Australian Computer Society

• Introduction
• Society Overview
• Electronic Publishing
• Networking
• Legal Issues
• Professional Licensing and Certification
• See Also

• Thank you for the invitation
• This presentation was on-line 29 September
• ACS 30th Anniversary & Conference, 3 Dec.
• Flying to the UK for on-line working?
• My work is on-line
• Australian Government on-line
• Challenge for us: electronic operations for member & community benefit
• Raised this issue with IFIP in September

• Major IT professional association in Australia
• Established in 1966
• Over 16,000 members
• Branches, chapters and special interest groups, like any professional society
• Member of IFIP & SEARCC

• ACS has a healthy evolving electronic publishing activity
• News groups, electronic mailings lists, and the Web
• Experimented with videotex and later Gopher
• Helped write Government on-line use policy
• Issues extensively discussed

• The Internet now a concrete entity
• "Electronic publishing" is different to paper publishing; some issues
  • Integrating paper and on-line
  • Public v members only
  • Member based v organisation publishing
  • Academic status of on-line journals [1]
  • Access equity [2]

• Leading Edge, ACS Branch newsletter
• ACS Consultant Directory
• ACS Core Body of Knowledge
• Member Publications and Papers
• ACJ Book Reviews & newsgroup
• Index to ACJ articles
• I.T. Practitioner's Handbook
• General discussion newsgroup: aus.org.acs

• Technical networking and people networking
• The Internet is now the public infrastructure
• We need to use and improve it
• ACS uses the Internet for administration, governance & member information
• ACSlink for member use two years ago
• Also ACS ACS Remote SIG

• My experience is few legal impediments
• Problem is lack of familiarity
• Existing law can be extended by interpretation...
• ... or made by precedent

• Not to be related to electronic operations?
• Australian IT professionals not licensed
• ACS certification program, by distance education
• ACSaccredits IT courses and has examinations
• New Code of Professional Conduct and Professional Practice
• New Body of Knowledge

Notes

1. For example, see: Harter, Stephen P. "The Impact of Electronic Journals on Scholarly Communication: A Citation Analysis." The Public-Access Computer Systems Review 7, no. 5 (1996). Also available at <URL: http://info.lib.uh.edu/pr/v7/n5/hart7n5.html>.

2. For example, see: National Library of Australia "National Strategy for Provision of Access to Australian Electronic Publications: A National Library of Australia Position Paper" <URL: http://www.nla.gov.au/policy/paep.html>.

3. "Management of Government Information as a National Strategic Resource", Preliminary Report of the Information Management Steering Committee on Information Management in the Commonwealth Government, 18 October 1996, URL: http://www.ogit.gov.au/imscrpt.html

4. Architecture For Access To Government Information, Report of the IMSC -Technical Group, 25 July 1996, URL: http://www.adfa.oz.au/DOD/imsc/imsctg/imsctg1a.htm

• Text of talk
• Three months on the InfoBahn looking for the on-line future
• ACS Home Page
• Tom Worthington's Home Page
• Other talks by the ACS President