Attracting Australians to Military Service

Luke Townsend, 
 Managing Director at Outlook Industries

Luke Townsend Managing Director at Outlook Industries Pty Ltd, has proposed an Australian service questionnaire ("Revolutionising ADF recruiting: an opt-out system", Australian Strategic Policy Institute, 15 Dec 2023). This would be compulsory for all year 11 or 12 Australian students, to determine their suitability for military service. Those considered most suitable would be sent an offer of a full or part time position. He proposes this could be extended to also cover civilian government job offers as well. This is proposed to answer a chronic shortage of Australian Defence Force personnel. However, in this form, the idea is unlikely to receive widespread political support.

A service questionnaire is likely to meet opposition as being conscription by stealth. Compulsory military service is an issue which has divided Australian society, even in times of world war. Also the questionnaire would not address the reasons why young people are not volunteering, and not choosing to remain in military service. The military needs people with advanced technical skills, and are competing with civilian employers for those people. While all trained to fire a rifle, most now sit behind a computer console to do their job. The ADF needs to offer competitive pay and conditions to attract and retain personnel who can maintain and operated advanced systems. 

Mr Townsend gives examples of the Australian 1st Armoured Regiment being removed from the order of battle, and HMAS Anzac has now been mothballed due to lack of crew. However, in the next decade tanks, & most warships will be replaced with drones having no crews. These will new fewer people to operate, but those people will need advanced technical skills, and be supported by techncans to keep the systems running.

Mr Townsend gives the example of Finland with 5% of the population in the reserve forces. However, Finland has a long land boarder which can be defended by troops, in some cases on skis. Australia is an island, requiring ships, submarines, and aircraft as its primary defense, and which will be mostly automated and uncrewed. This will require an advanced workforce, of mostly civilians working in industry, to support.

This is not to say an Australian service questionnaire could not be useful. But I suggest it needs to be voluntary to avoid political opposition. Also the questionnaire could emphasize civilian roles, not military ones. At the same time the ADF could reform its training programs, to offer civilian standard vocational certificates to recruits, as well as the university degrees already offered.

Is a New Canberra Campus Needed?

UNSW Canberra at ADFA are planning a new university campus in Canberra, on the site of the old Canberra TAFE. The current UNSW Canberra campus is described as being "now at capacity". However, universities are currently teaching online, with almost all students and staff off campus. That situation will change in the next few months, as students and staff return to campus. But, the COVID19 emergency has accelerated the long term trend to e-learning.

As this is integrated into routine university teaching, the capacity of Canberra's university campuses will increase five-fold. Domestic students will only need to be on campus for about one day a week and international students in Australia only for a brief part of their studies, if at all. There is scope to repurpose some of the surplus space for research and for co-working, but even so, there is likely to be more than enough space on Canberra's campuses for the foreseeable future. 

It does make sense to reuse the old Canberra TAFE site for a university, but it is unlikely Canberra will have the hundreds of thousands of additional students which this, and the existing campuses, could accommodate. 

Cyber Storm Conference in Canberra

UNSW Canberra has invited papers for  “Cyber Storm”, 18-20 February 2019. The conference will focus on training for cyber warfare.

"Australia’s former Minister of Cyber Security, Hon. Dan Tehan, warned in November 2016, of the need for the country to prepare for a cyber storm, even if it was an unlikely contingency. One view of the Cyber Storm sees it as the contingencies arising from protracted and complex, multi-vector, multi-wave, multi-theatre attacks against cyber assets. Such assets can include critical civil infrastructure, military C4ISTAR, computerised systems in weapons platforms, and even other civilian targets of military or national security significance.

This conference will concentrate on the role universities and professional education institutions, such as military colleges, can play to address the unique challenges of workforce formation for the Cyber Storm.

