Australian Professional Standards Forum

Greetings from the Professional Standards Forum of the Professional Standards Councils. Today's forum is on AI, with Dr Ryan Payne, University of Canberra. 

The councils set professional standards, including computing. In return members of participating organisations have their liability capped. AI creates many challenges for organisations wanting to ensure their members act legally and ethically. 

Dr Payne claimed that NFTs are making a comeback, which I hadn't noticed. He also mentioned a number of other technologies which have been coming real soon for a long time, but which AI will make mainstream. 

Dr Payne claimed that AI had changed the words MPs use in Parliament and drafted in laws. He then touched on doomsday scenarios of AI optimizing human out of existence, or just subtly nudging human behavior. Of course, given governments, individuals and corporations have engaged in crimes against humanity, so could AI be worse? 

Today Meta started suspending the accounts of children, ahead of the Australian ban. It occurs to me that it should be possible to use AI to make a safer social media for children. I worry that in the next few weeks we will have millions of children suffering real pain and at risk of their lives, due to the ban. 

Then we got to play with Lego! Dr Payne used Lego to explain how a Large Learning Model (LLM) works. This was cleaver, as it got us out of the mode of just looking at Powerpoint slides.

Developing a national sovereign AI strategy

For the first time in a long time this week I missed the launch of the annual Australia’s Digital Pulse, by the Australian Computer Society at the National Press Club (earlier in the day I twisted my knee running for a bus). The report has 10 recommendations. My comments on some:

1. Develop a national sovereign AI strategy: The ACS is calling for a "long-term vision for sovereign AI development". However, I suggest this should be looking for short term measures. If Australia looks to the long term the strategy will be out of date before it can be implemented. As I suggested for the ACT Government last week, we can look to countries such as Singapore, for mature AI strategies to emulate.
   
   
2. Develop an innovation strategy: The Australian Government is to release a "Strategic Examination of Research and Development", this year. Aligning workforce readiness with innovation by encouraging entrepreneurship is my day job. Government can do more to support startups and scaleups. One area is for defence, where the nation needs new capabilities quickly. Cancelling a few failed big ticket defence projects reliant on overseas suppliers could provide thousands of billions of dollars for local innovation.
   
   
3. Government co-investment in scaleups: Not so sure about this recommendation, as it sounds dangerously like government trying to pick winners. Apart from strategically important areas, such as defence, energy security and availability of vaccines, government should avoid direct investment in scaleups, as they are really, really bad at it. 
4. Greater incentives for R&D in AI and tech adoption by businesses: ACS point out there is a skills gap in the use of AI by business. The obvious solution, I suggest, is training. Many of the computer project students I teach are planning to work in AI. To them it is not new and exotic, just a tool they are very familiar with. We need vocational education programs which similarly give business people a deep understanding of AI. 
5. Executives take a digital skills health check: Rather than trying to get C-suite leaders up to scratch on digital capabilities, I suggest political parties, government agencies and company boards need to hire more technocrats. We need some digital professionals running the nation and corporations, not just lawyers who learned a bit about computers.
6. Promote entry-level pathways for cybersecurity professionals: ACS point out that we simply can't get enough computer professionals to fill cyber security positions. What we can do is take people qualified in allied fields and train them up. This can be done online with vocational education techniques, rather than in university lecture theatres.
7. Implement an ‘earn while you learn’ scheme: ACS proposes business and government sharing the cost of worker retraining. Unfortunately what has tended to happen is as federal government introduces subsidies for university and vocational education, business and state governments have stopped funding. We have the technology to do the retraining (I spent a decade learning how this works). The problem is to make a watertight agreement on funding which business and states will abide by. Assuming Jobs and Skills Australia release their national skills taxonomy promptly, this can be used (if not someone else can). This can be aligned with the UK based Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA), used by ACS. The match will not be perfect. When ACS commissioned me to design a course in Green Computing (way back in 2008), there were no relevant skills in SFIA. I sent SFIA HQ a copy of my course and they added green skills, but that took considerable time.
8. A national commitment to alternative tech pathways: ACS argues for greater trust in vocational qualifications by business. Another approach to this, I suggest, is the use of the Vocational Degrees, added to the Australian Qualifications Framework in February 2025. With this entry level staff can obtain a certificate and then go on to a degree at the same vocational institution. This should give business more comfort as to the depth of training provided. 

