, Hart, Heinrich, Unhelkar & Wilkinson, 2013).
Brenda was most recently Chair on the ACS South Australia Branch, a relatively recent appointment from January 2018. She was also
Convenor of the ACS SA PC Recycling Group, a position she had held for eighteen years. I visited her at the PC Recycling group and included this in my ICT Sustainability course.
Brenda Aynsley was as the first female President of the ACS, in 2013.
In 2015 Brenda gave evidence to the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security during an inquiry into metadata privacy 29 January 2015. She was also interviewed on the subject for the WSIS FORUM 2015.
Brenda was recognized for service to the information and communications technology sector in the 2014 Australia Day Honours
list, with an Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM). She was a Flinders University alumnus, being awarded a BA in 1982 and DipSocSc in 1984.
Brenda held so many positions in the computer profession in Australia and internationally, it would be difficult to list them all. Here are a few:
Honorary Secretary, South Australian Branch, Australian Computer
Society; Chairman, 1999-2001, 2004-2006 and 2018; ACS Member, since 1989; Founder
and Manager, ACS PC Recycling Group, since 2000.
Chair, SA Committee, The Pearcey Foundation, 2006-2012.
Lindley, D., Aynsley, B., Driver, M.,
Godfrey, R., Hart, R., Heinrich, G., ... & Wilkinson, K. (2013). 11.
Educating for professionalism in ICT: Is learning ethics professional
development?. Professionalism in the information and communication technology industry, 211. URL http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p223541/html/ch11.xhtml?referer=37
Greetings from the Hyatt Hotel in Canberra, where Yohan Ramasundara, is speaking to the Australian Computer Society on "Woden Valley to Silicon Valley - lessons for IT startups". Yohan spent three and a half months seconded from IP Australia to Austrade in Silicon Valley. He started the talk by explaining he geography of Silicon Valley. He mentioned the work of the Aussie Founders Network.
Yohan criticized the fragmented nature of the Australian government presence in Silicon Valley with federal and state organizations having separate initiatives, in contrast to the Swiss government. One successful Australian government initiative is the Australian Landing Pad @ WeWork, San Francisco. From the photos Yohan showed WeWork SF looks much the same as WeWork Sydney.
Yohan pointed out that people skills are needed as well as technical skills for a successful startup. He also pointed out that successful entrepreneurs are open about their business and willing to to talk to budding start-ups.
Yohan was positive about Standford University and its Product Realization Lab. This is available to students in any discipline and supports traditional fabrication (wood and metalwork) as well as hi-tech.There is now a modest ANU MakerSpace in Canberra. One of my teams of ANU Techlauncher students used the 3D printer to make a case for their project.
Yohan pointed to the Alchemist Accelerator as emphasizing the customs of business. But he pointed out that rules about punctuality differ between cultures. Yohan also pointed out that investors invest in the team of talent as much as they do the idea.
Gabe Sulkes then talked about his work as the Landing Pad Manager for Austrade. He was live on-line from the USA and, for once, the network held up. ;-)
From 1996, when the Australian budget was first put on-line, to 2015, I produced a summary of IT related items. This year the Australian Computer Society sponsored a "Budget Insider 2016", so I have not produced my own summary. However, here are some brief comments:
The governments' Youth Jobs PaTH for pre-employment skills training
sounds worthwhile. However the government needs to put in place
effective measures to prevent fraud in the system, as has happened with
the VET-HELP scheme (with several billion dollars lost).
What is not mentioned on education in the budget is how to manage the transformation from classroom to on-line. If Australian institutions do not make this change in the next five to ten years, the current education export industry will collapse and become an education services deficit of about $25B per year. To help prevent that I have prepared a proposal for a train-the-trainer program on Entrepreneurial Skills and Digital Technology. I plan to present this at an international computer education conference later in the year.
The Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) is unlikely to be any more successful than the NEHTA (National E-Health Transition Authority) it replaces, in adoption of the e-Health records. After expenditure of more than a billion dollars there is little to show. The project should be abandoned and rethought: What is the government trying to accomplish? How best can it be done? Who has succeeded at this elsewhere?
The Digital Transformation Office (DTO) has been given some more time to prove itself. But I suggest that if it does not start producing some tangible results in the next year, it should, and will, be scrapped.
Friday morning I attended the Annual General Meeting of Standards Australia in Canberra. I represent Australian Computer Society on Standards Australia's Council. Open Source programmers think they invented the idea of people getting together to develop technology and then giving the results away. But standards makers have been doing it for a hundred years. Companies which fiercely compete in the market and countries at war still get their experts together and agree standards to help the world operate efficiently. Like Open Source they results of this work are made freely available.
For those who don't know, Standards Australia is a non profit non-government organization with volunteer members. The standards developed have no legal force, but are often adopted by governments. Even standards not backed by law have a lot of moral force. SA works with other national and international standards bodies. The Australian Computer Society is one of the members of Standards Australia, along with engineers architects and other professional bodies.
Standards Australia and its sister organizations around the world just look after the administrative side of standards development. The actual work of drafting standards is done by expert volunteers sent by their companies, government agencies and universities. The experts are supposed to leave their organization affiliations at the door, to do a standard for the common good and mostly this happens.
Standards development is at an interesting transition time. Global standards are much in vogue to foster international trade. The Internet is forcing changes in the ways standards are created and distributed.
Standards Australia floated its commercial publications operation on the Australian stock market as SAI Global Limited. Stanndards Australia still makes the standards but SA Global sells them.
Standards Australia have sponsored a history "Engine of Change: Standards Australia since 1922: by Winton Higgins. SA are giving away the book and if you ask Ariella Mitchell she might give you a copy. Like the history ACS published some time ago it is not exactly a riveting read, but a useful scholarly work. Higgins is a Research Fellow at UTS and there is a paper from him on the same topic. But his research is flawed in one part of the book claiming OSI communications standards somehow fostered the Internet. In fact OSI and the Internet were bitter rivals. Internet standards were, and still are, made outside the international standards process which Standards Australia is a part of.
IT people are used to making standards online and standards bodies are having to come to grips with providing tools for doing this. Standards Australia has Consensus Builder as an online web based tool for helping committees to do their work. But most committees still involve face to face meetings and mountains of paperwork.
Standards NZ were at the SA meeting in Canberra. SANZ is a government body, but works much the same as Standards Australia and works on jopint AU/NZ standrads. Standards NZ have brought in a system for selling standards online, mostly by subscription. Perhaps it would be cheaper to get Australian standards via SA NZ? ;-)
Some changes were made to SA's structure at the meeting to streamline the processes. These came from a report from consultants Cameron Ralph. There was much humor over this as the report is still marked "confidential", despite being on the web.