For middle powers like Australia, immense challenges exist in framing education and training solutions for these contingencies, as the research foundations on which these policy responses depend, are very weakly developed, or even non-existent. This is especially case in the sub-field of simulations. The conventional wisdom, or at least the dominant practice, has been that the knowledge, skills and abilities needed would be acquired “on the job” in highly classified environments. There has been little space for open-source research and therefore minimal open-source education and teaching. This scholarly conference will discuss research papers on these subjects by leading specialists from universities, professional colleges, think tanks, government, and industry. The academic portion of the conference will not have any special national focus, but papers that can address the U.S. experience or that of middle powers like Australia will be highly regarded. The academic portion will be followed by a one-day invitation-only policy workshop to give strategic planners in government, the armed forces and business the opportunity to reflect on practical recommendations arising from the scholarly research."

Canberra into Space

Greetings from the UNSW Canberra Campus, hosting the  Canberra Innovation Network's First Wednesday event. The host told us about UNSW Canberra Space, their motto should be "It is rocket science!". There were then eleven sixty second pitches. If you have a bright idea and have thought about turning it into a product, you should come along to such a pitch night at your local startup center. The room has a positive vibe.But the most useful part of the evening are not the formal presentations (which are short), but talking to people. I am interested in how to teach innovation online to graduate students and happened to meet someone enrolled in such a course.

Research to Impact Program

The Research to Impact program is on at Canberra Innovation Network (CBRIN), starting 14 March. This consists of four workshops, over two months, with participants undertaking exercises between. The workshops are derived from those at CBRIN for entrepreneurs to find market needs, value propositions, business models, value chain, collaboration and pitching. But the workshops have been adapted for researchers who want their work to have a real work impact and be applied. I attended these workshops when they were run in-house for ANU by Petr Adamek and Craig Davis in 2016 and they were excellent. Staff of ANU, UC, CIT, Data61, CSIRO and UNSW Canberra can attend for free.

Mental Models for Decision Making

Greetings from the Systems Modelling Conference at the Australian Defence Force Academy in Canberra. The keynote is by Associate Professor Shayne Gary, UNSW on Mental Models and Dynamic Decision Making. In several training courses I have been encouraged to draw a mental model and even shown software to help with the drawing. However, there was never any rigor to this process, nor theory behind it, just "draw something", so I dismissed this as trivial. However, Professor Gary is pointing out there is research into how these models help people understand a complex problem.But mental models can be misleading.

References

Gary, M. S., Yang, M. M., Yetton, P. W., & Sterman, J. D. (2017). Stretch Goals and the Distribution of Organizational Performance. Organization Science. URL https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2017.1131
Gary, M. S., Prietula, M. J., & Feltovich, P. (2017, January). Mental Models as the Interface between the Business Environment and Strategic Decisions. In Academy of Management Proceedings (Vol. 2017, No. 1, p. 14588). Academy of Management. doi:10.5465/AMBPP.2017.14588abstract

Mastering the Cyber Security Skills Crisis with a Framework

Adam P. Henry, UNSW

Greetings from UNSW Canberra at the Australian Defence Force Academy, where Adam P. Henry, is speaking on his report "Mastering the Cyber Security Skills Crisis: Realigning Educational Outcomes to Industry Requirements".

Adam asserted that there is a shortage of cyber security personnel in Australia. However, his report is on university degrees, which are not necessarily intended to to provide "job ready" staff. University degrees provide a broad education and it is expected that industry and specific employers will provide specific job skills.

Some university degrees do provide specific work skills and experience, such as engineering and computer science. I am tutoring ANU engineering and computer science students in the ANU Techlauncher course after this seminar.  Some of these students undertake group projects for companies and government agencies, while others are individual "interns" working under supervision in organisaitons.

Adam emphasized practical time on task and testing of students on work-relevant exercises. He looked at different forms of education, including industry certifications, as well as higher education. Adam divided expertise into five levels, from basic to advanced expert. It would be useful to relate these to the Australian Qualifications Framework (AQF), which has ten levels. He also divided the field of education into five areas, including "people". He also had nine purposes in his framework.

Adam conducted surveys of students. Interestingly, 40% of students were not already working in cyber security and 56% were studying to get a new job. Also 34% were interested in going on to a PHd. One this last point, I suggest a Professional Doctorate may be better than a PHd.

