Broadbanding the Nation

Facebook: I Quit!

2012-01-29T23:51:00.010+11:00

Tonight, I decided to deactivate my Facebook account. Additionally, I deleted my Twitter account and my Yammer account.

I have actively used Facebook since 2007, Twitter since 2008, and Yammer since 2009. In the early days of Web 2.0, I was quite interested in how the power to interact, collaborate, and self-publish (all while reaching a large audience) had the potential to change society for the better. In particular, I held a fundamental belief that a more transparent, open society would be a better society.

I still hold these views but I don't think that Facebook, Twitter or Yammer are the tools to make this happen any time soon. Instead, I am focusing this year on bringing my teaching into Wikiversity and spending the extra time to take advantage of and contribute to Creative Commons-licensed material and accessible online publishers such as ANU ePress.

After much debate over the years with colleagues at the University of Canberra, I am ready to give the open source curriculum model a run and stop wasting my time on networks that don't really add much value to my research.

Using Web 2.0 in higher education has been an interesting journey. At each stage, I have immersed myself in various applications, technologies and devices early on, often only to find myself in the 'trough of disillusionment' just as everybody else is starting their journey towards the 'peak of inflated expectations'.

But my journey up 'the slope of enlightenment' to the 'plateau of productivity' has led to some unexpected outcomes.

At the beginning of 2009, the contract ran out on my i-mate JASJAM, a 3G mobile phone I had bought in 2006. I did not renew the contract and, after having used a mobile phone since the mid-1990s, I decided to see what life was like without one (see "Life Without a Mobile Phone"). Three years on I am happier, my telecommunications budget is healthier, and I marvel daily at the people around me who fill every moment gazing at or speaking into their handsets the moment they are alone. Or sometimes even when they are not!

I found that by having a mobile phone, I was actually paying for a device that others used to interrupt my time with my family. Ridding myself of the mobile phone facilitated a much better home life, and despite my being constantly online with my work, now when I walk away from the computer I am completely unplugged. Others have to wait until I am ready and I feel like I am in control of my Net interaction.

This year I am hoping the same will be true of removing myself from Facebook, Twitter and Yammer. Although I enjoyed the sense of community on Twitter in the beginning, it was quickly dominated by broadcasters and the intimate networks established by the Twitter pioneers disappeared in a torrent of "Twitterati".

But Facebook was great to catch up with people from the past and to stay abreast of what was happening for my friends on the other side of the world. These things I will miss.

Yammer I found was a great way to communicate with colleagues and to try new approaches in a relatively safe environment. Yammer is like an Intranet version of Facebook that is restricted to members who share a common email domain-name (for e.g. @canberra.edu.au). This means that you can be candid about organisational issues you normally wouldn't want to share on Facebook or Twitter.

So in 2011, I introduced Yammer into my teaching in an attempt to sway my students away from that bane of my existence, email.

My simple theory is that email is a reservoir, while a micro-blogging tool is a stream. When you receive emails, you are expected to respond. But the reservoir is never empty and quickly becomes a source of workplace stress. Add 1,000 or so students per year and email gets out of hand. And often by the time you respond to an email the problem has been resolved anyway, making the whole process a waste of time.

With micro-blogging tools, messages flow past in a stream, putting the onus on the sender, rather than the receiver, of the message. If I miss the message, then the sender must resend or revise and resend. Responsibility is completely reversed!

Regrettably, my attempt to use Facebook and Yammer as alternatives has had mixed results. Given the aim was to improve my efficiency in corresponding with many students, what tended to happen was that students would correspond via Facebook, if I didn't respond within moments they would contact me via yammer, and then send an email - all asking the same question.

Add to this an internal email function in the learning management system (LMS), and your life quickly becomes an endless stream WITH an overflowing reservoir, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year. Without institutional support, these levels of service are clearly unsustainable.

After 5 years of using Facebook, Twitter and Yammer in my teaching, I am back to square one. Unfortunately, email remains the dominant communication tool within many Australian organisations and old habits die hard.

But all is not gloomy, I have found wikis and blogs to be useful tools in the classroom and will continue to develop these in 2012. I will also be trialling the BYO technology model using some new teaching spaces at the University of Canberra. It really is an evolving process and I am pleased to be moving on.

But tonight, Facebook: I quit!

The über-efficient teacher: Harnessing technology for a student-demand driven “now”

2011-12-02T16:09:00.006+11:00

For many years I've been incorporating Web 2.0 technologies into my teaching. This year I have found some success with my teaching model, and today I presented the model at the University of Canberra. The video-recording of the presentation is below:

Here is the description I used to advertise the event:

Michael de Percy demonstrates how he can teach 250 students with zero admin support AND zero sessional staff support. His approach will enable you to achieve learning outcomes better than ever AND have students raving about how good it is! This is not a theoretical talk-fest, Michael will show you how he does this “NOW.”

Enjoy!

Akamai State of the Internet: Canada still leads Australia (and here's why)...

2011-11-10T01:40:00.009+11:00

The recently released Akamai State of the Internet Report shows that Canada is still leading Australia in all measures except the number of subscribers to connections of less than 256mbps. Here is a break down of the comparison from the Q2, 2011 report:

Despite the roll-out of the NBN and a policy focus on broadband, Australia still lags behind Canada. Will the NBN help Australia to "catch-up", or does there need to be a fundamental move away from the single national solution?

It is popular to believe that Australia has always been a "world-leader" in telecommunications outcomes. But not long after federation, things weren't looking too good. Here is a little snippet from Hansard in 1909. The "single national solution" wasn't working even back then:

With reference to your recent verbal inquiry as to how many new telegraph line extensions, apart from those along railways, have been provided in Queensland since the transfer of this Department to the Commonwealth... As every one is aware, Queensland has developed enormously during the past ten years... Yet every day I receive complaints of the telegraph system, and requests to try to get something done to improve the communication with Brisbane... Yet nothing has been done to cope with the increase of business, though all that would be necessary in cases like those, the poles being already in position, would be to fix more insulators, and put up new wires. Notwithstanding the public complaints, and my efforts, I cannot get the Department to move, and so desperate are my constituents becoming that some of them talk of voting against me because nothing is done for them. I ask the Postmaster-General to give us fair treatment.

Telecommunications remains a great "policy lever" for Australian governments, to be pulled in case of political emergency. Or not.

For example, the Royal Commission into Postal, Telegraph and Telephone Services (1910) found that sufficient funds to maintain the telecommunications network were withheld by the Treasurer to achieve other political aims in federal-state relations:

[T]he system of management is faulty, in that it permitted the Treasurer to assume financial control of services for whose efficiency he was not responsible.

This is more than just one historical flash-back where politics got in the way of the adoption of new technologies. And it wasn't necessarily the fault of Telecom Australia (back in 1982):

The present Government has rejected several of Telecom Australia’s attempts to enter new growth areas. These initiatives have included approaches for Telecom to be permitted to supply services such as facsimile machines, telephone answering machines, and videotex services. Telecom has also tried to obtain permission to market and supply under 50 line private automatic branch exchanges. Each of these initiatives has either been rejected by Government or not responded to...

The reasons why Telecom Australia was refused entry to the markets listed above appear to be political and ideological rather than a rational assessment of what the future requires for a viable and dynamic Australian communications enterprise.

Moreover, Single solutions take too long:

In 1998, the external territories and many remote communities on the mainland are still awaiting the delivery by satellite technology of many of the expectations of 1977 for instructional TV, telemedicine and digital data transmission.

Australians have always paid too much for these inferior services, too. And it isn't because of factors peculiar to Australia. According to the Productivity Commission (1999: xxiii):

Australia’s residential and business telecommunications prices rank about average among the countries benchmarked.

However, prices in the best performing countries are 20 to 40 per cent below Australian prices on a purchasing power parity basis in most major market segments.

The results are not sensitive to changes in assumptions about usage.

Further, the price performance gap is too great to be explained by factors outside the control of industry participants, such as technological change, input prices, taxes and geography.

An overall assessment of the evidence points to government involvement and intervention having a major influence on prices across the countries benchmarked.

My argument is not against government ownership per se, but against monolithic control by one particular government. So long as the provision of communications services remains purely a political (rather than a commercial) issue, Australia will always be behind other developed nations. And what's more, we'll continue to pay too much.

