Screen Australia and film industry

Greetings from the Screen Australia road show. A government review of support for the screen production industry, including the Producer Offset, is due out today. But at the same time Screen Australia is seeking input on the future of the film industry. CEO Ruth Harley is speaking at a road show around Australia and today is Canberra's turn. The meeting is at the CSIRO Discovery Theatre, with about 60 people present.

What strikes me is that Screen Australia talks about the feature film and TV industry. However, these are now dwarfed by the computer games industry. The Apple iPod has changed the music industry and the iPad may be about to do the same to the TV industry. However, the way Screen Australia works does not seem to have changed since cameras were hand cranked. They seem to be trying to help set up an obsolete analogue last century industry for Australia, rather than a digital one for the future.

Pressure points identified by Screen Australia:

1. Mid range features ($M10-30 ) lack domestic funding. This is an effect of the government offset, which helps both small and large features, but not mid-range.
   
2. Longer documentary series are doing well, but the Screen Australia process is complex for one off documentaries.
3. Liquidation of SPV has complex legislative issues. Providing a grant has tax issues.
4. SAC test is currently holistic and has no detailed points score type process which leaves producers uncertain as to what might rate well. Details of previous applications are secret due to tax law. "Reality" TV is uncertain as to if it qualifies as "documentary".
5. Low budget features may not be helped by lowering the limits on the current tax offsets as this requires a "theatrical release". Low budget films might use other distribution, such as online digital, which does not qualify as "theatrical".

At question time I asked if Screen Australia were addressing digital media. They responded they have initiatives in this area. However, I suggested they need to change their mindset and terminology. Digital distribution is seen as "alternative" by Screen Australia, and theatre distribution normal. I suggest this needed to be reversed. Young consumers see the iPhone as normal and going to a "cinema" as unusual.

Another attendee asked about support for the gaming industry and Screen Australia replied this was a matter of government policy and that representations should be made direct to the government. I got the impression that Screen Australia did not want to address the gaming industry without additional resources.

In my view, as the gaming industry is now larger than the film industry, at least half Screen Australia's resources and the government funding, should be devoted to it and digital media. Screen Australia appears to be stuck in last century technology and unable, or unwilling to change. The government should therefore abolish Screen Australia and set up a new digital entertainment body, which addresses digital media as a priority and also the legacy film industry as a secondary priority.

Government IT Contracts for Small Australian Companies

Senator Kate Lundy (ACT) and Senator Kim Carr (Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) announced a Supplier Advocate to Champion IT on 3 March 2010. So far there have been "Supplier Advocates" appointed for rail and steel.

Recently I was asked about support for small business by an ACT Government committee on procurement. I suggested the ACT government should use the same standards and, preferably the same tender system as the Commonwealth. Also simpler tender documents and less onerous insurance conditions were required. Perhaps the ACT government can work with the new advocate on a joint approach to help small ICT businesses.

Australia’s $98 billion IT industry is set to benefit, with an IT Supplier Advocate to be appointed to help secure more major IT contracts.

The IT Supplier Advocate is part of the Rudd Government’s $8.2 million Supplier Advocate Program, which appoints respected industry figures to provide leadership for targeted sectors. Advocates have already been appointed for rail and steel.

Announced by Innovation Minister, Senator Kim Carr, and Senator Kate Lundy, the IT Supplier Advocate will work as a broker and spokesperson, particularly for small to medium enterprises (SMEs) in the information technology sector.

We want Australian IT firms, particularly SMEs, to have the best chance of getting in the game and the best chance of winning.

It is vital that government has access to the nimble, innovative capacity of IT small businesses and equally, they have access to government.

The IT Supplier Advocate will help small businesses access contracts that may not have been on their radar.

The advocate will also work to ease the often unfounded concerns of risk that may be associated with awarding work to small business.

NICTA’s Australian eGovernment Technology Cluster has offered to work with an IT Supplier Advocate to provide services and facilities to help SMEs field test and prove the scalability of their IT solutions to prospective customers.

The Government canvassed the views of many stakeholders in the Australian IT sector about appointing an advocate.

These consultations suggest that there are significant IT procurement opportunities in the government where the supplier advocate could make a difference.

The Government’s Information Technology Industry Innovation Council will provide advice on the appointment. An announcement on the advocate is expected by the end of March. ...

From: Supplier Advocate to Champion IT, Joint Media Release by Senator Kate Lundy and Senator Kim Carr (Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) 3 March 2010

Building the Australian National Health Network

Dr George Margelis, from Intel's Digital Health Group, talked last night in Canberra on "The Patient Journey - What role for IT?" he will be repeating this in Brisbane 17 March.

Dr Margelis, showed a number of interesting before and after video segments of problems with the health system and how ICT could help. Normally I dislike company videos in presentations as they are advertisements for companies. While these were clearly produced for Intel, they were relevant to the topic.

The first video was of someone being rushed to hospital in an ambulance (which I could identify with having had it happen to me). This illustrated how currently medical staff in the ambulance and the hospital use computer based systems, but these are not linked, so that information has to be relayed by voice or paper. A future scenario showed the patent details being shared online between the ambulance and the hospital. Dr Margelis emphasised that none of the technology envisaged was exotic and was not already in use in other fields. It was a matter of integrating it into the medial system in a way which helped the medical staff and the patents.

The major issue was to network records so that dispersed medical services could serve the patient. Dr Margelis showed a scenario networking the ambulance to the hospital, to the remote specialist.

In a later scenario Dr Margelis showed patients using a home based system. This not only monitored the patent and prompted them to take medication, but also connected them to their helpers and medical staff, using a wireless mHealth device.

One problem I had with these scenarios is that they were applying computerisation to an existing system without considering how to change the system. As an example, it is difficult for a hospital to obtain patent's GP records in an emergency, because the records are stored on paper in dispersed GP offices. The Intel solution is to network the records. An alternative low technology solution would be to group the GPs in clinics. These clinics would then be large enough to employ professional record keepers and be open 24 hours a day, so they could respond to emergency record requests. My doctor would not like this as they see themselves as a provider of custom personal services, not part of a corporation. However, the alternative ICT solution will result in some loss of their autonomy.

What Dr Margelis presented was a clear logical vision. The question this raises is why has it not been done? This is not a technical issue, but still an issue for ICT professionals. It is not enough to we have a solution, it is the customer's fault for not buying it. The underlying issues as to why such systems are not implemented need to be addressed.