Adam compared the offered Australian degrees with a the requirements for the US standard cyber security job characteristics (NIST KSA).  However, he also pointed out that some cyber security jobs may be so specialized that the employees don't have a career path. That suggests that education needs to be broad to get the employees out of that trap.

This 28 page report argues that Master of Cyber Security programs in Australia do not meet the requirements of industry. However, this is based on comparing what is in the Australian degrees with U.S. Government requirements. As a trained and qualified educational designer, specializing in IT and with a background in defence, if you give me that as the requirement, I could design a degree program, to meet that specification. However, are the US requirements what Australian industry needs and who says what is required?

When designing engineering and computer science programs and courses, there are professional bodies for universities to turn to for guidance. Engineers Australia and the Australian Computer Society accredit relevant programs. There seems to be a lack of equivalent in the cyber security area. This is something the universities can help rectify. In practice many of the people who write the "industry" requirements for education are actually academics seconded to committees by EA and ACS.

The report is on firmer ground suggesting "... mission-specific and purpose-driven courses may better prepare students and address the skills crisis than generalist degrees." (p. 3). However, I suggest that purpose-driven courses can be incorporated into degree programs, using tools such as e-portfolios. The degree can provide a general framework, into which specific industry certifications can be inserted, as required.

Australia has an advantage when it comes to designing practical, flexible, education.  The vocational and university arms of education are able to support each other. The workforce can be trained by a combination of university degrees, vocation programs at government TAFEs and commercial training organizations (RTOs), plus training in the workplace RTOs.

ps: I prepared a Cyberwar Hypothetical for Teaching ICT Ethics at ANU.

Mastering the Cyber Security Skills Crisis in Canberra This Thursday

Adam P. Henry, UNSW

The report "Mastering the Cyber Security Skills Crisis: Realigning Educational Outcomes to Industry Requirements", by Adam P. Henry, has been released by the Australian Centre for Cyber Security (ACCCS). There will be a seminar about the report, 11:00am, 24 August 2017, at UNSW Canberra.

This 28 page report argues that Master of Cyber Security programs in Australia do not meet the requirements of industry. However, this is based on comparing what is in the Australian degrees with U.S. Government requirements. Australia's needs may not be the same as the USA and the UK's approach (coming from GCHQ) may be more appropriate. Also what is suitable for government and military requirements may not be what commercial industry need.

The report is on firmer ground suggesting "... mission-specific and purpose-driven courses may better prepare students and address the skills crisis than generalist degrees." (p. 3). However, I suggest that purpose-driven courses can be incorporated into degree programs, using tools such as e-portfolios. The degree can provide a general framework, into which specific industry certifications can be inserted, as required.

ps: I prepared a Cyberwar Hypothetical for Teaching ICT Ethics at ANU.

University Open Day in Canberra on Saturday 26 August

Canberra's universities and Institute of technology are having an open day on Saturday 26 August 2017. Prospective students, and anyone else who would like to see what happens at a university, can come and look:

1. Australian Catholic University (ACU)
2. Australian National University (ANU)
3. Canberra Institute of Technology (CIT)
4. University of Canberra
5. UNSW Canberra/Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA).

Each institution has its own character.  ACU is calm and cloistered, being a former seminary. ANU has a grand tree lined avenue, from North America's Ivy League. CIT has workshops and funky designers. UCan has gone upwards with new high rise accommodation. UNSW/ADFA is a modern interpretation of West Point Academy, with a parade ground and everything squared away.

Defining the ICT Curriculum

Greetings from the UNSW Canberra (at ADFA) where Lynette Johns-Boast from ANU is speaking on "A Definitional Framework for curriculum" at the "Conveticle on Computing Education". It is surprising that what a curriculum is could be so unclear. However, what a curriculum is depends on what the purpose of education is, what outcomes are expected and how prescriptive  the process to get there is. Lynette suggests a software engineering approach can be applied to curriculum design, working from the purpose of the course to the desired outcomes and from this set out the required content. This prevents courses growing in an uncontrolled way, with old content just accumulating. Lynette uses the analogy of university degrees built from building blocks, but I suggest my analogy of car "platforms" works better. Building blocks are of a fixed size, but car platforms are designed so they can be adjusted in size (within set limits) to build a small or large car. In the case of curriculum you could apply the platform to a short diploma, a degree or a masters.

