Talking on radio about using broadband to save the planet

At 4:20pm today (local time) I will be talking to Grant Cameron on ABC Radio Adelaide 891 Drive about using broadband to save the planet. This is to promote my talk to the Joint IT SM and IT Architecture Special Interest Groups of the Australian Computer Society and itSMF Australia on "Solving Climate Change with IT Service Management". The particular issue I wanted to talk to the radio audience about is how widespread availability of broadband, such as from the federal National Broadband Network proposal, could be used to reduce carbon emissions. An obvious way to do this is to substitute video conference for travel. Also such dematerialisation can include substituting online services for physical goods, such as replacing paper document delivery with online services. A less obvious example is to make public transport more attractive. One good example is that Adelaide now has Google's trip planner for public transport as well as car and foot travel. This makes it easier to work out how to get somewhere, particularly for those who are not used to public transport. Another option would be to install WiFi on Adelaide's O-Bahn Busway and Glenelg Tram (as is envisaged for the e Cambridgeshire Guided Busway) so that people could do useful work or entertain themselves on longer trips.

Dematerialising Share Purchase

Qantas and the Commonwealth Bank have offered existing shareholders the purchase of additional shares. With the offer comes a paper form to fill in and return. The obvious way to "dematerialise" this process would be to offer an electronic form which could be sent via the Internet. But if you pay electronically using Bpay, the process is even simpler: send the money and send no form at all. Because a client reference number is provided with each share offer and this number is sent as part of the payment, the sender can be identified and no separate form is required. Apart from the complexity of processing the form, this removed the worry of security of the information over the Internet (the payment transaction goes via the banking system). This process could be used for many more transactions.