Stephen Dunkerley on Leadership

Stephen Dunkerley,
Matsue Leadership & Consulting

Greetings from the Australian Computer Society in Canberra where Stephen Dunkerley from Matsue Leadership & Consulting is talking on leadership. He started with an example of what language to use to convince a technical versus non-technical boss. The difficult example was recommending croudstrike just after the hack. This follows today's workshop for ANU students on how to get a job.

Magic of Cybersecurity

Greetings from a panel on Cyber Security: Exposing the  THE magic involved in product evaluation, at the Australian Computer Society in Canberra. This is timely with Friday's Microsoft Windows/CloudStrike outage. The discussion so far is focused on the Australian Information Security Evaluation Program (AISEP). One topic of interest to me is that the Australian Signals Directorate is looking at training for security certifiers with other countries. Some of my uni students have been interns at companies carrying out government security checks.

The panel has:

Dr Hin Chan, Manager – Australian Certification Authority (ACA), Australian Cyber Security Centre, ASD

Erin Glenn, Director of Product Management, Belkin International, US

Patrick Campbell-Dunn, Securus Consulting Group 

Australia 4.0 Communiqué

Pearcey panel at Aus 2.0 Launch

Greetings from the Australian Computer Society, in Sydney,where Ed Husic MP, Minister for Industry and Science is launching the Pearcey Foundation's Australia 4.0 Communiqué: Collaboration to Transform the National Electricity System. The Pearcey Foundation is named in honor of computer pioneer Dr Trevor Pearcey, and does good works in the industry. The foundation has convened forums to work out what to do about climate change. I provided some ideas, and previously wrote course on ICT Sustainability for the ACS.   which outlines five pilot projects to accelerate the progress towards the ultimate goal of a net-zero energy system for Australia. Through the wonders of technology, Ed isn't actually here, but on video.

A panel of industry people started by discussing expanding the engineering workforce, and opening it to more women. The point here is you can't refit the grid for renewable energy without trained people. One issue is recognizing the overseas qualifications of professionals (something I help with at ACS & ANU). Another issue is male biases built into technology courses.  Another issue is consumer education, and if AI could help. 

Curiously, some of the issues in terms of consumer behavior are not new. An example raised by the panel was controlled load hot water: the water heater turns off during time of high energy demand, and in return a lower tariff is charged. New technology allows this to be done with smart meters, but the problem from decades ago when it used a signal sent over the power lines, the consumer needs to be convinced it is worthwhile. 

The panel touched on international collaboration to apply lessons from elsewhere in Australia. However, I suggest the reverse also applies, as Australia has the highest use of domestic rooftop solar in the world. That is something Australians can teach about, and charge money for. 

Energy is a national security issue. One scenario discussed by the panel was cyber attacks on smart meters. This could be used to disconnect consumer's power, on a large scale. But I suggest it could also be used to attack the grid: of all the demand load is turned on during peak energy use. One of the panelists pointed out the national telecommunications control centers are at secret locations., whereas those for the electricity grid are not. 

Professor Lachlan Blackhall's "light switch" was mentioned several times. He isn't here, so I asked the panel what it was. Apparently it is in the 2.0 report, and is the idea that consumers want a switch to control devices in their home, not trusting remote control. I suggest that this consumer sovereignty will have limited application. If the grid can't cope, the consumer will not be permitted to turn on non-critical appliances. The form of control will be like fly by wire pioneered on the Apollo Lunar Module, and no common on airliners. The flight controls are input to a computer, which can override the pilot. 

Charting the Future of Technology in Australia

ACS Canberra meeting room

Greetings from the new Canberra office of the Australian Computer Society. I am here for a planning workshop of the ACS Blockchain Technical Committee, in a small meeting room (my fifth ACS meeting for the week). As it happens there is an ACS Think Tank this afternoon in the main room. 

This room demonstrates a good design for meetings, and education. There is a small stage at one end, with space for four chairs, and a projection screen behind. There is a window into the office area beside the stage. This allows an operator to sit behind the glass, controlling the A/V setup.