Steve Jobs R.I.P.

2011-10-06T20:03:00.004+11:00

Today I took delivery of an iPad 2 wifi, courtesy of the AFR Smart Investor SMILES survey. Today also happened to be the last day the founder of Apple Inc was of this earth.

Typically, using Apple devices gives me a little taste of what it's like for my parents when they use Facebook, but the iPad is proving to be very intuitive.

I've been a big fan of desktops but the iPad is definitely changing the way we connect on the go. It's little wonder that now more Australians use mobile connections than DSL with such lightweight devices.

The popularity of iPads and iPhones is such that the next iteration of my e-textbook will be in VitalSource as the company's iApp is proving very popular with my students. So popular, in fact, that the success of the earlier version was limited by its accessibility via an iApp.

Jobs' enthusiasm for an interconnected world will be sorely missed, as will his presence in an industry that has been dominated by only two uber-geeks for most of my lifetime. But as Henry Ford was the mass producer who set the tone of the 20th century, Jobs and Gates have certainly set the scene for the information revolution that still, after all these years, seems just that little bit around the corner.

For Jobs, not being here to witness the fruits of his foresight in its full glory is one of the all-too-common tragic consequences for many of history's great visionaries.

Government tries to solve NBN puzzle with more government

2011-08-26T15:22:00.013+10:00

Who knew back in 1901 that by giving the Commonwealth the power to deal with “Postal, telegraphic, telephonic, and other like services”, we’d be in this mess 110 years later?

In October last year, NBN Co and government officials briefed Gungahlin residents on the local NBN rollout, but they had very little to say. Most people wanted to know the big things: Who will get access to it? Where will it be deployed? When will this happen? How much will it cost? Instead, NBN Co rattled on about sharing the future via the NBN, to think of the possibilities, and not dwell on the facts.

Approaching a year later, and with NBN’s Gungahlin rollout imminent, the big questions still haven’t been answered by NBN Co or the federal government. The release of the House of Representatives standing committee on infrastructure and communications report yesterday had this to say about the communications problem:

To date, much of Australia’s public debate around the NBN has focussed on relatively narrow issues such as pricing structures, technology options and governance issues. During the inquiry, the Committee perceived a growing appetite for a broader public discourse around what benefits the NBN could enable across Australia’s economy and society (Chapter 10, p, 245).

Rather than fix the problem, the “Labor-dominated” committee has found, after fluffing off any arguments which challenge the very design of the NBN governance model, that the solution is to talk more about the benefits of the NBN.

Citizens still want to know the big questions about NBN: Who will get access to it? Where will it be deployed? When will this happen? How much will it cost? None of these questions have been answered. Citizens are still treated with contempt and asked to “imagine the possibilities”.

Australia’s communications industries have always suffered from politics. Since the early days, we’ve been told how fabulous our communications infrastructure is when clearly we haven’t stacked up well against other advanced economies.

The only way to fix the NBN’s woes is to get the industry out of the hands of politicians and let it deal with market demand – it really is that easy.

The litmus test to check when the politicians are further enough away from the industry is just as easy: when a telecoms company CFO resigns, the event won’t even raise Malcolm Turnbull's eyebrow. In the meantime, government is the problem, not the solution.

Photograph: Copyright © 2007 Michael de Percy, taken in Canberra, 16 April 2007
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Australia still lags Canada: State of the Internet

2011-08-09T07:40:00.010+10:00

Despite intense political interest in the state of Australia's broadband infrastructure, four years on since the Rudd Government won the 2007 federal election (with broadband featuring heavy in the ALP's policy platform), not much has changed: Canada is still leading Australia in broadband access and speed.

Average Connection Speed

Canada has a decentralised telecommunications market, dominated by regional monopolies. However, there is significant competition between platforms, particularly ADSL (traditional telecommunications carriers) and HFC (cable television providers). A major difference is that the regulatory system enables greater access to address anti-competitive practices, especially for smaller competitors.

Average Peak Connection Speed

Meanwhile, politicians insist on making imprecise comparisons between Australia and New Zealand, as Malcolm Turnbull did at his recent National Press Club address. The latest Akamai State of the Internet figures demonstrate that comparing Australia with New Zealand is hardly inspiring:

Broadband speeds in Australia versus New Zealand

As two of the most similar countries in the world, Canada and Australia provide a unique comparative study for political scientists, enabling the adoption of Mill's method of difference to find the underlying cause of different outcomes. A key difference is the extent of decentralisation in Canada's communications industries.

High Speed Broadband Adoption

According to the latest Akamai State of the Internet report, Canada beats Australia on all measures of broadband adoption.

Broadband Adoption >2mbps

To prove the point, the only measure where Australia beats Canada is in the adoption of "Narrowband" - connections with speeds of less than 256kbps - which is hardly an enviable position. Enabling competition by freeing up the market from federal control is the only solution. When the NBN is completed in 2020, this will remain a short-term fix.

Narrowband Adoption

Mark my words: the underlying problem of political control of Australia's communications infrastructure will be back to haunt us at the next evolution. Indeed, it has happened repeatedly throughout the history of Australian telecommunications policy. The following is from the report of the Royal Commission into Postal, Telegraph and Telephone services of 1910:

The result of unduly curtailing expenditure was pointed out repeatedly by the Department, and the required provision was made on the Estimates, but was reduced by the Treasurer. The longer the reconstruction is deferred and the longer installation of a new system is postponed the more expensive the work becomes, on account of extensions made to the old system. Construction methods were found to be practically the same as in 1901, as the Department claimed it had been impossible to improve these methods since that date, although the adoption of improved methods would obviously have tended towards economy.

100 years on and communications infrastructure is still used as a "policy lever" to be pulled every time politicians need a boost in the polls. The trouble with the NBN, despite the obvious advantages in the mid-term, is that the new and improved policy lever is an investment of such staggering proportions that it will be difficult to pry it from the hands of those who wish to continue to play politics with this important infrastructure.

NBN: The paths we didn’t take & why

2011-05-18T21:02:00.005+10:00

This article appeared as "The NBN’s the culmination of 150 years of cock ups" on The Punch, 19 May 2011: http://www.thepunch.com.au/articles/the-nbns-the-culmination-of-150-years-of-cock-ups/

Wednesday’s announcement that the NBN finally made it to the mainland was good news for the many Australians who have deplorable access to broadband services. But why did it take so long?

Simple: Australia’s communications policy-makers are bounded by a centrally-controlled, single-solution approach that has been around since the time of the telegraph. This model leaves no room for innovation, encourages contractors to artificially inflate prices, and stalls whenever a skeleton can be found in the closet of the head honcho of NBN Co.

When the Canadian Samuel McGowan brought the telegraph to Victoria in 1853, his plan to become a telegraph entrepreneur was thwarted by the Victorian government’s decision to rollout the telegraph network as a public monopoly.

Not long after, James McGeorge ignored the South Australian government’s declaration that only the government could own and operate telegraph networks. McGeorge had captured the market, causing ‘the immediate revenue’ from the government’s duplicate network to be ‘infinitesimal’. McGeorge’s reward for being innovative was to have his network forcibly purchased by the South Australian Government and subsequently dismantled to prevent further competition.

Fast-forward a century and a half later, and not much has changed. Backed by its constitutional mandate for communications policy, the federal government has opted to address Australia’s broadband woes by deploying another monopoly. Just like the telephone, radio and television technologies with which, despite popular sentiment, Australia was also a developed-world laggard, it has always been the same: Do nothing for years and then try to ‘catch-up’ using public money when the problem becomes obvious.

Recent events have revealed the downside to the centrally-controlled, single-solution approach. Instead of rolling out high-speed broadband to Australian citizens, NBN Co has been embroiled in a series of scandals such as contractors charging over-inflated prices and NBN head honcho Mike Quigley caught up in a drama that really has nothing to do with NBN Co. In the meantime, the announcement that the NBN has finally reached the mainland via Armidale is only good news for the handful of people signing up to trials via the NBN.

If a decentralised approach had been adopted, none of these dramas would have been so newsworthy as to take the focus away from the real issue: giving Australians access to broadband worthy of their status as some of the richest people in the world. This begs the question: Why is broadband so bad here?