The Prime Minister has proposed to take over all public hospitals in Australia. As Dr Margelis pointed out, the public hospitals are the smallest and least important part of the health care system. There is a risk that the government will concentrate on hospitals, resulting in better hospitals but an overall decline in the quality of health care and an increase in costs. This would be similar to the situation where the government funded insulation in homes is likely to increase energy use, rather than reduce it. Similarly a networked national hospital system may increase costs and reduce the health of the population.

Some far less glamorous, less expensive, more local community health initiatives, might be far more effective. These could still make use of ICT.

The NBN Company provides one possible model for the health care reforms. Under this approach the government announced an impressive sounding multi-billion dollar national broadband network (NBN). They then set up a government owned company to implement it. What NBN Co has done is architect a national system, but are first implementing small scale local projects. These projects are small enough to be implemented efficiently and provide local benefits in the short term, so the government can be seen to be delivering services (in what might happen to be marginal electorates). One day all these system might join up into the envisaged national system, but in the interim they will provide useful local services to the community and political kudos to the government.

Current attempts at national e-Health standards are mired in the need to have a consultative process between government and industry. NBN overcame this problem with broadband standards by consulting with parties, but making clear that as a company they were not required to wait for everyone to agree and were going to make a decision and then implement that decision. A NHN Co (Australian National Health Network Company) could make similar decisions for e-health standards and the implement them.

The government could announce the goal that all public hospitals would be networked and all patent electronic health records would be available by a set date. Governments and companies which did not wish to cooperate would not be funded.

One interesting question asked was when will patents will be able to ask their doctor to put their records on Google health. This might be useful for the patent, but the doctor would need to be compensated for the extra effort in working out how to do this.

Another question was on casemix to provide appropriate incentives for keeping people healthy, instead of dispensing medicine to them. If there were the right incentives this would provide an incentive for better ICT systems to keep the patents out of hospital.

It was pointed out that there are now international standards for medical imaging (Xrays). There is now under way for standards for the medial records delivered to the patent in the home, so that we will not first build proprietary systems and then have to convert to real standards. It may be that Australia has to accept an international standard which is not as good as a local standard, but which is adequate and has the advantage of widespread acceptance.

See also: ICT in Health Delivery in the 21st Century in 11 November 2008.

Senator Lundy on Internet Regulation

Senator Kate Lundy has written extensively, and thoughtfully, on the issue of Internet censorship in Australia. I think she is on the right track. This is an issue where you can't please everyone. I had the task of preparing the ACS position on regulation in 1995. My own position is summed up in a talk gave on ABC Radio: "Filtering Porn on the Internet: Imperfect by Necessity".

By Senator Lundy on Internet filtering:

• My thoughts on the Safer Internet Group statement
• My thoughts on the Filter
• Further thoughts on the filter
• Q and A from my thoughts on the internet filter
  

Government Announcement Fails Accessibility Test

The Minister for Finance and Deregulation, Lindsay Tanner, announced that the Australian Government would adopt version 2.0 of the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2.0). Unfortunately the web page with the announcement failed tests with both version 1 and version 2 of the guidelines, as shown with a TAW Automated Test.

On a version 1 of the TAW test, the page had zero Level 1, eleven level 2 and one level three problems. On the TAW version 2 tests the page had 12 "Perceivable" problems.

The minister needs to have his own web site checked to ensure he is following the policy issued by his own department and complying with Australian law. It should be noted that the Minister does not have the authority to decide what is, or is not, legal. Under the Disability Discrimination Act 1992, the Australian Human Rights Commission issues guidance and courts decide.

ps: The announcement page also scored only 34/100 on the W3C mobileOK Checker. While this is not required by law, it would be desirable if government information was provided in an efficient easy to read format.

Government ICT Education Panel

The federal Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations has issued a Request for Tender for an Applied Information and Communications Technology in Education Panel (ATM ID DEEWR RFT PRN24602 17 February 2010). There is a 126 page document avialable to prospective tenderers (1.48Mbyte MS-Word). The table of contents is 20 pages long.

Overview

Purpose of the Applied ICT in Education Panel

1. DEEWR requires a panel of experienced consultants with strong technical knowledge and a good understanding of the use of ICT in the education sector to form the Applied ICT in Education Panel (‘the Panel’). Panel Members must have detailed knowledge and a demonstrated understanding of the design and implementation of ICT infrastructure, networking and eLearning in the education sector. Members of the panel will have demonstrated capacity, expertise and experience in providing high quality technical advice and analysis services in relation to government ICT in education initiatives.

Types of Services Required

2. The panel may be used by DEEWR to support the development, implementation and evaluation of initiatives that support the use of ICT in education including the Digital Education Revolution (DER) and the Vocational Education Broadband Network (VEN).

Use of the Applied ICT in Education Panel

...

Background

9. The Australian Government has made it a national priority to create a world class education and training system for Australia. It is committed to increasing the proportion of Australians with educational qualifications and through the Council of Australian Governments, has set targets for 2020 and 2024 in order to secure Australia’s long term economic prosperity.

10. The Government is supporting the education and training sector to achieve this objective through the investment of $2.2 billion under the DER and $80 million under the VEN initiatives. Reflecting Government policies DEEWR aims to promote the effective integration of ICT in teaching and learning in Australia.

11. DEEWR has identified a need to have access to ongoing external specialist technical advice. The panel arrangements which are the subject of this tender will assist in the timely delivery of technical and specialist advice and reports to support the activities set out ...

From: Applied Information and Communications Technology in Education Panel , Request for Tender ATM ID DEEWR RFT PRN24602, Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations 17 February 2010

Negotiate Post Copenhagen Climate Change Online

Greetings from the Australian National University, in Canberra where "Post Copenhagen: Where Do We Go Now?" was just held. The event is also streamed live online.

Professor Will Steffen, Executive Director of the ANU Climate Change Institute hosted. More than 50 ANU staff and students attended the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009. They provided insights on what happened.

Some insights:

• One Russian spokesperson make commitments one day and a different one explained these were not going to be commitments the next day,
• Developing nations argued for financial help to mitigate climate change. There were allegations that this was being used to gloss over the lack of progress. There were also issues as to if any funding would be new and would actually be paid.

The Australian Government's Climate Change Ambassador will be speaking
at ANU tomorrow. My suggestion is that ANU should host online forums on behalf of the Australian Government to provide a low emission high efficiency place to negotiate the Copenhagen Climate Change global agreement. This could include training in how to negotiate efficiently as well as how to use online technology to do it.

Australian National Enabling Technologies Strategy

Innovation Minister, Senator Kim Carr, yesterday launched the National Enabling Technologies Strategy with $18.2M to upgrade the National Measurement Institute, $10.6M for policy and regulatory development, industry uptake, international engagement and strategic research and $9.4M for public awareness and community engagement.

