Australian Computer Society

Media Release

ACS Sharpens Focus on Australian R&D

The ACS is formulating a strategy for IT R&D as part of its "New Information Industries Strategy for the Nation", which it submitted to the Information Industries Taskforce and then released publicly on 18 February.

The ACS is providing funding and expertise to a joint government/industry project called the "Discipline Research Strategy for Australian IT", which recently released its first draft report.

ACS President, Tom Worthington,a member of the project steering committee, has criticised both researchers and business leaders for failing to get behind the project.

"If academics, researchers and business people want government research grants and tax breaks, then they need to say why this is good for Australia. If we don't have a good case, the Government may cancel R&D and we will have to go cap in hand to other countries for new IT products. Australia will become just a worked out quarry."

Dr. Bernard Robertson-Dunn, the ACS nominee on the working party for the project has posed ten questions for the IT industry:

1. Should the topics for government funded IT research be left to the researchers or directed on the basis of relevance to Australia - if so how?
2. Should ALL government funded IT research projects have an industry sponsor who contributes financially and has a vested interest in the outcome?
3. Should government funded IT research be "pure IT" or related to IT use? Should there be a strong cross-discipline flavour to projects?
4. Should a major outcome of government funded IT research funding be products, ideas, educated people, centres of excellence, critical mass of research activities? Any more priorities?
5. Should there be a national strategy for all IT research covering private sector R&D, government funded university research, CSIRO, DSTO etc?
6. If Australia were to select one broad area of IT research on which to concentrate, what should it be?
7. Is the lack of a common terminology a problem (eg. Computer Science, Information Technology, Information Systems, Software Engineering, Computational Science, Computer Engineering, Control Engineering etc).
8. Should Australia permit any and every IT vendor to operate in this country? Should there be a selection process based on the willingness to participate in R&D and production? (Compare the IT industry with the Motor Vehicle industry with its limited number of indigenous manufacturers.)
9. Would we notice if the government stopped funding IT research and concentrated its resources on education and training?
10. Assume the following claim is true - "IT research in Australia is irrelevant to the needs of industry and the community." What can be done to make it relevant? How can practitioners be encouraged to participate in university IT research, and researchers be exposed to "the real world"?

Details of the project and how to make a submission are available on the World Wide Web at: http://www.acs.org.au/president/1996/drsit/

Copies of the ACS "New Information Industries Strategy for the Nation" submission are available on the Web at http://www.acs.org.au/national/acs_05.htm or in paper format from the ACS National Office by calling +61 2 9299 3666.

Members of the Australian Computer Society and others in the IT community can join an on-line discussion in the ACS newsgroup: aus.org.acs

An electronic copy of this media release is located at: http://www.acs.org.au/president/1996/drsit/mr970303.htm

ENDS

Media Enquiries:

• Tom Worthington, President, Australian Computer Society Inc, Mobile: 0419 496 150, Fax: +61 6 2496419, Email: tom.worthington@tomw.net.au
• Dr. Bernard Robertson-Dunn, ACS nominee, Working Party, IT R&D Review, Tel: +61 6 249 1979, Mobile: 015 268 882, E-mail: brd@netinfo.com.au
• Caroline New, ACS Public Relations Consultant, Tel: +61 2 9630 2108, Mobile: 0411 889 456, Fax: +61 2 9630 1685 Email: cnew@acslink.net.au

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