It is easy to blame Telstra, and many do. But Telstra didn’t create itself, it was created by the federal government. The blame should go where it is due. But is it enough to engage in short-term blame-storming to find the answer? Enter serendipity.

McGowan brought the telegraph to Australia from Canada and he also brought a copy of the legislation that enabled the telegraph to be deployed. But he wasn’t able to bring the decentralised policy approach that has enabled Canadians to be at the forefront of broadband technologies and the associated services years ahead of their Australian counterparts.

Solving Australia’s broadband problems requires a longer-term view which is hard to fathom through a short-term lens – what worked in the past doesn’t work now. But our institutions aren’t capable of letting go of communications policy as a lever for political goals, even though these goals are no longer congruent with the brave policy agenda that opened Australia’s protected economy to global competition some 30-odd years ago.

Australian policy-makers on both sides of politics must let go of the social-democratic past and forget about trying to provide the same level of service to everybody. Given the snail-like pace of the NBN’s deployment, by the time everyone gets access to high-speed broadband it will be time for another government-controlled monopoly to rollout the next communications innovation.

It is now common knowledge that when governments intervene in markets, they invariably create false market conditions which often end badly – the roof insulation scheme is an obvious recent example. Focusing on competition through a variety of approaches to the deployment of broadband technologies through a variety of government and industry players would have avoided the problems facing NBN Co right now.

Regardless, with a century and a half of policy-making experience focused on centrally-controlled, single-solution approaches to deploying communications technologies, Australia will be hard-pressed to adapt to the inherent complexity of the information revolution that is happening whether Australians have access to high-speed broadband or not.

Broadbanding the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan

2010-11-30T17:45:00.007+11:00

Tomorrow I present my early findings from research conducted in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. The presentation will be delivered at the Australian and New Zealand School of Government's Institute for Governance seminar series at the University of Canberra.

Considering Jordan's GDP per capita is about 13 times less than Australia's, broadband services are very good. I was able to access a variety of Wimax and ADSL services from Amman, Aqaba and Irbid and could easily purchase additional gigabytes of download access as required. Compared to Palmerston in the ACT, Jordan's broadband performance was outstanding.

I am interested in the development of institutions. Jordan's relatively new institutions and their recent development provided me with a unique and less ethno-centric view of the policy world. I am particularly grateful to the Princess Sumaya University for Technology for their support during my time in Jordan and also Aqaba Adventure Divers who provided me with much needed accommodation during the Eid Al-Adha period.

Below is a copy of the presentation. More will be forthcoming in the new year as I look at the institutions in the communications industries of Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Broadbanding the nation: Jordan

View more presentations from Michael de Percy.

Photograph: Copyright © 2009 Michael de Percy, taken in Jordan, 20 November 2009

The "My Lecturer" Website: Students trump government

2010-09-22T15:38:00.001+10:00

A while back Julia Gillard suggested the ...My University“ website would force boring university lecturers to lift their game. But it seems that the government has missed the boat to stir up these old bores. And a group of students has taken the initiative to stir up the insomnia-curers on their own terms.

This initiative, the My Lecturer website: http://mylecturer.net.au/, brings to Australia an idea that started in the US with websites such as Rate My Professor. Admirably, the Australian site is cautious about defamation and actively encourages students to be constructive in their feedback. But is it a good thing or a bad thing for Australian higher education?

For proponents of open academia, a growing movement which believes all educational materials and information should be publicly available; it might be a good thing. But for traditionalists, it might just be the scariest thing in the world!

Open academia includes initiatives such as Wikiversity, a site dedicated to enabling academics to put their course materials in the public realm, are growing in popularity. Such initiatives threaten to disrupt higher education industries such as textbook publishers and even research journals as a growing number of academics move their materials into the public realm. This is significant as entire industries worldwide are at stake, but so is the future of higher education.

Open education asks the question of existing education institutions: Who is education for? From a purely liberal perspective, open education provides everyone with equality of opportunity â€“ if the materials are freely available, we all have the opportunity to receive an education. We might have to pay for the qualification, but at least the education is free.

But many traditionalists see this 'power to the people' approach as little short of a 'dumbing down' of the best of our educational institutions. Indeed, a colleague recently recalled to me a documentary from years ago where an old British professor suggested that ...bad teaching is a tradition. How else would we get our students to learn for themselves?“ Certainly some food for thought there!

But what of the My Lecturer site? And just how 'open' should open education be?

The furore over the 'My School' website saw unintended consequences such as teachers helping students to cheat 'no doubt so that either the teachers' careers were not jeopardised or that the students' education wasn't seen in a bad light. Or more likely both. But government should have seen this coming from a mile off. Everybody knows that Ivy League tables are anti-egalitarian â€“ or dare I say it â€“ they are just plain unAustralian.

What makes the My Lecturer site different is that it is not something imposed by government, but it is an initiative from the students themselves. As one who encourages students to take the initiative and stake a claim in their own future, it is very difficult to see the My Lecturer site as anything but positive.

Traditionalists might be opposed, but these same people are more likely to be those who have some hidden interest to protect. The big test will be whether the open academia crew accept this type of openness, or if they are only in favour of openness which they themselves create

The times are a-changing for the higher education sector, but the same is true for most sectors of the economy. Indeed, access to technology is fulfilling what Manuel Castells (among others) predicted well before today's capabilities were a practical reality. But where does it all end?

From the very early findings of my research into the use of openness via technology in organisations to date, openness results in higher quality, increased productivity, better recognition of high-performing individuals, and overall improved organisational performance. It is simply more difficult for poor performance to go unchecked in an open organisational culture.

But does this justify the PM targeting 'boring lecturers' with the My University website? It is a bit rich when the leader of a political party that can barely form government makes an assumption about the performance of individual lecturers in a sector she hasn't experienced for many years.

But John Howard held a similar view a few years ago and provided funding to universities on the basis of workplace relations reforms, including the introduction of individual performance management techniques as a condition of funding.

Strangely enough, some of us lowly lecturers have already been putting our teaching feedback from these publicly-funded ...performance initiatives“ into the public realm on our blogs or even Wikiversity. The original intention by government may have been to intimidate, but with the majority of lecturers focused on providing the best possible skills and intellectual development for our students, and many of us seeing the benefits of openness, it should be no surprise that government misunderstands the higher education sector.

But now that the My Lecturer website has emerged from out of nowhere to trump bad lecturers, reward good lecturers, and provide future students with feedback which is not tainted by a self-interested government, it is my hope that the government's My University website is passé. For that, the team of students who put the My Lecturer website together are to be applauded and I trust that the new model will break down the old hierarchy of higher education.

Openness is, after all, in all of our best interests.

Public ownership of the NBN is just crazy talk

2010-09-20T11:42:00.009+10:00

There is some speculation the Greens will de-rail the privatisation of the NBN in a few years time, based on a pledge made by senator Scott Ludlam "to fight for the project to remain in public hands". At a time when the NBN is the only real reason Labor is in power, this is just crazy talk.

The premise that the NBN will result in a monopoly holder is not a done deal. If anything, there are plenty of lessons to be learnt from the privatisation of Telstra. And the idea that Telstra's privatisation left Australia with a monopoly provider as a direct result of privatisation is simply wrong - the Howard government made a mess of this on the basis of blind ideology. Ludlam's pledge is another case of blind ideology making decisions, albeit in the other ideological direction.

But is privatisation necessarily bad?

It can be, but usually it is the government who messes it up. Businesses want to make a profit? Surprise, surprise, but this isn't necessarily evil. A quick glance at most attempts at full privatisation or public-private partnerships (PPPs) demonstrates that it is rarely businesses who are the bad guys. After all, state governments refused to release details on the Harbour Tunnel and other PPPs, not the businesses who were calling for this to be done all along.

But what about Telstra? With Telstra's share price taking a caning in the market, more meddling by government with the NBN should be over and done with as quickly as possible. Ongoing public ownership is not a solution, it is the problem that got us here in the first place. And handing over Telstra's ageing assets to NBN Co. is the best way to fix what should have been done before the decision to privatise Telstra was made on the basis of ideology and not practical reality.