Coming up is:

2:40 Potential for Secondary and Tertiary IT Pathways in the light of the Digital Technologies Curriculum, Bruce Fuda, Gunghalin College
3:20 Computing Ethics Education, Richard Lucas, UC
4:00 Close

Teaching Innovation in Canberra

Greetings from the UNSW Canberra (at ADFA) where Richa Awasthy, from ANU is speaking on "TechLauncher: A university course creating industry-ready graduates and entrepreneurship". I have been the "client" for one of the teams of students doing the TechLauncher Program at ANU (building webinar software to plug into Moodle). Richa described the complexities of having IT students do a real group project where they have to produce a product (and optionally do a company start-up). May institutions now have some sort of project course and possibly a start-up, but the interesting thing about TechLauncher is that it links together existing project and start-up programs.

Coming up are:

1:40 A Definitional Framework for curriculum

Lynette Johns-Boast, ANU
2:20 Afternoon tea
2:40 Potential for Secondary and Tertiary IT Pathways in the light of the Digital Technologies Curriculum, Bruce Fuda, Gunghalin College
3:20 Computing Ethics Education, Richard Lucas, UC
4:00 Close

ps: This morning I talked on Evolving Content and Assessment for an International Moodle Course

Looking for Graduate Outcomes

Greetings from the UNSW Canberra (at ADFA) where Tim Turner just opened the "Conveticle on Computing Education". This is a free, informal one day conference where researchers and practitioners can present and discuss.  The first speaker is Chris Johnson from ANU on "Academic Peer Assessment for Learning Standards". The issue is how you compare the educational product which different universities produce.  Interesting, while universities compare a lot of time and resources assessing their students, they do not like to be assessed themselves. ;-)

Chris went through some of the reasons for learning standards: for the university, government and employers (one not mentioned was the community). He suggested that the final capstone project which ICT students do would be one option for benchmarking.

I suggest that university, government and employers may have different priorities for what graduates should be able to do. Hamilton, Carbone, Gonsalvez, and Jollands (2015) have looked at what ICT employers want. In terms of the public interest I suggest that competence is sufficient: that is graduates should be able to do what they are supposed to do without accidentally killing anyone. Universities and employers might want some form of ranking above competent. Also, I suggest, that universities and employers may have different priorities.

One issue for employers have been the professional skills of the graduates. That is can they work in teams, deliver on time, understand business processes and communicate with non-specialists. Universities have responded by claiming students have these skills, by having them in extra-curricular activities, as separate courses or integrated. The latter two approaches I suggest could be implemented using e-portfolios.

Coming up are:

9:40 Evolving Content and Assessment for an International Moodle Course, Tom Worthington, ANU
10:20 Morning tea
10:40 Teaching Human Computer Interaction to International Students, Jennyfer Taylor, ANU
11:20 Teaching Technical Subjects on Moodle, Michael de Raadt, Moodle
12:00 Lunch
1:00 TechLauncher: A university course creating industry-ready graduates and entrepreneurship, Richa Awasthy, ANU
1:40 A Definitional Framework for curriculum
Lynette Johns-Boast, ANU
2:20 Afternoon tea
2:40 Potential for Secondary and Tertiary IT Pathways in the light of the Digital Technologies Curriculum, Bruce Fuda, Gunghalin College
3:20 Computing Ethics Education, Richard Lucas, UC
4:00 Close

Reference

Hamilton, M., Carbone, A., Gonsalvez, C., & Jollands, M. (2015, January). Breakfast with ICT Employers: What do they want to see in our graduates?. In Proceedings of the 17th Australasian Computing Education Conference (ACE 2015) (Vol. 27, p. 30). Retrieved from http://www.tomw.net.au/education/online_professional_education/eportfolio/

ps: Most of the time the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA)  campus looks like any other university (except the students are in uniform). But today I noticed a sign pointing to a cyber-security course and there are helicopters landing on the playing field.