See:

• National Enabling Technologies Strategy
  
• Fact Sheet
• Discussion Paper

1. A national approach
   Through the Strategy, a collaborative effort and joint activities will be encouraged between Federal, State and Territory governments and agencies and a wide range of stakeholders, consistent with the aims of the Strategy. More information is available on the Stakeholder Advisory Council and the Commonwealth State Working Group which are being established under the Strategy.
2. Balancing risk and reward
   The Strategy will support the appropriate coverage of enabling technologies in policy and regulatory frameworks, and support Government agencies to ensure that Government policy is informed by an understanding of health, safety, environmental, social and economic considerations. More information is available on the HSE activities taking place under NETS, and also on the international engagement activities taking place under NETS.
3. Engaging with the public
   The Enabling Technologies Public Awareness and Community Engagement program will provide balanced and factual information on enabling technologies to inform public debate, and to encourage greater community engagement in debates about the development and use of enabling technologies.
4. Developing measurement capabilities
   The National Measurement Institute (NMI) will develop measurement infrastructure, expertise and standards for nanotechnology and biotechnology (nanometrology and biometrology).
5. Using technology for a better future
   The Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research will increase government, industry and the community's understanding of the ways in which applications of enabling technologies may help to address major global and national challenges and increase industry productivity, and will encourage the responsible development and uptake of these technologies.
6. Planning for the Future
   The Strategy will assist Government, researchers, industry and other stakeholders to prepare for the advent of new technologies by undertaking foresighting activities and supporting the development policy and regulatory frameworks. An Expert Forum of 8 to 10 people will be established in 2010 to guide the Strategy’s technology foresighting activities.

Publishing round table National Library of Australia

Greetings from the National Library of Australia. Colin Steele organised a round table with Richard Charkin, Executive Director of Bloomsbury Publishing, London. There were 26 people present, about one third from the library, a third from the ANU and the rest from federal government agencies and universities.

Richard, who I met in the library's cafe on the way in, is talking at forums in Melbourne and Sydney. Senator Kim Carr, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research talked at the forum yesterday. In his speech "THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION: PUBLISHING IN THE 21ST CENTURY". He announced a book industry support group. The group has not been set up and its composition and role is unclear. Richard commented that the Minister seemed to be making it up as he was speaking.

Richard talked about Bloomsbury's role in publishing educational and scientific materials with "Bloomsbury Academic". He talked about the tradition business model of publishing, with the separate roles of publishers and book stores. Publishers became more specialised an online delivery became available twenty years ago with Dialog and the like. There were also early CD-ROM books, such as the BBC Domesday Project. The point of this was that e-publishing is not new. One example was the spell check program based on a traditional paper dictionary. One large e-publishing effort was the Oxford English Dictionary.

Large digital scholarly publishing started around 1993 and was largely complete in five years. Scientific journals were traditionally published as a record: to be written, not read. Computer based systems allow the material to be easily searched. The science publisher's staff were scientifically trained and so comfortable with computers. Because the publisher had rights to re-purpose the material allowed for new databases, which Richard argued was a good thing (although in other ways publishers may have too much power). The last link in the chain were the university librarians, who were comfortable with digital materials.

Richard commented that scientific publishing has been very profitable for hundreds of years. The profit was an enabler for digitising publishing. Also university library budgets for subscriptions is a source of funds. He claimed that scientific publishing is now 99% digital. For leading journals, such as "Nature" all submissions are now digital. The print journal is now a sideline.

Book publishers are now being sucked into the maelstrom of electronic publishing. Book publishing is incredibly complicated (something I discovered recently with my new book "Green Technology Strategies").

Unlike scientific papers, format matters for scholarly books and there are many different complex formats. The rights to books are very complex, with rights for different territories and in different languages. Some of the rights are unclear, as for example, is Hong Kong an "Open Market". A publisher might have the paper rights, but not digital rights, or may have the rights, but have agreed a royalty. This makes the metadata for the rights difficult to encode. Calculating royalties can be difficult when the book is available in different formats and modes, such as subscription.

Richard commented that the fear of book piracy may be more of an issue than piracy itself. There is also a fear of e-book sales cannibalising paper book sales. He also commented on the Macmillan verses Amazon.com pricing issue. With Amazon Kindle e-books, he commented that the commercial arrangements were confidential (I see this as similar to software licences).

Richard said that many Kindle book sales are to regional areas and less developed nations. He speculated this was a new market of people who previously had difficulty getting access to books. There is a large market for English language books outside English speaking countries. I assume this is particularly the case for technical and scientific works, where English is the language of the discipline (such as Computer Science).

There are frustrations and delays with e-publishing still. This will require new systems and clarification of rights. Richard used the example of the Kindle edition of my book of what is possible, which took only 12 hours to be distributed.
There is needed a new emphasis on marketing of material. Also global agreements on copyright is needed. Richard argued copyright is workable and Creative Commons is an example of how it can be adapted to new needs.

He suggested that academic publishers need to de-specialise, so they find a new wider market.

Post Harry Potter, Richard decided to build Bloomsbury's academic publishing, with Bloomsbury Academic. He commented that a fiction book goes through 25 intermediaries before publishing, making it difficult to make a profit. The academic publishing process has many fewer steps.

Bloomsbury set up " Bloomsbury Academic" which has adopted the Creative Commons licence, with "vanilla text" versions online for free, as well as selling e-book and print editions. I was surprised that a credible publisher had taken this innovative step and more surprised that I had not heard about it. I had a quick browse and found at least one book of interest ("Net Neutrality" by Christopher Marsden). But Bloomsbury need to improve their web site, as I could not find a web page about the book. He aims to publish a few hundred titles in five years, an at least break even. He accepts that this new initiative will not appeal to academic authors as much as prestige publishers, but will be attractive as the books will be much widely read and have the potential to become popular. The production process has traditional editors and quality controls.

The floor was then open for questions.

The first question was about Print On Demand (POD), such as the Espresso Book Machine at University Bookshop and Melbourne University Library. Like me, Richard has doubts about the current machines, but they have potential for the near future (next year or so). Someone then commented that US publishers don't allow POD outside the US, because the US market is so large in itself and they do not have to try too hard. Richard also commented that due to the "thirty day rule" many books are now printed in Australia (unfortunately I could not find a web pages explaining the 30 day rule).

The next question was about markets and demographics. Ricahrd commented there was little science in trade publishing and it as more a matter of passion and reading the book. It occurred to me that the sort of data you get from web sites using tools like Google Analytics could be of use.