Once communications networks are in private hands and there is real competition, there is no evidence anywhere in the world to suggest that market-based approaches don't work. The single national solution provided by the NBN is just one approach to fix the mess created by governments since 1975 when the monolithic Postmaster General's Department (PMG) was finally divided and conquered. But T3 released the untamed gorilla that perpetuated the policy failures of every government since PMG's demise. It is very important to note that none of this was really the private sector's doing.

And there is little doubt that government meddling in the market distorts everything from prices, to competition, to regulation, to share prices - even the information available for consumers to make decisions which don't end up in tears.

From personal experience, I am paying $110 per month for a highspeed, 10gb Wimax plan because nothing else is fast enough in Palmerston via Gungahlin. That's expensive. But with the NBN due to be deployed in my suburb some time in the future, I am not very happy about government using my tax money to give me high-speed broadband while I am already committed to a two-year contract out of the necessity created by government meddling in the first place.

If the NBN improves the service I currently receive I will be happy, but if it means I have to pay out a two-year contract to move to the NBN I have also paid for, I will be quite grumpy indeed!

So let us applaud the NBN for how it will fix the broadband woes created by governments past. But don't think ongoing public ownership of the NBN is a good thing.

The Greens really need to reconsider their approach to public ownership, especially where communications networks are concerned. If they want to keep the duct structure in public hands to ensure access for all competitors, then that is another thing. And this could be built out as part of road or other network budgets but that would require greater cooperation within our federal system. But for the federal government to own it all is nothing short of a return to the bad old days.

Australia really needs to get over its addiction to government ownership and start applauding the successes of our private sector. If we don't, we risk hampering our future success. Can you remember a single occasion where our private sector was applauded for major feats of engineering? Not once!

Yet history has proven time and again that ideological approaches devoid of lived experience are doomed to fail. So any policy decision based solely on ideology, whether left or right, should be avoided at all costs. And we are already too far behind the rest of the world in taking advantage of the information revolution for government to meddle further with our communications industries.

Put simply, committing to public ownership for the sake of public ownership is a backward step that nobody should be seriously considering at this stage of the NBN's deployment. It is just crazy talk.

Decentralised NBN Key to Unlocking the Potential of Our Regions

2010-09-12T14:12:00.003+10:00

Photo taken on Black Mountain, Canberra by Michael de Percy - CC: BY-NC-SA

“Rolling in” the NBN from the bush to the city is good news for regional areas. Indeed, the trickle-down-effect has never really worked for “the bush” so the reversal of the NBN’s delivery approach is a promising sign of policy change.

With Australia’s coastal cities reaching crises in housing affordability, traffic congestion, over-population and a rapidly diminishing quality of life, the NBN “roll-in” provides a timely opportunity to reinvigorate our neglected regional areas. But is the “roll-in” just centralisation going backwards or an opportunity for decentralisation and therefore our regions to – dare I say it – move forward?

In comparison to other geographically large, wealthy, federal nations, Australia is one of the most highly centralised in terms of both governance and population concentration. For decades now, Australian policy makers have been focusing on the ways things are, rather than how they could be, and the regions have been paying the price with diminishing services leading to a vicious cycle of economic stagnation and ever-decreasing populations.

To make matters worse, whenever service delivery fails, the trend in policy responses has been to centralise responsibility with the federal government, whether it is healthcare, education, workplace relations or indeed telecommunications. Clearly, centralisation has not worked for our regions.

And centralisation has its cost. Centralisation tends to lead to systemic policy failures due to the overwhelmingly bureaucratic decision-making processes needed to ensure the monolith operates in a rational manner. This typically means that programs designed to deliver services wheel-spin in administrative expenditure for years before ever getting any rubber on the road. The Coalition’s Metropolitan Broadband Connect program was a good example where millions in administrative costs led to minimal outcomes in terms of improving services to citizens two years later. Put simply, centralisation does not make good economic sense.

Administrative expenses aside, there is also a human capital cost to centralisation which political parties are able to avoid right up until it is too obvious to ignore – often when major opportunities have already been lost. The trouble with human capital, particularly skills development, is that it is only noticeable when it is absent. For example, as more and more policy functions are centralised, Australian citizens have less and less access to policy processes. As citizens have less access to the policy process, they have less interest in participating.

A simple example of poor policy participation was the Regional Telecommunications Independent Review Committee consultation I attended in Sydney a few years ago. It’s a no-brainer to guess how many regional citizens were able to attend a consultation on regional issues held in Sydney. Focus groups don’t overcome the problem either, and the recent election outcome is clear evidence that focus groups simply don’t work for successful policy formulation.

Further, with centralisation, policy actors become increasingly organised and specialised, leaving less room for the ordinary citizen to be involved. This is already a problem for local political representation, where the federal government’s constitutional responsibility for telecommunications means that only federal representatives have any real impact on policy.

NBN Co, when it was first established, started looking for a “headquarters”. But whenever there is a choice to be made between “Sydney or the Bush”, the original intent of the old Aussie saying holds true – nobody really wants to be in the bush unless they’re reminiscing over a Paterson or Lawson classic.

In the end, citizens lose faith in their political representatives and become disenfranchised. Any hope of harnessing the nation’s human capital is then lost and bureaucrats are left to struggle away, delivering one project at a time to “customers” who probably would have chosen a different “supplier” if they had a choice. In essence, central systems are too slow and can only deliver one solution to a myriad of problems. Governments are generally bad at this as the Coalition rightly suggested, but their model – “NBN 3.0” - was stuck in centralisation-mode, too.

It seems that the only way the bush was ever going to get a broadband Guernsey was via the independents. There is simply no way a “roll-in” of the NBN would have happened if the Gillard Government could govern in its own right. But must it be centrally delivered?

The NBN “roll-in” provides an opportunity for economic stimulus and to develop human capital in the regions. A decentralised “roll-in”, harnessing the skills, knowledge and political clout of all sectors of the community (including local government) to address the modern communications needs of our regions will enable multiple “roll-ins” and ultimately faster deployment of the NBN. Granted, decentralisation can lead to sporadic failure in some instances, but it will certainly alleviate the current eight year wait for Australians to officially join the information revolution.

A quick look at Canada and the United States shows that regional development and decentralisation tend to go hand-in-hand. Neither country has a single national solution for broadband, yet both outperform Australia in both regional prosperity and connectivity.

Right now is the time for a new approach to regional development and service delivery, and only the federal government has the jurisdiction to make it happen. If we know anything so far, it is that the centralised model just doesn’t work.

Decentralisation is the key to unlocking the potential of our regions while making life in both “Sydney and the Bush” just that little more bearable.

NBN 3.0? Lessons from an Arabian Broadband Experience

2010-09-01T00:40:00.007+10:00

Broadbanding the Nation: The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan (Photo by Michael de Percy CC: BY-NC-SA)

From Photo Gallery

Is NBN 3.0 a feasible alternative?

Regardless of the politicking behind broadband policy, there has been little discussion about what is needed and why we need it in terms of broadband outcomes. Labor's NBN promises vast coverage of fibre-optic cable (effectively replacing the copper network currently owned by Telstra) and very high speed broadband (100 mbps) with a handful of hard-to-reach places served by satellite and wireless. The Coalition is promising to do what they did for more than a decade which got us into our broadband woes in the first place. But now there appears to be a third option: NBN 3.0.

Rather than repeat what has already been written, details on the Alliance for Affordable Broadband's NBN 3.0 provided by independent technology journalist Renai Lemay are available here.

There has been some speculation about using wireless technologies in lieu of a fibre-optic NBN. Here I draw on some experiences in a country with mostly Wimax services to argue that these technologies can provide an adequate user experience for household users.

An Arabian Wimax Experience

The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is a small, non-oil producing, mostly land-locked country in the Middle East, bordering Israel in the west, Iraq and Saudi Arabia in the east, and Syria in the north. With a population of some 6 million people, Jordan is home to many ancient wonders and sites of significant historical and religious importance.

Comparing Australia to Jordan is inherently unfair: Australia's GDP per capita is some 13 times more than that of Jordan. But when it comes to access to broadband, my personal experience is that Jordanians - if they can afford it - have access to better services.

In Palmerston via Gungahlin, in full view of the flag atop Parliament House, it really doesn't matter how much money you have. Out of frustration with ADSL, I now have a Wimax connection (and a two-year contract) which at least gives me adequate speeds during peak times but it costs $110 per month. The trouble is I am limited to 10GB of downloads per month - regardless of how much I am willing to pay for additional data.