There are 30 chairs set out, with five flip top tables on wheels at the back. These are used for holding the snacks during a function, but can be spread out around the room for group work. Along one side is a kitchen with a bench facing the meeting space. Smaller meeting rooms have glass walls into the main space. Each room has two large LCD screens and an inbuilt video conferencing system, and seating for nine people. This layout would be good for a small satellite campus. 

Deciding the Future of Higher Education in Australia

View from ACS HQ

Greetings from the Australian Computer Society head office, halfway up a very tall building in Sydney, overlooking the harbour. I am here for a meeting of the ACS Professional Standards Board (PSB). But beforehand I am sitting in on the ACS Accreditation Committee. This committee decides on which university degrees are suitable for those applying for ACS membership. There is a complex and detailed process, with a team visiting each university, talking to staff, and checking assessment. There are also larger issues to consider, as to what skills are needed for a computer professional working in a multidisciplinary team. 

Questions for the future, I suggest, include: "What about micro-credentials? Can you chop a degree into small pieces, but still have it make sense?". As I was writing that I came across a post from May Sok Mui Lim at Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT), on a Competency-Based Stackable Micro-credential pathway (CSM). In the SIT scheme a micro-credential is about 4 months work, and is a standalone qualification. Students can complete several micro-credentials, plus a capstone project to be awarded a degree. As it happens I visited SIT recently, and was impressed with what they are doing, which gives me more confidence this approach will work. It will be interesting to see how much consideration it gets in the O’Kane Review of Australian Higher Education. 

Also this morning I sat in on the ACS Professional Ethics Committee, which is revising the code of ethics of the society. Here the questions can get very philosophical, buit have to translate into guidance a working professional can use to deal with dilemmas. 

Race to the Top for Talent Says new Australian Computer Society CEO

Greetings from the National Press Club in Canberra, where the Australian Computer society are launching the "ACS Australia’s Digital Pulse 2022" report. Chris Vein, the new ACS CEO, fresh from the USA, described how Australia is in a "race to the top" for global computer talent. This year's Pulse report, prepared by Deloitte Access Economics, backs this up, with details of the growth areas for demand for personnel, particularly as cyber security, digital analytics, and AI. The Hon Ed Husic MP, Minister for Science, then talked about the ACT's role in support of government, and proposals of the new government to open up contracts to local tenderers. The Minister also mentioned the issue of diversity, arguing technology industries have suffered from a lack leading to poor design. The Pulse report (Page 16) bears this out, with a 31% female computer workforce, compared to 46% for professions generally. 

I asked the Minister about cyber training in the region, particularly Indonesia, where a recent ANU National Security College report expressed concern. The Minister mentioned his recent trip to Indonesia, and emphasized vocation education, and micro-credentials as areas with potenital.

Andrew Barr, Chief Minister of the ACT Government, and Attorney-General Shane Rattenbury, are also present. 

ps: The release of the Pulse report is fortuitous, as tomorrow I am helping a class of several hundred ANU computer students think about their future career.

ACS Recommendations to Improve Digital Technologies Education in Australia

The Australian Computer Society (ACS)  has released a whitepaper on "Computer education in Australian schools 2022: Enabling the next generation of IT" (June, 2022). This is timely, with a new federal government. There are 55 recommendations, but the most important is for support for those teaching Digital Technologies to be trained and qualified in what they are teaching (Recommendation 3, Page 72). This training, I suggest, should ideally be done using digital technologies, without necessarily taking in service teachers away from their classroom for extended periods (there are several good Australian university programs for this). Also it would be useful to have a nationally standardized senior secondary computer education curriculum (Recommendation 25, Page 77). It would also be useful to have research on how well schools do, what resources they have and how are disadvantaged students helped (Recommendation 55, Page 78). I commend the report to those advising Government ministers, state and federal: I know you read my blog. ;-)

Declaration of Interest: I am a member of the ACS, and its Professional Standards Board. But I wasn't involved with the computer education whitepaper, which is from the ICT Educators Committee.