The next question was about the ability to produce large print books on demand. It was commented that this was very useful, but expensive from Amazon POD (but an exclusive arrangement will not be used). I produced a large print edition of my latest book, simply by increasing the paper size. he Apple iPad also got a positive mention.

The next question was composite textbooks, made from chapters out of different works. Richard responded that US style textbooks are an outdated "Oldsmobile 1996" style of working, with a long production time and large costs. He doesn't think "chunking" (taking chapters from different works) is an interesting approach. The lecturer's notes are more interesting. Textbooks are bought by students in shops, whereas digital materials are bought by libraries. He suggested university libraries might buy a e-textbook site licence and then obtain reimbursement from students. Last year at ANU I selected an e-textbook available through the library for COMP2410 and this worked fine (we aren't charging the students extra for this).

The next question was why English and Dutch academic paper publishers think they can make money, but others can't. Richard's reply was that if you subsidise the publishing it will never make money. He argued that academic publishing can make money and university should not subsidise their presses.

One question was why aren't students demanding e-textbooks? One comment was that the text is no integrated into the course and students may never read the text, electronic or on paper. Richard replied that teaching English was producing the most sophisticated e-learning systems. Another comment was that the Australian Government's new publishing intuitive did not include educational institutions, who are a large source of the content, as well as consumers. It occurred to me that the e-learning initiatives funded by the federal education department for universities (Education Network Australia: edna ) and TAFEs (Australian Flexible Learning Framework) could be usefully combined with the publishing initiative.

Richard commented that "printers" were not now seen as a significant part of the publishing business, but with POD this could become important again: "desperate industries tend to be ahead of the curve".

Another comment was about "Learn on Demand" rather than "Print on Demand". Students want to be able to select components of courses and texts in different formats as required. It seems a shame that the publishing people in this room did not know about all the excellent work being done on exactly this by people who probly a few doors down the corridor from them.

Richard expressed doubts that Google Books would earn significant advertising revenue and was likely done out of idealism. I am trying it out, by making my book avialable on Google Books.

One person commented that academic publishing online was still largely in the format of traditional books. Also better measures than citation index was needed. It occurs to me that some of the sophisticated measures available to web publishers could be applied.

Richard commented that the business model for Apple iPad was still not clear. He also amusingly commented that the market for e-books did not seem to be mobile younger business people as expected, but actually older people who wanted to read in bed without disturbing their partner. He also commented that the limiting factor in selling books was bookshelf space at home and there may be more shelf space in India (haing seen the book store at Bandglore airport and the public library in Panjim, Goa, I can agree). There were also comments about the iPad and Knidle being too big. In 1996 I predicted a passport size (b7) PADD device, much like the Apple iPad.

There was then a discussion of the disposable nature of mass market paperbacks, particuarly romance novels.

Richard said how he saw no books in the canteen of the British Library, only laptops. He also said how good the canteen is. This I found surprising, as on my one and only visit as a reader at the BL, I found the food at the cafe very poor (along with the poor state of maintenace of the technology in the BL, poor customer relations and poor building design).

There was then a discussion of how quickly books go out of print and general agreement that e-publishing would eliminate this.

Richard asked if books could be e-published in 12 hours, why couldn't peer review be made faster. In fact with electronic support for publishing, this can be done. The systems automatically track how ling reviewers are taking, send them reminders and monitor their performance.

One comment was that books only count slightly more than journal articles for the Australian research ranking system. So a smart academic will chop their book into about five papers to maximise their ranking.

I commented that my e-learning course ended up being a printed book as well. Richard replied that several initiatives at Nature which started out purely electronic later produced print versions which were popular.

One audience member asked that if the academic author does all the production work, then what is the publisher for? Richard responded that authors always feel there publishers are not doing enough, but they do provide production, marketing and distribution services, as well as "love". One of the audience commented that the film industry has a different arrangement. It occurred to me that the modern publisher is more like a holywood studio, which actually does little of the film production.

Bloomsbury created qfinance.com for the Qatar government. Also is creating Bloomsbury Qatar Publishing Foundation for publishing educational materials and Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Journals (couldn't find their web site) to do institutional repository with open access for Education City's research output. These are non profit actives established by Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned (موزة بنت ناصر المسند‎), chairperson of the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development.

How do we sleep while our bats are burning?

One of the uses for the Internet is to answer odd questions. As an example has anyone done the obvious parody of the Minister for Environment's difficulties with roof insulation: "How do we sleep while our batts are burning"? It turns out there are variations: "How Can He Sleep ...", "HOW CAN YOU SLEEP...", "How do you sleep... ". These are all parodies of "Beds Are Burning" sung by the Minister when with the band Midnight Oil, on the album Diesel & Dust (1987).

More seriously, there are problems with government policies to deal with climate change which select specific technologies. This is both a political problem for the government and a problem of efficient allocation of resources for the community. Due to the need to provide a quick economic stimulus, the Australian Government decided to subsidise the installation of insulation in domestic dwellings with its Home Insulation Program. This seemed a sensible policy. However, this resulted in a very large demand for insulation and a tendency for less well trained installers. Even if there were no more than the usual number of problems with insulation, because this is being done under a specific government program, their is a political cost of the government.

An alternative strategy would be to require a level of energy efficiency for new buildings. Another strategy would be a carbon tax or trading scheme. These would have the effect of influencing householders decision making. But it would be up to the householder to decide how to achieve the needed energy efficiency or deal with the cost of energy. It would not be up to the government to have to have policies and guidelines for every detailed decision by a householder, nor risk the political consequences of each decision. However, these schemes would not have an immediate effect, as was needed by the stimulus package.

Government reports as ebooks

One response to my talk on "Making e-Books for e-Learning on i-Pads" at BarCamp Canberra 2010 was from Senator KateLundy. She tweeted: "With so much govt information online, Tom's talk makes me wonder about the merit of publishing public info in ebook formats too". This seems an idea worth investigating.

I have long advocated providing government reports as a set of web pages, rather than as one big PDF file, as is typically done. However, government people are reluctant to do this.

One argument against web pages is that they are more difficult to make, but as I show my web design students, if you take an accessible approach to design, then this is not hard. If the document designer concentrates on making a document people can read online, where most will be read, rather than concentrating on producing a pretty printed report (which hardly anyone will see), then web format is a viable option.

Another argument is that web pages are not legal documents, which I explain to my electronic document students, is not true either. There is a commonly held, but incorrect, assumption that government reports must be in PDF format to stop them being edited. It is more difficult to edit a PDF file than a web page, but not impossible. In any case this is irrelevant to the protection of government reports.