While in Jordan, I experienced an ADSL connection in Amman, the captial, which worked fine (once we upgraded the ageing modem). Just about every Western cafe and fast food joint had free wifi for customers - again no problems. In the south, I experienced blistering Wimax speeds while staying at a dive centre, and a similar service closer to the centre of Aqaba, Jordan's only port city on the Red Sea.

The dive centre's download limit was regularly blasted by a few guests who insisted on watching videos online. This created a bit of havoc when I tried to help out the crew with some web page changes and a workshop on using Facebook to market the business. But it was a simple phone call to the supplier and 1 Jordanian dinar (about AUD $2) per gigabyte of additional download - and that was it. Try doing that with your typical Aussie plan!

Implications for NBN 3.0

So what does this quick comparison mean for NBN 3.0?

First, it means that Australia's broadband services are poorer than those provided in less well-off developing nations.

Second, it means that Wimax technologies can deliver adequate broadband experiences to the typical household user.

Third, it means that there may be some merit to NBN 3.0.

But is wireless good enough?

Let me put it this way - if I was being operated on by a surgeon receiving instructions from a specialist via a Wimax connection, I'd be pretty worried. Satellite would be even scarier. And if I was in the middle of an online university test using my connection here in Palmerston via Gungahlin, I'd be quite worried about the connection dropping out (as it does regularly) and my complaints about my Net connection would get the "my dog ate my paper" treatment. Or worse, my light-weight download limit would be blasted by 2 weeks worth of online learning and then I would be stuck until the next month. Students in the UK simply don't have this problem because capped plans are the exception not the rule.

So while there is some merit in the less-fibre NBN 3.0 option, I think it will be a missed opportunity for Australia if we don't get the NBN promised by Labor. Having said that, I would rather have a Jordanian broadband experience than a Palmerston via Gungahlin fraudband experience any day, so NBN 3.0 sounds better than what we have now.

Why I wish Turnbull was still Opposition Leader

2010-08-05T15:49:00.000+10:00

Malcolm Turbull supported a *real* approach to climate change, he is not a hardcore boat-people-kicker, and he knows a thing or two about the value of high-speed broadband. I wish Turnbull was opposition leader so I would have a real choice this election. But instead, I have a choice between Dumb and Dumber.

It doesn’t matter who gets in at this election – Australia’s broadband future is well and truly stuffed. Whether you vote for Dumb or Dumber really won’t make a difference.

Australia could get a high-speed and far-reaching National Broadband Network censored by the Central Party in Canberra. Alternatively, the nation will have unrestricted access to the Net but on the tired old network provided by the same private sector that has never really had a reason to invest the necessary billions in the infrastructure. For years, the Coalition kept throwing consumer subsidies at businesses under a variety of names, only to see most of the money disappear in administrative costs with no improvement in connectivity.

If we don’t choose the Central Party option, then we will be returning to the dark decade of Howard’s Luddite regime. Only this time you won’t be able to blame it on the old dears and their lack of understanding of how this Internet thingy all works. But rest assured they will have a new name for the same schemes they used during their last reign.

People who question the value of high-speed broadband in Australia really need to wake up and smell the coffee. If you think Australians are anywhere near their counterparts in the rest of the developed world in terms of Web 2.0 skills (and this includes e-commerce), then you are kidding yourself. The lack of broadband access has simply crippled our skills development.

Why is it so?

There are two reasons why Australia has been so complacent about new communications technologies: 1) The myth of the digital native; and 2) Australian governments have done it this way since the time of the telegraph.

First, let’s look at the myth of the digital native. All hitherto Australian communications policy is based on the myth that digital natives will just pick up all this Internet stuff once they have access to it.

But as we approach a decade or more where our young people have not had real access to broadband services, the skills-gap between Australian workers and those offshore is huge.

I should know. I have been using Web 2.0 technologies in university classrooms with young Australians for a few years now. These same young Australians pick up the skills pretty quickly once they learn, but getting them started can be quite the uphill battle.

Over the years, some of my students have said that my approach to teaching is “left-field”, only to find out later that their friends in the US and Japan have been using blogs and wikis in the classroom for about ten years now. And yes, overseas students do this even in high school. But try implementing Web 2.0 technologies in Australian high school classrooms and see how long you last. The bureaucracy will hunt you down.

It is quite clear that young Australians engage with modern communications technologies. But this engagement is all about entertainment and it has nothing to do with productive work. I wish I could understand why workplaces are so reluctant to engage with Web 2.0 applications. You only have to use a wiki instead of a face-to-face meeting to develop a team document and you can see in two seconds how much more productive we could be if everyone knew how to use this stuff.

And this brings me to another point. Why is it only the ALP who bothered with the NBN? If any of the Liberals (or even the Nationals) knew how much more productive the minions would be if they could use Web 2.0 technologies, there would not be a single right-wing politician opposing the NBN. After all, they want to get as much out of each employee for the least cost possible. If only they knew.

But the really big question is why? Why do we do it this way here in Australia?

The answer is simple: we have always done it this way.

The first telegraph system was brought to Australia by Samuel McGowan, a Canadian who had studied under Morse. He thought he could become a rich businessman by bringing a new technology to Australia, much like he had seen the entrepreneurs do in North America. McGowan could not have been more wrong.

Colonial governments refused to let the private sector own the infrastructure. Indeed, the first private sector telegraph network was demolished by the colonial government of South Australia. The businessman who set up the network was promptly warned that only government could own the infrastructure. It never really happened again until the late 1980s when the Australian government said that maybe Optus could own a few phone lines.

But the thing that keeps happening is that Australia persists in locking itself into decades-long commitments to a particular technology – and always because government says so. And, ironically, always because the introduction of newer technologies was delayed by government for far too long in the first place.

So much so that by the 1950s, Australia was still relying on the telegraph long past its use-by date. Implementation of that horrible new instrument, the telephone, had rightly been delayed in Sydney by at least twenty years. Imagine the dilemma if we had spent a great deal of money on the telephone only to see a new technology replace it in the future? Besides, we had a perfectly good telegraph network up until 1968.

Don’t get me started on FM radio, colour television, pay TV or Government 2.0. But if you compare Australia’s use of electronic communications technologies with a similar country like Canada, you can see the trend quite clearly. Australia is slow to implement new technologies. Consumers might take them up pretty quickly, but we are always slow in comparison to the other advanced economies.

Australia simply waits too long before adopting new communications technologies, and then adopts the new technology via a government-led catch-up that is so big we have to wait decades to receive the return on investment from the initial outlay.

It isn’t about a lack of will on the part of the Australian people. Australians want these new technologies but the historical control-freak nature of Australian governments just slows the whole process down. In the meantime, Australians are not learning how to use these new technologies, so we are always behind the 8-ball.

Sure, the NBN will fix a bad situation, but then adding a Net Filter to it is just plain crazy talk.

And then how long will it be before we find ourselves in another communications technology crisis? Will we sit around waiting for the government to “rescue” us once again?

Decentralisation and enabling combinations of business, local council and community solutions to our broadband woes is the key - a key that government refuses to consider.

With a choice between Dumb and Dumber this election, you can rest assured that in a few decades time, we will have a new “future-tech” drama just like the one we have now. Either way, things are not looking good for Australia’s broadband future.

If only Malcolm was still Opposition Leader...

Photo courtesy of Melburnian.

The NBN is coming to Palmerston via Gungahlin! or, How I jumped the gun?

2010-07-08T17:16:00.009+10:00

I had no idea the NBN would come to Palmerston soon - indeed, in the second release of the NBN mainland sites. But there it is and I just entered into a two year contract with the only real provider in Palmerston via Gungahlin. Thanks for nothing NBN!

There is something to be said about why governments simply shouldn't interfere with markets, and the cost to me is probably the easiest reason. to understand. But will the NBN be available to me in 2011 as suggested by the Minister for Broadband's press release? Will Palmerston ever be without the "via Gungahlin" tag?

I hope not, because then I didn't start out with a whopping $109 for 10 gigabyte per month plan via wireless for nothing. But on the other hand, I might be able to buy additional downloads WHEN (not IF) I need them via the NBN.