Computing Education Conference in Canberra

UNSW Canberra (at ADFA) is hosting the "Conveticle on Computing Education", 27 October 2015 in Canberra. This is a free, informal one day conference where researchers and practitioners can present and discuss. Contact Tim Turner, for more details.

Draft Program

8:30 Arrival tea and coffee
9:00 Academic Peer Assessment for Learning Standards, Chris Johnson, ANU
9:40 Evolving Content and Assessment for an International Moodle Course, Tom Worthington, ANU
10:20 Morning tea
10:40 Teaching Human Computer Interaction to International Students, Jennyfer Taylor, ANU
11:20 Teaching Technical Subjects on Moodle, Michael de Raadt, Moodle
12:00 Lunch
1:00 TechLauncher: A university course creating industry-ready graduates and entrepreneurship, Richa Awasthy, ANU
1:40 A Definitional Framework for curriculum
Lynette Johns-Boast, ANU
2:20 Afternoon tea
2:40 Potential for Secondary and Tertiary IT Pathways in the light of the Digital Technologies Curriculum, Bruce Fuda, Gunghalin College
3:20 Computing Ethics Education, Richard Lucas, UC
4:00 Close

Forum on Computing Education in Canberra

UNSW Canberra (ADFA) is hosting the "Conveticle on Computing Education", 27 October 2015 in Canberra. This is a free, informal one day conference where researchers and practitioners can present and discuss. Tim Turner, has asked for presenters:

"I am writing to invite you to attend this year’s Conventicle on Computing Education. UNSW Canberra agreed to host the event in Canberra this year. ... Please feel free to forward this invitation to other peers with a similar interest. The conventicle is a free one-day forum where computing education practitioners and researchers share their innovations, ideas, and findings with like-minded people working in the same geographic region.

The conventicle is often used to pre-present or re-present recently accepted papers, but it is also a venue for presentation and discussion of hot topics or work in progress. Proposals are not formally reviewed, as they would be for a conference or journal, but are considered by a local organising committee.

No publication ensues, as many of the conventicle papers have been or are soon to be published elsewhere. Please respond to me with your interest in attending and your willingness to make a presentation at the conventicle.

I’ve scheduled the whole day (9:00am to 4:00pm) and would assume that we can have between 8 and 10 presentations (30 – 45mins each) separated by relevant breaks for tea/coffee/lunch/etc. ... I’m happy to discuss the day and expectations on participants in more detail with you, as required.

Please send along proposals for a presentation as soon as practical so that I can build a program. I look forward to seeing you all on 27 October. "

Dr Tim Turner, FACS Director, Undergraduate Studies School of Engineering and IT UNSW Canberra at the Australian Defence Force Academy Chair ACS Canberra Branch

E-learning in developing countries

Dr Tim Turner and Dr Ahmed Imran will speak on "E-learning in developing countries" at the ACS e-Learning Special Interest Group, 5pm 6th May 2015, Australian National University in Canberra.

ACS e-Learning Special Interest Group

E-learning in developing countries

Unlike 1st world countries, e-learning in developing country has a different connotation, which is not readily understood without in depth research and experience of the context. We would like to share two cases: a study of a Regional Public University in the Philippines, and an e-learning portal on E-government management for public sector officials of developing countries. More at: http://www.ictforldc.com/pslp/

Biography

Dr Tim Turner is Director of Undergraduate Studies at the School of Engineering and Information Technology, UNSW Canberra. Dr Turner has been involved in the IT industry for over 20 years, with the focus on e-commerce, and particularly e-government, for over 15 years.

Dr Ahmed Imran is an Information System (IS) researcher at UNSW Canberra, whose research interest largely emerged from his personal experience that includes ICT adoption in public sector, e-government and ICT in developing countries.