But I suspect the real issue is that a set of web pages do not seem as real as a "book" and does not have the needed look of authority a government report demands. Collecting the web pages up into an ebook format may give them the needed gravitas. This could done with a three step process:

1. Here is the printed report, see it looks like a proper printed document,
2. Here is the ebook, see it looks like the printed report,
3. Here is the web page, see it looks like a chapter from the ebook.
   

As government agencies are already using content management systems, it should be feasible to support commonly used ebook formats with minimal effort by authors and publishers. The CMS would simply collect up a set of web pages and package them in an ebook format (a simpler system would do the reverse, saving the e-book and unpacking it on request to separate web pages, which might better meet archiving requirements).

As discussed in my talk on "Making e-Books for e-Learning on i-Pads", the obvious e-book format to use is EPUB. This is based on XHTML and CCS as used by government web sites. It is also being popularised as a format by support on the Apple iPad. EPUB requires some extra XML files, but these supply information which agencies are required to provide anyway and should already have in their systems.

Convincing agencies to use an ebook format should be a lot easier than convincing them to use accessible web pages. Instead of having to explain why a whole lot of decorative junk is not a good idea and that instead information should be clearly and simply, it will be just a matter of saying "yest, that is a wonderful animated app, but unfortunately the ebook format does not support it".

There will be some inefficiencies, as ebooks are designed to be standalone. Therefore the CSS, logos and "about us" text which can be shared between web pages (and automatically inserted as required by a CMS) will have to be duplicated in each ebook. However, this duplication already occurs with PDF versions of reports, where fonts also contribute to the size of the resulting files.

Ebooks should also make archivists happy as they include their own metadata. In fact ebooks are conceptually similar to the archiving techniques used electronic archiving systems, which wrap up all the associated files of an e-document along with an XML encoded set of metadata.

The public could still read an individual chapter of a report as an ordinary web page. The system could also still provide automatically generated PDF, if anyone wants it. But if the web version is offered first in the list of options online, I suspect most people will be happy to download a few dozen kilobytes of the summary of a report, rather than megabytes of the full report in PDF. I might try out the idea with my students this year and see if the practice then diffuses into the Australian government.

Australian Whole of Government Computer Tender

The Department of Finance and Deregulation has issued a Request for Tender for a "Whole of Government Desktop Hardware (Computing Equipment) Panel". This includes desktop and mobile computing equipment, monitors, installation and disposal. All agencies will be required to buy through the panel.

There is an extensive 235 page "Statement of Requirements" available to tenderers. This not only includes the usual desktop PCs and laptops, but also Thin Clients, Ultra Mobile PCs, Netbooks, Ruggedised Notebooks and Mobile Thin Clients.

Tenderers are required to describe environmental aspects of their Tender, but no minimum requirement is specified for EPEAT:

Environmental Assessment: [State whether this Deliverable is registered in the Electronic Product Environment Assessment Tool (EPEAT) or equivalent environmental assessment tool in Australia or overseas and the level attained by the Deliverable (eg Energy Star 4, EPEAT Silver)] [Provide environmental specifications stating the normal range of operation for the device (including but not limited to, temperature, altitude, humidity, dust, noise output, and heat output ...

From: Request for Tender to establish a WHOLE OF GOVERNMENT DESKTOP HARDWARE PANEL, RFT FIN10/AGI001, Department of Finance and Deregulation, 1-Feb-2010

This contrasts with the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts (DEWHA) Request for Tender for Provision of Desktop, LAN, Helpdesk and Midrange Services (RFT 0708-705, 7 August 2008), which required at least an EPEAT silver rating. This was possibly too much to ask of suppliers, but not asking for at least the minimum Bronze rating may be too little.

Green features required include: US ENERGY STAR 4.0, BIOS Support for Green and Plug and Play features and Support for Wake-on-LAN. There is no specific requirement for
recycling or environmentally sensitive disposal of surplus hardware.

Support for Linux is mentioned, along with Microsoft Windows XP, Microsoft Vista and Microsoft Windows 7.

Table of Contents

Section	Description	Page
PART 1	GENERAL	3
1.1	Structure of Statement of Requirements	4
1.2	Criteria Definitions	6
1.3	Structure of Requirements Statements	6
1.4	Integration of Deliverables	7
1.5	Occupational Health and Safety	7
PART 2	ABBREVIATIONS, ACRONYMS AND DEFINITIONS	8
PART 3	DESKTOP PC CATEGORY	16
3.1	Standard Desktop PC	17
3.2	Power Desktop PC	31
3.3	Workstation	45
3.4	Thin Client	59
3.5	Accessories	69
PART 4	MOBILE PC CATEGORY	71
4.1	Ultra Mobile PC	72
4.2	Netbook	84
4.3	Lightweight Notebook	96
4.4	Standard Notebook	109
4.5	Lightweight Ruggedised Notebook	122
4.6	Standard Ruggedised Notebook	136
4.7	Mobile Thin Client	151
4.8	Accessories	162
PART 5	MONITOR CATEGORY	163
5.1	19 Inch Monitor	164
5.2	20 Inch Monitor	170
5.3	22 Inch Monitor	176
5.4	23 Inch Monitor (If Available)	182
5.5	24 Inch Monitor	188
5.6	30 Inch Monitor	193
5.7	36 Inch Monitor	198
5.8	Accessories	203
PART 6	ASSOCIATED SERVICES CATEGORY	204
6.1	Warranty	205
6.2	Centralised Services	213
6.3	Transport	225
6.4	Installation	231

From: Part F - Statement of Requirements, Whole of Government Desktop Hardware Panel, Request for Tender FIN10/AGI001, Department of Finance and Deregulation, 1-Feb-2010

My School web site design

Hon Julia Gillard MP, Minister for Education launched the "My School" web site today. This is intended to provide information to the public on schools, including the number of students and teachers, socio-economic status and literacy and numeracy test results. Media reports indicated problems with the site responding. I found the site would not respond at about 9am, but by 9pm it was working well. However some simple changes to the web page design could improve the site.

I ran some tests on the page for the Montessori International College (Buderim,QLD,4556) and found:

• 140 HTML Markup errors
  
• The W3C Mobile test reported: This page is not mobile-friendly!
• An automated web accessibility test reported 6 Priority One, 37 Priority Two and 86 Priority Three problems.

This school web page contained:

1. document: 139.1KB (HTML, text and scripts),
2. stylesheets: 26.4KB,
3. images: 16.3KB.