Anyway, what matters is that Canberra's most densely populated suburb will soon be dragged out of developing world broadband territory and into the Brave New World of the National Broadband Network.

But it should never have got to this stage and we can appropriately blame every other federal government since the Net became publicly available in 1992 for this major interference in the market which will ultimately be paid for by the consumer, i.e. ME!

Thanks for nothing, too, to the senior federal control freaks who should have given more power to our local representatives - the people who don't have the luxury of hiding away in THEIR house at Capital Hill!

Kate Lundy for Communications Minister!

2010-06-24T18:41:00.012+10:00

Find me a person who wants a compulsory Internet filter. There are none. But you don't have to look far to find a person who wants greater access to the policy or political process, especially on an issue that affects individuals on a personal level. People who want a better broadband service are easy to find, too!

The competing objectives of Internet filtering versus Gov 2.0 have gone on for long enough. And as today has been the day of the #spill and #spillard, a few little steps further will make all the difference for Australia's future prosperity.

Australian digital natives have been living in a digital wilderness for too long. There is so much to do that fighting over an Internet filter which will never work anyway is a complete waste of time and the whole tech community knows it. There are efficiencies to be gained which conservative organisations are only just coming to grips with. This is no time to change everything else but the *other* sticking point for this government.

Senator Kate Lundy is the logical choice as Australia's new Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. There needs to be a new minister. There is nowhere Labor can go unless Conroy also moves on.

And stories about 'conflicts of interest' are stupid. If two individuals can't separate their personal and private lives when they are under so much public scrutiny then God help us if we ever let a couple be successful again.

What matters is that Lundy actually knows what can be done and how to do it. You don't need to be a techno-geek in a particular technology to know, but you need to be familiar with one of the technologies to know the massive change in culture this technology is bringing. Lundy is that person.

There is no other politician in this country who knows just how important the gains from the National Broadband Network and the associated uses of higher bandwidth for social, political and economic are than Senator Lundy. Nobody else at all.

Provide your support for Senator Lundy and Australia's digital future and post a comment here.

Other links:

Kate Lundy for IT: The Change We Really Need

Delimiter: Should Gillard replace Conroy with Lundy?

Bloggers campaign for Lundy

New Aus PM may dump comms minister
Ludlam: Change in comms ministry unlikely
Gizmodo: Is Senator Conroy Still Minister For BCDE?

I'm tipping: Conroy to replace Tanner, Lundy to replace Conroy!

Photo courtesy of Bidgee: CC-BY-SA

NBN agreement not just good for Telstra

2010-06-20T21:57:00.004+10:00

Yesterday's $11 billion non-binding financial agreement will give NBN Co access to Telstra's communications network and duct structure. This is not just good for Telstra – it is good for the nation.

Why? Well, there are two main reasons. First, the previous federal government handed Telstra shareholders an investment dud by selling the telco on the basis of blind ideology. The lack of forethought about the resulting industry structure not only hindered the deployment and take-up of new technologies, but it locked in old technologies and prevented innovation – both in infrastructure and the use of high bandwidth technologies.

Second, after more than a decade of neglect, not only is our infrastructure outdated, but our students and workforce are a decade behind in the skills they would have gained had we had access to adequate broadband years ago. The myth about digital natives being 'naturally' tech-savvy provided a policy blind-spot that has left many Australians in the digital wilderness. But yesterday's agreement is the first real sign of progress toward the digital future we should be enjoying right now.

While Minister Conroy's press release rehashes the NBN Implementation Study's assertion that the NBN “would still be financially viable even without the participation of Telstra”, only a fool would try to broadband the nation without the cooperation of one of the most innovative companies in the world. The agreement is the closest thing to the win-win solution the government was no doubt dreaming about in the lead-up to this year's federal election.

Telstra shareholders will be watching the stock market to see if their investment recovers from the years of regulatory uncertainty perpetuated by governments from both sides of politics. As Telstra will be able to divest its wholesale operations without destroying its market value, it is difficult to think the market will react anything but positively.

The creation of USO Co will help, too. Removing the Universal Service Obligation (USO) – a remnant of technological socialism which has done nothing but act as a handbrake on new technologies - will enable Telstra to focus on services which are not predetermined by politicians. Hopefully this will also free-up USO monies currently provided by Telstra's competitors and put the social responsibility for essential communications services back where it belongs – with government.

Nonetheless, the inevitable time-lag between now and when the details of the agreement are finalised will not help fix Australia's shortage of skills in using high bandwidth applications. The benefits of some of these technologies are yet to impact upon the Australian workforce and most managers haven't a clue about the productivity improvements and cost-savings which can be gained through various collaborative communication alternatives.

Overseas, companies are less reliant on email as they move to using blogs, wikis and other social media applications to communicate with co-workers and customers. Hard skills in a particular technology are not important, but the soft skills, such as being able to operate in an environment where communication is (for the most part) out in the open, cannot be gained in the absence of technology.

Many executives who operate in these open communication environments suggest that the quality of work improves significantly as a direct consequence of openness. But in a country where bosses still suggest we blog with prudence or we shouldn't use social media at work, Australia is far behind the eight-ball.

And it is not just in the workplace. When I introduced blogs and wikis into my university teaching this year, many students found the technology quite confronting. But a few have spoken with their friends offshore and have discovered that overseas students have been using social media in education for many years.

The myth of the digital native in Australia is just that – a myth. But addressing the lack of skills is exacerbated by the lack of teachers capable of teaching with the technology, which in turn feeds into the lack digital skills in the workforce.

While the government argues that the “NBN is critical to securing Australia's international competitiveness”, some people still argue that the NBN has nothing to do with education. But a quick comparison of broadband plans in the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia demonstrates just how far behind we really are.

Even Australians who have adequate access to high-speed broadband services are restricted by the amount they can download each month – hence how much they can participate in online education or other educative applications on a regular basis. But if you live in a suburb like Gungahlin in the ACT, even the most expensive wireless plan won't fix the problems of the old network, let alone provide you with adequate download limits to upgrade your qualifications online.

NBN Co's deal with Telstra should usher in a vast improvement in the quality of access, price, speeds and bandwidth as the old copper network is phased out and customers are migrated to the NBN's fibre. But whether the regulatory certainty the agreement is designed to provide for Telstra will be sufficient to satisfy other players in the communications industry remains to be seen.

Yesterday's agreement gives the Rudd government a chance to put the NBN back on the election agenda. At a time when the Opposition is still talking about scrapping the NBN, there will be much rejoicing in Labor circles. But it is also good news for the Australian economy and the education revolution. Who knows, Australians might even join the information revolution in a few years time?

Photo credit: "Bidgee"/CC BY 3.0

Digital Natives? Myth Busted!

2010-06-15T20:12:00.010+10:00

There is a myth perpetuated by people who are not engaging with emerging social media technologies. This myth is that people born since the advent of the Internet have grown up with new media technologies and therefore these people are digital natives who do not need a digital education.

But this myth does not stand up to the slightest scrutiny. I would probably not get this into an academic journal, but here are some statistics collected during my second attempt at using social media such as blogs, wikis and other information sharing tools for completing major assessment items.

Blogging:
Question: Have you ever blogged before?
Yes = 2 responses
No = 50 responses
What's a blog? = 1

Wikis:
Question: Have you ever wiki'd before?
Yes = 8 responses
No = 35 responses
What's a wiki? = 11

Not research to stake a career upon, but hardly an overwhelming victory for the digital native myth!

But it also suggests why technologies which boost productivity and efficiency in so many ways are not making it into the mainstream fast enough. While it is true enough that the so-called "digital natives" can learn the new technologies very quickly, there needs to be someone teaching how contemporary technologies can be harnessed in business, government and community applications. In my experience, these teachers fit into the "digital immigrant" category.

Anyway: Digital Natives? MYTH BUSTED! Now we can get on with providing a digital education and stop pretending that it isn't necessary.

iPad? Techno Wipeout and how to avoid it

2010-05-27T14:00:00.004+10:00

Tomorrow's release of the iPad in Australia is sure to cause a stir in the media. But claims that this is a world changer will be nothing but noise in the echo-chamber. The changes happening as a result of the information revolution pre-date Apple's mass marketing techniques.