Successful Virtual Hackathons

Steve Nouri ran two recent online hackerthons for the Australian Computer Society. He has written some very useful "Lessons Learned From Executing Successful Virtual Hackathons" (Forbes, Jun 11, 2020). These hackerthons ran over a few days. I was one of the mentors fort the first and a lead mentor for the second (mentoring the mentors).  The idea is teams are formed and work on a project addressing a specific challenge. There are set deliverables with deadlines, judging, and prizes. 

In the past I have helped out with hackerthons at a physical location, ome were national, or global, at multiple locations. An online hackerthon creates new challenges, but also new opportunities. Mostly the online tools mentioned by Steve worked very well, but it is the socialization using them which is important.

A hackerthon is similar in format to a student group projects used in many STEM university courses, except compressed in time: a hackerthon is two or three days, whereas a group project may be ten weeks. There is the potential to use the hackerthon format in industry and in education to give staff and students experience of creative group working quickly.

Blended Learning Challenge for the ACS Flatten the Curve Hackathon

The Australian Computer Society is running a Flatten the Curve hackathon, to develop prototypes in 48 hours to counter the  COVID-19 Coronavirus. Registration closes 3:30 pm 9 April, and the event starts at 9pm. The challenge I have submitted is Blended Learning for a gradual return to campus, and so if there is a further outbreak of disease online learning can be quickly implemented. This will require tools, teacher training, and changes to government policy.

Machine Learning Innovation Report

Karen Andrews MP,
Minister for Industry,
Science & Technology

The report "Machine Learning Innovation:A Patent Analytics Report" by IP Australia for for the Australian Computer Society, is now available. A major finding of the report is that China dominates machine learning patents, having filed 69% of the global total since 2012. One government owned Chinese electric utility is responsible for 3% of these patents globally. The report was launched today by Karen Andrews MP, Minister for Industry, Science and Technology.

Key Report Findings

1. 36,740 patent families have been filed in machine learning technologies since 2012.
2. 25,319 originate from China.
3. Machine learning patent filings have grown 27% or more every year since 2012.
4. 91% of AI and machine learning related patent families are in an active state.
5. The State Grid Corporation of China is the top global innovator, with 1,018 active patent families (88% are active).
6. China is the largest filing destination in the world, while Australia is 10th.
7. Australian innovators rank 17th globally, with 59 patent families.
8. The telecommunications sector leads real world applications of machine learning, with 17% of patent applications.
9. Image and video analysis is the largest core capability application, with 36% of patent applications.

From Summary,  Machine Learning Innovation:A Patent Analytics Report,  IP Australia, December 2019 (numbering added)

The direction China may want to take AI could be troubling for other countries. As an example, at the recent education conference an academic from a Chinese university presented research on an AI system for monitoring student attention. A camera observes the facial expressions of all students in the classroom at all times, and from this prepares a report on who is paying attention. This is used to prepare reports not only about the student's behavior, but the performance of the teacher. There was some disquiet among the delegates at the Orwellian nature of this. However, the presenter pointed out that the research showed it was very effective. As a result, this approach may find its way into classrooms in other countries.

ps: Kate Crawford, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, will talk on "AI and Power: From Bias to Justice" at ANU, 5:30pm today.

ACS at River City Labs Startup Catalyst

The Australian Computer Society (ACS) has announced it will operate the Brisbane based River City Labs (RCL) Innovation Accelerator and Startup Catalyst and will invest $7.5 million over the next three years.

Last year I had some free time in Brisbane so I went along to River City Labs Entrepreneur's Story Evening. River City Labs is a coworking space, much like Fishburners in Sydney and Entry 29 in Canberra. Those wanting to start a new tech business get some office space and help.

River City Labs looks a good venue for innovation, but underused. The ACS input should provide a boost for this. I suggest also formal involvement by VET and university students, which I do in Canberra with CBRIN and ANU Students can undertake startups and receive course credit for it.

River City Labs is in the historic TCB Building, Fortitude Valley, fitted out in the usual New York Loft warehouse style of co-working spaces: bare wooden floorboards, brick-walls and services visible on the ceiling. There is glass partitioning, making the most of the light from the clerestory windows of the large atrium.

River City Labs founder, Steve Baxter, is best known from the Australian TV series Shark Tank. Originally from Brisbane, he made his mark as an ISP pioneer in Adelaide, then in the USA before returning to Brisbane.