Digital Students at the Australian Defence Academy

Greetings from the "Red Room" at the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) in Canberra (aka UNSW Canberra), where Dr Jason Mazanov is speaking on "The Digital Student: Insights from Building an On-line Masters Course". He described how ADFA moved from paper based correspondence courses to their own bespoke on-line system "Olive" and then to Moodle. More importantly he described the path from just using message boards to more sophisticated use of social media to build an on-line community of inquiry (Garrison & Anderson, 2010). He pointed out that the military on-line learning culture is didactic with completely self contained materials and students who will look after each other.

Dr. Mazanov showed one of his Moodle course designs on screen. He uses peer feedback for students and some live online (synchronous) sessions. He also uses Twitter for "come and do stuff".

Dr. Mazanov has 75 to 86 students in his masters course. One problem found from student feedback surveys  was that students though they had to get 15/15 for their online engagement. It seems to me that this part of the assessment should perhaps be competency based. He found some improvement in learning for digitally literate and non-literate students.

Some other stud net feedback was they liked discussions, but not Wikis or Twitter. Students liked on-line pre-recorded videos. Students preferred asynchronous formats. Twitter was too short for an academic discussion and they were not skilled at threading. One interesting comments from a student was that they wanted a distance eduction course, not one which replicated a campus experience (a military student cannot necessarily connect regularly when deployed).

Dr. Mazanov provided very useful examples of how to use on-line leaning for a course and credible research to back this up. However, the bigger questions remain of how universities incorporate on-line leaning in their programs and their right balance of teaching and research skills for their staff.

Dr. Mazanov pointed out the typical ADFA masters student is a middle aged male military officer, who is not a "digital native". The same might apply to other masters students from middle management positions in the public service and private industry. These students need training in how to use the Internet.

The lack of digital literacy by Australia's middle management should be of concern to their organizations. Apart from lowering the ability of these staff to educate themselves, they are  vulnerable to Phishing attacks, placing their companies, government agencies and the ADF at risk.

I suggest that improving the digital skills of officers is the cheapest way to improve the effectiveness of Australia's military forces. Western forces are, at best, halting the advance of ISIS in the Middle East. While they have superior weapons and conventional military training, the western forces, including the ADF, are deficient in digital skills and as a result are losing the information war. Training by UNSW Canberra/ADFA could help win that war and those to come, which will be fought on-line.

ps: The Red Room looks like a TEAM learning room to me with an almost square room with screens around the walls and round tables for students and the presenter walking around (Cabaret style).  One problem is that LCDs screens are used, which I found too small to read. These are also in front of windows with light coming though from behind (ADFA has much better seminar rooms).

References

Garrison, D. R., Anderson, T., & Archer, W. (2010). The first decade of the community of inquiry framework: A retrospective. The Internet and Higher Education, 13(1), 5-9. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.iheduc.2009.10.003

ICT for Development

Greetings from day two of the University of NSW Canberra, where I am attending the ICT for Development Symposium. This started with a video about the "eGovernment for Bangladesh" project by ANU and UNSW Canberra. This trained Bangladesh civil servants in how to use ICT for better administration. One frustration with this is while there are some academic papers produced from the project and a book (eGovernment for Bangladesh: a strategic pathway to success / Ahmed Imran, Tim Turner and Shirley Gregor, 2008), these are very difficult to access.

The first speaker is Professor Robert M Davison, City University of Hong Kong and Editor in Chief of the Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries (EJISDC). He explained the difficulties which researchers in developing countries have in having their work published in "international" journals. The researchers may not having training in the terminology used by journals and the journals are not so much "international" as "western". The theories which the journals require the authors to mention are not really "universal" but are developed by western researchers  in a western context. Non-western forms of thinking are relegated to being "indigenous knowledge".

Professor Davison estimated that 99% of papers from developing nation authors are screened out at the pre-review stage, as not being relevant. He admitted that editors have biases, but that papers have to be relevant to the journal they are submitted to. I have had to face this myself as a conference paper reviewer, with some papers not being on the topic of the conference and so being rejected (about 20% in my case).