One of the biggest problems for any user of technology is keeping up with the changes. Conservatives typically quote digital cameras and their ever-increasing megapixels as markers of the pace of technological change and why it is pointless to try to keep up.

But the release of the iPad tomorrow will see many arguing that this is the great marker of the revolution, many others saying that Apple isn't everything, and the rest not really caring.

Part of the problem is what I call "Techno Wipeout". It might be cutting edge to surf the edge of chaos, but it can also be expensive.

I argue that it is better to wait for the right wave and ride it to where you want to go. Unless you are mega rich, of course, and then do whatever you like!

I have tried a few times to be ahead of the curve, but the only outcome was that I was ahead of the curve. Form over substance.

Increasingly, I am finding that the soft skills needed to work with new social media technologies are more important than the technologies themselves. Sure, if you leave it for too long, it can be a long swim back out to the surf, but it is better than constantly being dumped as a new technology wave hits you.

So while Apple's iPad will no doubt bring about some amazing new applications and ways to access and manipulate information (just as the iPhone did), is it really the marker of a brave new world? I doubt it.

But what the iPad will do is signal to the mob that it is now cool to do what many tech geeks have been doing for a long time - connecting and networking and sharing almost anything through their communications devices. Who knows, my students might even start reading e-books!

Apple's brand power will also make those who have refused to see the benefits of these devices take notice. Not because they now see the benefits and the new ways to collaborate and improve productivity, but because it was in the newspaper and on the telly.

So Apple's marketing machine might be the straw that broke the camel's back and bring social media and other web technologies into the mainstream.

But for me, I'll be sticking to my netbook for another generation or two. Just like I did with my telly - I'll be buying my 3D TV real soon and I will not have to get rid of my rather large plasma. That's how I avoid Techno Wipeout.

Photo credit: Mila Zinkova: CC-BY-SA 3.0

Telstra down but not out

2010-05-20T13:44:00.003+10:00

Although you might still not encourage your mother to buy their shares, Telstra is down but not out.

A Labor win at the election could see Telstra hopeful for an agreement on the NBN. But according to CEO David Thodey:

It is a purely commercial issue and if we can get to an outcome we'd be delighted, if we can't we can't and life will go on.

On the other hand, an Opposition victory (which Tony Abbott appears to have personally hijacked) might prevent any plans to split Telstra's wholesale and retail operations.

But how does this really affect Telstra, and not just its legacy network?

David Thodey suggests that Telstra's wireless customer base is doubling every nine months:

Telstra CEO David Thodey: Let me say it again, every nine months. Any of you out there would die to have a business like that.

And with Telstra continuing to improve the capabilities of its wireless infrastructure, once the fallout from the Three Amigos and the NBN negotiations has cleared, it seems plausible that Telstra will come out of it all just fine.

Either way, the NBN debate is giving Telstra enough breathing space to reposition its business. Ticky Fullerton's report on ABC's Lateline recently is worth a watch as it identifies some of the major issues for the election. No mention of how backward Australia is at the moment or how it will screw-up our future capabilities, though!

But in the meantime, speculation over the retail price of the NBN services in Tasmania has prices ranging from $40-$90 per month - even some suggesting it is "too expensive". Given that I currently pay $109 per month to get quasi-reliable Wimax in Palmerston via Gungahlin (I gave up on the ADSL "service" just recently), if any Taswegians out there would like to swap, let me know via the post as my email may not be working...

Photo credits: Telstra sign: "Bidgee"/CC BY 3.0; David Thodey: Telstra.

Infrastructure Duplication? Duct structure is the problem, not the cable

2010-05-14T13:13:00.002+10:00

Optus CEO Paul O'Sullivan has confirmed that the telco will support the "controversial "cherry-picker" levy to crimp the ability of Telstra and others to build high-speed networks in high-value, low-cost areas in competition with the NBN".

Singaporean Government-controlled Optus is obviously taking the opportunity to have a swipe at Telstra. But the out-dated natural monopoly argument still being used to prevent infrastructure duplication is a smoke-screen.

The idea is that duplicating infrastructure is inefficient and leads to unnecessary civic disruption and unsightly cables, boxes and so on. The early telegraph and telephone days are cited as proof of this problem.

But it is clear that where a provider has access to the duct structure or the poles (that is, the conduit), the provider is able to deploy wire or cable to connect consumers. Transact in Canberra is a prime example.

Where Transact (through ACTEW) owns the power poles, consumers have access to the Transact's cable. If you live in Gungahlin, where the ACT Government rushed the development of the suburb's infrastructure through a variety of public-private joint ventures, you get, well, nothing.

So when Optus supports a measure designed to prevent the duplication of infrastructure, it is important to look closely at the argument against duplication.

Put simply, it is inefficient to duplicate the duct structure or the poles (the conduit), not the actual cable. Additional cables increase bandwidth. Additional conduits cause the problems experienced in the early days of the telegraph and the telephone.

Shara Evans at Market Clarity suggested at a broadband conference in Sydney last year that government could improve access to the duct structure by adding this component to all new road-building projects .at a fraction of the cost to do this as a separate project. As the road is built, so is the duct structure.

The main reason this doesn't happen already? The division of powers between the federal, state and local governments.

So the next time you hear Optus or any other telco arguing against "infrastructure duplication", the duct structure is the problem, not the cable.

Put simply, the interests supporting the new measures to avoid infrastructure duplication are worthy of further investigation. And to make matters worse, none of this even got a mention in the whole NBN debate.

NBN cheaper, but so is the politicking

2010-05-06T14:09:00.008+10:00

Today's release of the National Broadband Network (NBN) report suggests that the NBN will cost taxpayers $5 billion less than the initial proposal and will be affordable for consumers with or without Telstra’s participation. This is good news for Australia. But the way Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is handling one of the most important events in 21st century nation-building is an absolute disgrace.

The long awaited report by KPMG and McKinsey was released at 1:30pm today after a budget-style lock-up of selected journalists. And this is where the problem with Conroy begins.

The NBN has the potential to put the "public" back into public policy-making. But with the current minister at the helm, all we seem to be getting is a one-size-fits-all solution dictated by policy-making elites.

Australia has one of the most modern democratic political systems in the world, yet citizen participation in policy processes is effectively blocked by elitist attitudes. Indeed, public consultation usually results in little more than a placebo to calm the masses rather than a deliberate attempt to understand what issues are actually in the "public interest".

The bill for neglecting Australia's communications infrastructure has finally arrived and while it is significantly cheaper, the sneaky manner in which publicly-funded reports are delivered by government is nothing short of tyranny.

To make matters worse, the government is delivering mixed messages. In response to the Government 2.0 Taskforce report recently, the government is suggesting that the use of new communications technologies (which will be enabled by the NBN) will “shift public sector culture and practice to make government information more accessible and usable [and] make government more consultative, participatory and transparent”.

It would seem that somebody forgot to tell Stephen Conroy.

The minister is doing everything possible to sabotage public involvement in the NBN's implementation. Today's cloak and dagger style meeting of Canberra's press elite is just an extension of what we have come to expect from a minister who wants to implement an Internet filter to censor what Australians can access on the Net before the NBN is even available.

But none of this is necessary. Any number of people involved in delivering services such as health and education know just how important access to the NBN will be in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery. But even the problems in these two areas are not being addressed by innovative practice or new ideas - giving more and more responsibility to the federal government is all the elites have been able to come up with so far. Maybe it is time someone else had a go.

Those educating young Australians know just how desperately Australia needs the NBN. In comparison to their counterparts in the UK, Canada and the US, Australian students are not only behind in accessing affordable and adequate communications services, but their involvement in creating, disseminating and accessing public goods such as open education and other information resources is about a decade behind. So much for the education revolution and preparing for the knowledge economy.

Further, education now ranks in the top 5 Australian export industries. In a country where the standard of living rests on major exports of unsustainable resources such as coal, the education industry provides the biggest opportunity for sustainable future prosperity. But without the NBN, our chances of continuing to grow our exports in this industry are effectively hamstrung.

While today’s government-funded report is nothing more than an expert opinion to back up the government's NBN proposal, the price tag and the expected increase in access to the infrastructure will provide welcome relief for the government. And few would doubt the report has been held back for so long for any reason other than political opportunism.