At the Entrepreneur's Story Evening, Steve made several comments about the role of universities in innovation. He seemed keen for school leavers to undertake tech degrees at university, but otherwise did not want universities involved in innovation. I pointed out that some tech students in Canberra are encouraged to go to the Canberra Innovation Network (equivalent to River City Labs) to learn about entrepreneurship, they then receive credit for the project work they do. Programs such as ANU Techlauncher try to balance the academic and practical aspects. Steve seemed to like this idea.

Teach Coding at School Workshop in Canberra

The Australian Computer Society is hosting a "Do you want to teach Coding at your school?" workshop in Canberra, with "Code Club Australia", 19th May 2016.

"Code Club Australia is a nationwide network of free, volunteer-led, coding clubs for children. We create projects for our volunteers to teach at coding clubs. The projects we make teach children how to program by showing them how to make computer games, animations and websites. 

Code Club is about fun, creativity, and learning through exploring. It’s important that the children enjoy their time at Code Club. They should understand that they’re in charge of the computer, and can (and should) make it to what they want, not the other way around.

Other benefits of Code Club, such as learning about computational thinking, or developing expertise in coding, are secondary to these two objectives."

University of the South Pacific IT Degrees Accredited

The Australian Computer Society has accredited the Bachelor of Net-centric Computing and Bachelor of Software Engineering programs of the University of the South Pacific in Fiji. These are reported to be the only non-Australian institutions accredited.

Future of Education is in the Clouds

The Information Age article "Blue skies or thunderstorms - what is the future for education?" reports on a Consumer Electronic Show (CES) panel session on transforming education. Part of this I agree with: "... employers value competency based advise ... MOOCs have been over-hyped ... credentials were the way of the future...". The article departed from reality at that point, when it suggested that students were not interested in "... finishing an entire course ...". Try telling a student they should stop now as they have learned enough and not bother graduating. They likely response is "I invested tens of thousands of dollars and years of my life in this and I want my my qualification!"

The article quotes ACS CEO Andrew Johnson as saying “The US is a bellwether for Australia ...". I disagree: the USA has a very different education system to Australia (and most of the world). The USA can't be taken of as an indication of what will, or should happen in Australia, or elsewhere, with education.

Johnson is reported to have also said:

"What we are hearing from policy commentators at CES is that all new net job growth in the US comes from new businesses and start-up firms, while there is a growing trend towards self-employment. "

This is confirmed by Australian research, with job creation by start-ups, while old firms shed jobs. This has implications for education, but I suggest not as drastic as Johnson suggests:

"This will have significant implications for education models to identify the knowledge and skills needs that are aligned with career aspirations,"  continued.

"Not all education institutions will be able to focus on preparing for students for the traditional firm of an industrialised era.”

For the last few years I have been mentoring winning teams of Canberra university students learning innovation and preparing business plans for the start-up competition "Innovation ACT". Last year, students were able to do this as part of their IT degree, through the ANU Techlauncher Program. In thinking about this (and in preparing some m-learning innovation materials for the students), it struck me how many of the "start-up" skills are also applicable to jobs in large corporations, government agencies and research organizations. It is not just in start-ups that students need to learn to structuring and communicating an idea, to work in teams and to make estimates.

"Millennial" students are no different in what they want from education. Students want an education which will advance their careers. Vocational training organizations have been better at responding to these needs than universities.

Much of this learning can be done on-line and so I suggest the future of Higher Education is not blue sky, or thunderstorms, it is in "the Cloud". ;-)

Promote Professionalism with Free Online Ethics Course

Straight after the ACS Canberra Conference, I attended a focus group run by Oliver Burmeister from Charles Sturt University, on promoting professionalism in ICT. This is part of a two year study funded by the Australian Computer Society (ACS) and the Australian Research Council (ARC) on "Investigating which strategies are most effective in overcoming ethical problems facing information and communications technology professionals". My suggestion was to provide free open access educational materials online which meet the requirements for ACS accredited education programs.

ACS could assemble material into the form of free online self paced courses. Thse could be used by anyone wanting to improve their understanding of professional ethics, used by ACS in its own educational programs, by an educational institutions in their programs and as an example of the minimum standard ACS requires for all accredited programs. For the last ten years I have been teaching ICT Ethics using materials from ACS to students at the  Australian National University:  "Professional Ethics and Social Issues in Networked Information Systems".

