Australian Computer Society

Strategy for Information Technology Research in Australia

Report on First Steering Committee meeting: 18 October, Sydney

by Tom Worthington, President of the Australian Computer Society, 18 October 1996

This is to provide an informal report from the first meeting of the steering committee of the Discipline Research Strategy for Information Technology in Australia. My input for the committee is also available.

Opened 10:36am, Madsen Building, Sydney University

Present:

Mr Harry Wragge AM FTSE (Chair)
Satis Arnold (in place of Ms Christelle Zmood), DEETYA
Mr Tom Worthington, Australian Computer Society
Mr Mike Moore, Bureau of Meteorology
Mr Richard Dixon Hughes, DH4 Pty Ltd
Emeritus Professor John M. Bennett AO FTSE
Trevor Robinson

Apologies:

Professor Andrew Lister, University of Queensland
Professor Mary O'Kane, University of Adelaide
Professor Henry d'Assumpcao, Signal Processing Research Institute

Welcome and Introductions: Each person introduced themselves. I handed out copies of my initial thoughts web page.

Themes emerging:

Concern that Australia's financial sector was not interested in investing in the commercialisation of IT R&D. There was intended to be a representative of this sector on the steering committee but no one has been found.
Relationship with SE-Asia, both from the point of view of their corresponding R&D strategies and as a market for products.
How will the strategy report be used: launch to promote report, recommendations directed to government, industry, profession.
What is the new federal government's attitude? DEETYA has $14.5M to spend on high performance computing over the next three years. The Government will be looking for advice on what to spend it on.
Problem of priming the market: To what extent can we anticipate a need for IT products (such as super-computer services) and invest in R&D for what we hope might be valuable.
Does the study include telecommunications R&D? Perhaps the major issue and opportunity is the synergy between telecommunications and computing (consumer products to hang on the end of the lines).
Do we only have to research areas for exploitation by our own industry? Can we as well sell the intellectual property for exploitation by others?
Who should the report be addressed to? What results can we expect?
How do we ensure the results of investment remains in Australia? How can the results of R&D be made into products.

Critical issues:

How does the Steering Committee interact with the working party.
The working party has the job to produce a report. Was due by December now due around March 1997.
I put the view that the project needs to be more visible, particularly on-line and that the final report should address the Australian community (who are ultimately paying for R&D), as well as academics, industry and Governments.

Some comments:

I was the only person at the meeting with a computer,
The project Web page proved useful for the steering committee,
There are new opportunities emerging daily: As an example the IMSC report Management of Government Information as a National Strategic Resource released the same day contains many interesting IT R&D challenges

At around 2pm the steering committee joined the working party for a joint meeting. The working part presented a progress report. There are three web sites for the working party, steering group and the general community. I didn't know about the Steering Committee web site.

One embarrassment was that the ACS has not made a submission to the working party. We haven't anyone to write it yet (any volunteers?).

The working party held a number of public forums and a summary of the results of these will be made available in the next few weeks. My impression was that the working party was on to some important issues. An example was that there wasn't an ARC panel for IT and it had to fit in one of the other categories.

There was concern that there hadn't been much discussion on the project on-line forum, so get in there!