Professor Davison commented that many researchers in developing nations do not study their own country and so may be missing opportunities. He also questioned the value of studies which just take an existing methodology from a western study and replying it in a developing country. He also criticised studies of intentions, such as if studies where favourably disposed to e-learning. I don't agree with these criticisms, as something useful can be learned from such studies, even if they are not ground-breaking.

Professor Davison called for the development of new theories in ICT, rather than borrowing them from other disciplines. He also criticised studies which claim to be using "Grounded Theory" but are just presenting data with no theory to make sense of it.

Professor Davison  pointed out that ICT4D researchers are by their nature interested in practical outcomes to help development, rather than theoretical considerations and this view might be shared by the editors and reviewers.

This was an excellent presentation and worth attending the whole two day symposium for.  It highlights the important role which editors of journals play in academia. This role is not often mentioned in discussions of the quality of universities and education. Apart from academia, Professor Davison comments have great relevance to business, discussion for example, "Why eBay Lost to TaoBao in China".

I noticed that the the Electronic Journal of Information Systems in Developing Countries uses the Open Journal System (OJS) free open source software and provides its papers free online. It can be very frustrating when learning of an interesting paper and then finding it is hidden behind a pay-wall and so inaccessible. The OJS based free journals have made a significant contribution to academia by making papers freely available.

ps:  Professor Davison mentioned that City University of Hong Kong uses my ICT Sustainability course materials. I hadn't realized this, but then found it mentioned in Global Information Systems (IS5600), Green IT (IS6600 - 11)

Where Does Information Systems in the University?

Greetings from the the University of NSW Canberra, where I am attending the ICT for Development Symposium. I thought this was going to be about how ICT could be used to help developing nations. However, so far it seems to be about where Information Systems (IS) fits as a discipline within academia and what forms of research are acceptable in the discipline.

At ANU Information Systems is within the College of Business & Economics, and at University of Canberra the School of Information Systems & Accounting is within the Faculty of Business, Government & Law. These are separate from the computer science and engineering faculties. Being a computer science practitioner, who deals with some governance, environmental and development issues, I don't see how academia could be divided up into neat unchanging atomic units. There needs to be overlap and change.

The question of what forms of research are acceptable seems a curious choice of topic for an event attended by experienced researchers. I can understand that new graduate students need training in different approaches to research, but this is a topic for a compulsory graduate course (such as "Research Methods in Distance Education" at Athabasca University), not a symposium.

At the end of the day I asked if the last speaker thought that interpretive research had particular benefits for ICT for development. They seemed to be reluctant to say it was relevant, which seemed odd, as they were speaking at a conference on ICT for Development, so why were they there?

ICT for Development Symposium

Greetings from the the University of NSW Canberra, where I am attending the ICT for Development Symposium. This is being held in the Australian Defence Force Academy's expanded teaching building. Rice Daubney Architects have playfully decorated the glass curtain wall of the building with the ADF Disruptive Pattern Camouflage. Inside the building has multi-purpose teaching rooms, equipped with projectors and whiteboard walls. One problem I have noticed in what is otherwise a workable building is that the air-conditioning is very loud.

The symposium is on the topic of "ICT for Development Symposium" but so far none of the speakers has addressed this topic. The morning has been devoted to the issues of forms of research and the relationship between research and industry. Curiously ISO/IEC 38500 Corporate governance of information technology Standard, which was also mentioned during the Australian Government Chief Technology Officer's talk, at the ACS Canberra Conference, yesterday.

ps: The morning session ended on a slightly surreal note, with an officer cadent from ADFA, in camouflage uniform, playing a classical tune on a cello.

Climate and Energy Research Expo

The Australian National University (ANU) is hosting a "2013 ANU Energy Change Institute Student EXPO", 12-6pm, 17 October 2013, in Canberra. Students of the ANU, University of Canberra and the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) are invited to report on their research at the event.