Previous published work by Oliver on ICT ethics includes:"Ethics of Computing Committees: Suggestions for Functions, Form, and Structure (2008).

ICT Job Profiles

The Australian Computer Society (ACS) has released an "ICT Skills White Paper: Common ICT Job Profiles & Indicators of Skills Mobility" (30 December 2013). This may be of interest for those designing training and education to help someone get from one job category to another.

As an addition to its annual employment survey, last year the ACS asked respondents to select up to skills they use in their work section. The skills definitions they were provided with are from the Skills Framework for the Information Age (SFIA). The results were distilled by the ACS down to 25 ICT job descriptions, at five levels. SFIA defines seven levels of job from the lowest 1 to highest 7, but only levels 3 to 7 are reported on by ACS.

The top ten most common job categories, starting with the most common, were:

1. ICT Consultant
2. ICT Manager
3. Software Engineer
4. Database Administrator
5. Project Manager
6. Business Analyst
7. ICT Architect
8. Systems Administrator
9. Analyst Programmer
10. Developer Programmer

The paper gives a one page summary for each of the 25 jobs.

Students citizenship of the digital world

Greetings from the Australian Computer Society Branch Forum in Canberra, where Dr Karen Macpherson of the University on "Digital Technology and Australian Teenagers: Consumption, Study and Careers". In 2012 the Australian Computer Society (ACS) commissioned a study into school student's use of computer technology and their views on a career in technology. The results have been published by the University of Canberra as "(by Karen Macpherson, May 2013).

The ACS sponsored this research because there are too few young people enrolling in computer science courses at university to meet industry demand. Dr Macpherson took a refreshingly simple approach to answering this question, by simply asking young people about their use of ICT and views on career.

Students interest in studying IT peaks in Year 8 (age 14) of school. But interest in "How Computers Work" stays at a higher level until age 18. This may indicate a problem with the perception of what IT is brought about by school courses.

School students perceive university IT courses as being difficult but interesting. Most students think IT professionals write software and design databases for business. There is little perception of creative uses for IT, such as in robotics. Students though that working in IT meant a dull job sitting at a computer all day. Students wanted a creative, well paid, creative and interesting job. The problem for the IT profession is to point out the creative aspects of IT and also perhaps reform the current school IT curriculum.

Dr. Macpherson pointed out that students wanted interesting "well paid" jobs, but not necessarily professional ones. So I suggest that perhaps ACS should place more emphasis on the vocational path to an IT career, as an alternative to university.

Macpherson reports that young people have a type of “dual citizenship”: in physical space and digital space, with different language and mores. As students, young people make intensive use of on-line information sources, but are not necessarily able to identify definitive content.  Educators then have to help students bridge these cultures. I suggest this might be though of in a similar way to overseas students who have English as a second language. In a way this has always been the case, as student learn the language and culture of higher education.

In teaching university students via the Internet, I find that they know how to use a computer (these are computer science students), but not necessarily how to use it to have a structured professional discussion.

I will be speaking at the 12 November ACS ICT trends in Education" (I am a member of the ACS.

Student dual citizenship in digital and physical worlds

In 2012 the Australian Computer Society (ACS) commissioned a study into school student's use of computer technology and their views on a career in technology. The results have been published by the University of Canberra as "Digital Technology and Australian Teenagers: Consumption, Study and Careers" (by Karen Macpherson, May 2013).

Macpherson reports that young people have a type of “dual citizenship”: in physical space and digital space, with different language and mores. Educators then have to help students bridge these cultures. I suggest this might be though of in a similar way to overseas students who have English as a second language. In a way this has always been the case, as student learn the language and culture of higher education.

In teaching university students via the Internet, I find that they know how to use a computer (these are computer science students), but not necessarily how to use it to have a structured professional discussion.

Dr Karen Macpherson will be speaking about her research at the Australian Computer Society Branch Forum in Canberra,  6 August 2013. I will be speaking at the 12 November ACS ICT trends in Education" (I am a member of the ACS and teach in the ACS Certified Computer Professional Program).