The document contains 4.4 kbytes of text, only 3% of the total. This indicates an excessive used of HTML mark-up in the page design. Reducing this would speed up access to the site. Some simple changes would reduce the code size by two thirds.

The code shows an excessive use of nested DIVs. At one point DIVs are nested ten deep, to display just two images. The large amount of white space which this deep nesting causes may also slow the system down, depending on how the pages and generated and transmitted.

Also automatically generated identifier names appear to be excessively long, such as: id="ctl00_ContentPlaceHolder1_SchoolProfileUserControl_SchoolDescriptionLabel".

In other respects the page is reasonably well designed . It is readable (perhaps more readable) with the styles turned off. However, it is not clear if the general public will be able to understand the complex tables displayed. It might be better to offer an introductory page for each school with summary data. This would also be a way to reduce the load on the server. Most readers will not read past the first few lines of text and therefore downloading the complex tables is a waste of resources.

Is electronic storage cheaper than paper

Yesterday I mentioned a petition against the closure of National Archives of Australia offices. One reply suggested that instead of closing offices to save money, the Archives should stick to paper storage and not digitise records. I am not sure that would be cheaper, nor give a good service.

Most new government records are "born digital", that is they are first created in a computer, not on paper. So to store them on paper would require an additional step of printing them out. Apart from the cost of the paper and printing, there is the storage of the records and handling.

A one terabyte disk holds the equivalent of about 10,000 reams of paper. The paper would take up about 100,000 times as much space as the disk (40 cubic metres as compared to a pocket size device). Also digital records can be shorted and sifted electronically and moved about automatically.

Opposition to closure of Archive state offices

A petition has been prepared protesting the planned closure of the National Archives of Australia offices in Adelaide, Darwin and Hobart. More details is available from the facebook site and History Council of Western Australia.

Dear aus-archivists,

Our petition is going very well. To date I have approximately 2000 signatures from across the country.We want to close it off this Friday so please collect them all now and post them to me. It doesn't matter if there is only one signature on a sheet, it still counts, so please hunt around and
make sure you get them all.

The address:

Anne Picot
C/- Archives & Records Management Services,
A 14
University of Sydney
NSW 2006

Baiba Berzins and I will copy and bundle them up to send to the HR Petitions Committee in time we hope to get on the agenda for their first meeting in February.

And look out for the news coverage (we hope) of the Adelaide demonstration at the Community cabinet meeting today. Of course I hope everyone who can,
will get there to join it. I gather that three people are meeting Senator Joe Judwig this afternoon thanks to the good organising going on in SA.

Please make sure someone takes photos to send to the list and to put on the facebook site.

Have to say that the South Australians are making the running on this campaign right now - Good for you!

Final thoughts on Our Broadband Future

Roger Clarke wrote some "Final Thoughts about the Broadband Future Event" in Sydney last week. For me the event ended on a positive note with Genevieve Bell, on e-Community. It was refreshing to hear ideas about broadband for people to use,
rather than as something done to them.

I started to suffer from conference fatigue on the last day, to the
point that in a moment of inattention I plugged the wrong power supply into my wireless modem and destroyed it.

George Bray wrote in the Link List: "I was able to participate remotely from my beachside cabin ...". In a way he got better access to the event than I did, sitting in the venue (just behind the PM, Minister and assorted dignitaries).

There were power boards and WiFi supplied for the Twiterarty in the fist and last few rows of seats. However, sitting cramped over a 10 inch netbook screen in your lap for hours is not very comfortable. Given that much of the time I was not looking at the live speaker, but instead at my netbook or at the projected image on the big screen in the auditorium, I might as well have been somewhere more comfortable.

There were some advantages being there live, such as the spectacle of Senator Lundy operate a laptop with one hand while Twittering on a smart phone with the other. The coffee and lunch breaks were very high bandwidth networking events. A node of ACS people formed in the centre of the room, grabbing anyone important who wandered past and lobbying them on assorted issues (It was useful to be able to meet the new ACS CEO and President Elect).

It was a little unsettling to wander into a conversation and find the Minister for Communications, the head of the ABC, or the PM part of the discussion.

One frustration I had was that the media were never in the media room, they were wandering around taking part in the discussions. The speakers preparation room was more open that I have seen it at commercial events, with non-speakers allowed to wander in.

Another frustration was the large number of the Link mailing list members present. As everyone else was furiously trying to plug their product or policy proposal, I tried this myself, but people kept saying: "Yes Tom, I read you posting about that on Link".

In retrospect, perhaps I would have been better off sitting in the media or speaker's room at a comfortable desk during the sessions, watching them on screen. Then I could have come out to mingle during the breaks.

The stream sessions did not work so well. The problem was that most of the time was taken up with talks by the panellists. While mostly excellent people and speakers, this was a waste of the limited time. It would have been better to provide the talks online in advance and then go straight to discussions. Also I could not get the Wiki to work at all, despite (or because of) all the user-ids and passwords I had been issued with. As a result I felt I had less ability to communicate by being in the room.

This was an excellent experiment in an Internet enhanced event (not quite as good as the Internet Global Summit).

But perhaps more of the bar camp format could be adopted. There was too much spent on glitz and stage managing. As an example we could have done without the glossy colour program (so glossy you could not scribble notes on it). A sheet of monochrome paper printed at the last minute (so it was up to date) would have done. The expensive looking neoprene
conference satchel was so large it was an encumbrance and does someone at the Department have a rubber fetish? ;-)

Perhaps what is needed is an official event with the important speeches and "fringe" events with the less formal bar camp style discussions.


ps: Technology does have its limits. After the forum I took a 370 bus to King Street to go to a performance of "Cabret" at the New Theatre. In the street I bumped into Chris
Chesher, who mentioned there is a Fibreculture event on Wednesday, about "Freedom and control in the Australian Internet".

e-Community in Our Broadband Future

Greetings from "Realising Our Broadband Future" forum in Sydney (you can participate online). The event ended on a positive note with Genevieve Bell, on e-Community. It was refreshing to hear ideas about broadband for people to use, rather than as something done to them.

Wireless Our Broadband Future

Greetings from "Realising Our Broadband Future" forum in Sydney (you can participate online). Stephen Wilson, CIO, NSW Department of Education and Training, described how wireless will be provided on school grounds. There seems to be little point in the school sector building a wireless network. Instead, I have already suggested, NBN Co. provide wireless as part of their network.

Tasmanian Open Source e-Learning Materials for Broadband Future

Greetings from "Realising Our Broadband Future" forum in Sydney (you can participate online). Dr Evan Arthur pointed out that their were difficult issues with access to educationally relevant digital materials, such as ABC's archive. One way I suggest the education sector could help of federal funding that such a licence is used. This could start with the funding for e-learning which the PM announced for Tasmania yesterday. The Commonwealth can simply specify the open source licence, such as Creative Commons, to be used. The Tasmanian Government will then be required to comply with that licence in order to receive funding. If done carefully this can also boost the Tasmanian economy by encouraging additional commercial services which can add to the open source.

"In Tasmania, we will invest $4.9 million in the Connected - Any Student, Any School project. This will enable Tasmanian schools to use technologies to offer exciting and innovative personalised learning opportunities - using practical, hands on and local, national and global e-learning programs and services. In the short term, the focus will be on services in the NBN pilot towns of Scottsdale and Smithton, while in the longer term services will be delivered across the whole of Tasmania as the NBN is deployed...."

From: Realising our broadband future, Prime Minister of Australia, 10 December 2009

Making Education Less Boring in Broadband Future

Greetings from "Realising Our Broadband Future" forum in Sydney (you can participate online). The event has broken into streams and digital education one is on the future of higher education with broadband. Speakers are Dr Evan Arthur, Group Manager, Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, Tom Cochrane, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Technology, Information and Learning Support, Queensland University of Technology and Stephen Wilson, CIO, NSW Department of Education and Training.

Dr Evan Arthur argues that we need to work through the issues of access to digital material for education. This is a harder challenge than the last one he set.

Tasmanian Alternative Broadband Future

Greetings from "Realising Our Broadband Future" forum in Sydney (you can participate online). After the disappointing presentation from David Bartlett, Premier of Tasmania, there was an excellent talk by Jane Bennett, CEO, Ashgrove Cheese in Tasmania. This was the sort of well researched, sober and serious presentation the Premier should have been given. Perhaps he should take up making cheese and Ms Bennett could take over running Tasmania.

Tasmania's Broadband Future

Greetings from "Realising Our Broadband Future" forum in Sydney (you can participate online). Speaking now is David Bartlett, Premier of Tasmania. I have proposed that Tasmania should put its smaller tourism accommodation online, for Green Broadband Jobs, (so that tourists who can't book online instead decide to go to New Zealand) and hopefully this message will get to the Premier. The premier mentioned the trial for "Smart Street" set top boxes. He also mentioned the potential for smart grid technology combined with renewable power. This would be a good application for Tasmania. Unfortunately whoever wrote the Premier's speech did not research it properly. The speech was peppered with inaccuracies, such as the claim that each google search produced 1.5 Grammes of CO2. Also the level of hype in the speech might suit a political rally but was inappropriate for a broadband conference.

Old Media Still Struggling with Our Broadband Future

Greetings from "Realising Our Broadband Future" forum in Sydney (you can participate online). Abigail E. Thomas, Head, Strategic Innovation & Development, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, is talking about how the ABC sees the broadband future. Unfortunately the ABC seems to see this future as little video clips from TV put on a web site. The ABC is making several bold experiments online, but seem to be fixated with old fashioned TV. What the ABC seems to have difficulty with is joining up all the disparate technologies into one current whole. As an example, the ABC is starting to provide radio via Digital Audio Broadcasting, but doesn't provide the same radio via the audio channels already available on digital TV. This would be a very simple to do, but the ABC doesn't do it, perhaps because they see "radio" and "TV" as two separate media.

What ABC needs to do is restructure itself for the new environment: its all bits. The challenge is to work out what business the ABC is in. The convergence of technology would suggest that the ABC is there to collect and create content, which then can be available in the form of text, audio and video. The ABC needs to therefore restructure itself for that environment.

ps: Perhaps I was a little harsh with the ABC. The next speakers were Stuart Tucker, GM Marketing Aussie Home Loans & Iain McDonald, Director, Amnesia. They bored the audience rigid with a tedious history of how Aussie Home Loans uses the web for marketing. Such a presentation might be f interest to marketing executives who had not heard of the web before and were not familiar with its history, but this was a waste of their time and our time at a broadband conference. If this is how Aussie Home Loans think they should do promotion of their business, then this is not a business I would want to invest in.

Getting to Our Broadband Future

Greetings from "Realising Our Broadband Future" forum in Sydney (you can participate online). Speaking now is Senator the Hon. Stephen Conroy, Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. He is arguing that investing in broadband is an investemnt in education, health, the enviornment and regional devlopment. Next is Abigail E. Thomas, Head, Strategic Innovation & Development, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Stuart Tucker, GM Marketing Aussie Home Loans & Iain McDonald, Director, Amnesia. After morning tea is David Bartlett, Premier of Tasmania, Australia and Jane Bennett, CEO, Ashgrove Cheese. I have proposed that Tasmania should put its smaller tourism accomidation online, for Green Boradband Jobs, (so that tourists who can't book online instead decide to go to New Zeland) and hopefully this message will get to the Premier.

Education in our Our Broadband Future

Greetings from "Realising Our Broadband Future" forum in Sydney (you can participate online). The afternoon stream I selected is Digital Education with Greg Moo, CIO, Department of Education and Training, Northern Territory, Craig Foster, Education Director, Microsoft Australia, Andrew Skewes, Executive Director, Bendigo Campus, LaTrobe University, David O'Hagan, CIO, The Learning Place, Education Queensland. Also like the rest of the delegates, I am coming to grips with the Wiki for the event. We have all been invited to contribute. My book of my e-learning course was launched earlier at the event.

The first d-education session was a little disappointing. The low point was a promotional video from Microsoft, with their version of the future. This video was not specific to education (and apparently was being show in one of the other streams as well). I was having difficulty getting the wifi to work, so I could use the Wiki and so went out to the conference technical support desk (The conference has excellent technical support).

At that point I decided to take a break and wandered off for a coffee at the student union. The coffee turned out to be free, as I found I had wandered into a scientific conference. This was at something called the "Eora Exchange", by lahznimmo architects. This was a dropping cyber cafe (with real coffee). There are wall botths which seat about six students, on each side of a table. One the wall at the end of each table is a large computer screen, with a VGA cable. There are five power points available on the wall for laptops and another two points on a pop-up panel in the tabletop. Also there is the UNSW wireless. I felt right at home here and was a little reluctant to go back to the fast pace of the forums. Also I felt I was learning more about d-education from observing this room than I had at the official forum.

ps: I tried to post the following comment to the wiki comments on the forum. But I was unable to enter my user id or get the anti-spam image check to work, so here is my comment. Perhaps someone who can get the wiki to work can add it:

One of the reality checks on digital education is that in many ways broadband will not change education. Many of the fundamentals will be the same. My e-learning course, which Senator Lundy launched the book for this morning at the forum is very hi-tech, but underneath is about old fashioned education. David Lindley, calls this Mentored and Collaborative Online Learning. I have coined the term e-Oxbridge education to describe this.

Education has not changed since Aristotle was teaching: the teacher gives some guidance to the student and then sends them off to explore for themselves, later the student discusses what they found with other students under the guidance of a tutor, the student then explores some more alone or in groups and produces more and more complex analyses, until the tutor and the student think they have learnt enough.

Infrastructure for our Boradband Future

Greetings from the "Realising Our Broadband Future" forum Sydney. Brad Weam, CIO Iron Ore, BHP Billiton is talking about the network used for running iron ore mining in Western Australia to Port Headland. This shows how broadband is literally part of Australian infrastructure. Without the telecommunications, Australia's mining industry would stop. It happens that some years ago I was part of a HQ Australian Defence Force party which visited northern Australia, including Port Headland, looking at how to protect it. While my military colleagues discussed how y satchel charges a terrorist would need to blow up an LNG refinery, I looked at the telecommunications. It would have only needed cutting a few cables to disrupt Australia's major industry. Since then a level of redundancy has been introduced, making a disruption to the system much harder.

Green IT Answers the Challenge of Copenhagen

Opening the "Realising Our Broadband Future" forum Sydney this morning, the Prime Minister, the Hon. Kevin Rudd MP, stated that broadband could reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Australia by 5%. Senator Kate Lundy then launched a new book "Green Technology Strategies" to detail how to do this. saying "I would like to pay tribute to the work of Tom Worthington with his new book and training on the important issue of dealing with climate change".

Tomw Communications Pty Ltd

Media Release

Green IT Answers the Challenge of Copenhagen

Sydney, 10 December 2009, 11:30am: While the climate change conference in Copenhagen struggles, technologists and political leaders are detailing practical answers today in Sydney. Opening the "Realising Our Broadband Future" forum Sydney this morning, the Prime Minister, the Hon. Kevin Rudd MP, stated that broadband could reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Australia by 5%. Senator Kate Lundy then launched a new book "Green Technology Strategies" to detail how to do this. saying "I would like to pay tribute to the work of Tom Worthington with his new book and training on the important issue of dealing with climate change".

The new book "Green Technology Strategies: Using computers and telecommunications to reduce carbon emissions" by Tom Worthington, is available online for free, as well as in printed and e-book download formats: <http://www.tomw.net.au/green/>

The book is about how to reduce carbon emissions and achieve other environmental benefits by using computers and telecommunications technology. It is designed to be used within an online course for professionals, using mentored and collaborative learning techniques. The book is currently being used in masters level postgraduate courses offered by the Australian National University, Open Universities Australia and the Australian Computer Society.

Author and course designer, Tom Worthington, claims that using the techniques of Green IT can reduce greenhouse emissions globally by 25% by 2020. Tom Worthington, an Adjunct Senior Lecturer at the ANU said: "Reducing greenhouse gas emissions rewuires us to work cleverer. As the Prime Minister said, technologies such as broadband can make a significant contribution to reducing emissions and boosting economic development.We can grow the economy and save the planet at the same time."

See also:

* Realising Our Broadband Future forum: <http://broadbandfuture.gov.au/participating-remotely/>
* Green Information Technology Strategies (COMP7310), Graduate Studies Select program, Australian National University: <http://studyat.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310;details.html>
* Green Technology Strategies, Computer Professional Education Program, Australian Computer Society: <http://www.acs.org.au/cpeprogram/index.cfm?action=show&conID=greenict>
* Green ICT Strategies (ACS25), Postgraduate Program of Open Universities Australia, available from 2010 to students of Curtin University, Griffith University, Macquarie University, Monash University, RMIT University, Swinburne University and the University of South Australia: <https://www.open.edu.au/wps/PA_eBusinessPortlets/Unit-Profile-?year=2010&unitCode=ACS25>

Authorised by, and media contact: Tom Worthington FACS HLM
t: 0419496150 email: tom.worthington@tomw.net.au
Director, TomW Communications Pty Ltd., PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia http://www.tomw.net.au

Media release at: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2009/12/green-it-answers-challenge-of.html

*** Ends ***

NBN CEO on Our Broadband Future

Greetings from the Realising Our Broadband Future forum at University of NSW in Sydney (you can participate remotely). Mike Quigley, Chief Executive Officer of NBN Co., has been explaining that the National Broadband Network is installing fibre to the premises for demanding applications, such as video. He argued that wireless broadband could not provide this due to limited spectrum (in fact the conference organisers asked deli gates to limit their access o the WiFi in the room). The NBN CEO suggests they will need a couple of KA Band satellites for remote areas of Australia (which brings us back to AusSat). NBN will also provide an analog telephone adaptor.

Most of what Mike Quigley said I agree with. However, wireless devices do not necessarily needs as much bandwidth as fixed devices. When watching video on your mobile phone you need much less bandwidth than when watching on a regular TV. This is because the mobile device has a much smaller screen and so needs less data. Similarly, mobile web applications need less bandwidth because people are busy doing other things when they are out and about. Applications in the "cloud" can summarise the data and present just what the user wants to know then and there. A good example of how this has surprised telecommunications companies are SMS and e-mail. These are very plain text based services which take little bandwidth, but a very popular

In my view, the NBN will need to evolve to incorporate wireless. This might be done at, or near the premises. Under current schemes, the NBN will deliver fibre to the home. The customer will then likely attach a wireless router to the NBN termination. As a result the last 10m of the NBN will be wireless. However, this last 10m, which is the most important to the customer will not be managed by the NBN and will waste capacity. Each premise will have a separate wireless device, which will compete for bandwidth. I suggest that instead the NBN should provide a terminating device with wireless built in. That wireless can then be used by the customer in their own home, but also shared with their neighbours. This will make a cheaper, more resilient system. If the home owner's NBN link fails, they can automatically switch over to use the neighbours. If they need more than one node provides, they can use several. If a smart meter or burglar alarm is installed in their hoe, ti will take no configuration, as it can use the standard wireless. Similar wireless telephony can use the wireless network.

Next is: Jeffrey Cole, Director USC Annenberg School.

Senator Kate Lundy will then be launching my book "Green Technology Strategies" in her speech. But first the Minister for Communications will introduce Kevin Rudd, the Prime Minister.