With Opposition Leader Tony Abbott speculating recently that the Coalition could deliver the NBN faster and cheaper, Conroy will be able to take a breath while the details of the 500 page report are being absorbed.

But don't be fooled into thinking that things will be better under a Coalition government. After all, Conroy says the Coalition were responsible for keeping Australia's communications infrastructure in the dark ages.

And this is one area where Conroy is actually right. Abbott and the Coalition will no doubt cut spending on the NBN or scrap the project altogether, and this would be tantamount to deliberately making Australia part of the developing world.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is well aware of the consequences of failure with the NBN, stating that he doesn’t “intend to be Prime Minister of Australia which consigns our 21st Century to a 20th Century technology”.

But none of this bodes well for the whole point of having the NBN – to enable citizens to have greater access to information and communication services.

Today’s NBN report “lock-up” harks back to convict times. In the information age, the way policy is being made is simply not good enough.

Australia needs the NBN, but it also needs a major attitude change from senior ministers such as Conroy. Public money belongs to the public and hiding information for political sensationalism is just plain wrong.

Don’t expect the public consultation that is planned to be conducted as part of the NBN rollout to be anything more than a farce. Consumers might be “the big winners”, but citizens are getting more of the same. So much for 21st century nation-building.

For further info, see Delimiter's coverage here.

Photo of Stephen Conroy by Dr Ron from wikimedia.org. CC-By-SA

Electioneering via Social Networks: Preaching to the Converted?

2010-05-05T18:43:00.004+10:00

With an election looming, some of the old favourites like "let's kick a dole-bludger" among other idiotic policies are being tossed around in the popular media. Targeting Tony Abbott in particular, it appears that the ACTU will be using Facebook and Twitter to 'hammer out a warning' about a re-painted Workchoices industrial relations environment.

Everybody knows that such a policy is not a winner - just ask John Winston Howard and Stanley Melbourne Bruce. But it makes me wonder how much difference the use of social media will make this election?

The inherent beauty of social networks is that you don't have to engage with or read stuff you don't like. If you have a friend or followee who annoys you, you simply unfriend or unfollow them and move on. But how many people will be happy about having their social networks infiltrated by those annoying politicians during the election campaign?

The reality is that most of us will either only read or engage with those we are already going to vote for, or alternatively we will keep a safe distance away from the more evangelistic politicians.

I am not a betting man, but if I were my money would be on social networks being nothing more than a sideshow for the traditional media, or at the every most a case of simply preaching to the choir.

UC 2.0: The Hothouse Rocks!

2010-05-04T23:51:00.000+10:00

Today I met with the UC Hothouse crew to report on my progress for the Winter Term. I arrived 1/2 hour early to finally use the room set aside for us. After teaching from 8:30am to 3:30pm without a break, I spent the time listening to Scheherazade on my old iPod Shuffle while responding to student emails on my new Netbook. I was surprised to learn how quickly time has passed this semester with just over a week left to go for the semester, and now only two weeks for us to use the Hothouse room.

The trial with the University of Canberra College using my Web 2.0 techniques is proving to be a real winner with students with English as a second language (ESL). On sabbatical last year in Jordan, I really got to know what it was like to be a foreign ‘student’ and Google Translator and other tools became firm friends. On returning to the UC College fold, I decided to change my attitude toward ESL students and now students are providing me with links to the tools they are using - typically tools peculiar to particular languages.

Not everyone will agree with the approaches to teaching I am using (see the video in the coming weeks!). But the simple fact is that using traditional teaching methods, my ESL students sat stupefied as my head talked at them in the classroom. At the end of a class, nobody could correctly answer a single question asked of them. Now, it is rare that I get vacant faces when I ask questions - indeed the converse is true.

What is obvious is that the days of the talking head at the front of the tutorial class are limited - and for me the computer lab is the place where learning is ramped up to warp factor.

Next week, Leonard Low of the Hothouse crew will be producing a video record of my approach to teaching ESL students. I still need to collect detailed feedback from students but the informal feedback I have been receiving from numerous students and peers has been mind-blowing. My gut feeling is that the system I was using in Jordan works as a teaching method with a class of about 90 students. Nonetheless, the method is resource intensive, requiring computer labs for every face-to-face contact period except the 2 hour lecture.

My biggest fear is how I will be able to replicate the results I have achieved in the computer lab in a fully online unit. To be honest it is stressing me no end as the numbers for the new Winter Term are approaching 80 students and rising. What makes the difference is knowing that the Hothouse crew are behind us the whole way. After today’s meeting, I am noticeably less stressed. Whether that is the result of the meeting or that 1/2 hour of chilling out this afternoon I am not sure, but either way it is attributable to the Hothouse!

"Savvies" vs "Unsavvies": What web skills should contemporary professionals possess?

2010-04-13T10:19:00.008+10:00

What web skills should contemporary professionals possess? To hear many educators, you would think that "web-savviness" was something that could be outsourced to a personal assistant or some other "non-professional". This view is just plain wrong and the consequences for Australian professionals will be disasterous.

There is a great deal of interest in online and blended learning in the higher education sector. However, many of the complacent views about web technologies are held by those in positions of power - often the same people who do not know how to use the technologies.

There is nothing new about some people lagging behind others in terms of "tech-savviness", but there is a divide in higher education between the "savvies" and the "unsavvies". The "unsavvies" want to make sure the pedagogy is sound and that there is some theoretical approach to the use of web technologies in the classroom. The "savvies" know that these normative questions have already been answered. The trick is how to implement new technologies in a setting which is not geared up to do so.

What is not clear is what web skills contemporary professionals should possess. Clearly, the higher education sector is the place where most of this skills development will occur. But why are web skills desirable?

With Australian broadband lagging the rest of the developed world, the time-lag between infrastructure development and skills development is ever-widening. This means that Australian professionals are already at a disadvantage in comparison with professionals from abroad. Further, a quick glance at the higher education sector and the state of Australian "Government 2.0" initiatives demonstrates that web interactivity is far from being a priority in Australia. But it should be.

Why? The first reason is productivity. The rise of neoliberalism in the West saw not only the end of free tea and coffee at work, but executives operating photocopiers and using fax machines. Just about every minute detail of day-to-day administration is now conducted by the professional - the once-ubiquitous personal assistant is reserved for only the very-well-to-do.

Web technologies enable more minute-to-minute tasks to be undertaken by professionals, rather than by a throng of support staff. Professionals might not be happy about this for a while, but who remembers when it was a "right" to have free tea and coffee at work? [International Roast Caterers Blend was hardly something to cry about losing anyway!] The point is, the efficiencies which were produced by reducing administrative staff were consumed by the system the same way web technologies would be - I am surprised the closet neoliberals haven't discovered this one yet.

Second, there is a growing need for professionals to establish a Net identity. Like it or not, it is only the few at the end of their work life cycle who can hold out to retire before web technologies are just plain normal. Think of Sir Robert Menzies - avoiding television and retiring before it was the political norm. Now imagine a politician who avoided television because they weren't familiar with the technology. Now imagine the inefficiencies created by a professional who needs to pay someone to set up their blog, social networking sites and so on. Can you even imagine paying someone to set up a Facebook account? But watch the "unsavvies" trying to do it by themselves.

Third, technology has changed. Again. Imagine a professional who refused to use a word processor, favouring the humble pen. Granted, there are a few of these people around, but they are either VERY senior or VERY VERY rich. But what about using a wiki for collaborative work? Why would you use a MS Word document when you could use a wiki? Maybe because you don't know how to use a wiki? Now watch how long it takes a handful of people to put a MS Word document together from 50 or more other Word documents. Days. Sometimes weeks. A wiki would have solved this dilemma in real-time but only if people know how to use a wiki.

I haven't even mentioned the non-organisational/non-administrative good bits yet. I could go on but I won't. The simple answer to the question posed here is that professionals need all the web skills they can reasonably get. If they don't, someone else will. But in the meantime, our productivity could improve at a rate that beggars belief. And that is the trouble - some people just won't believe it.

The trick now is to get universities geared up to teach web skills. Maybe not as a matter of direct teaching, but as a generic skill (or an assumed skill like the ability to use a word processor). But before we get ahead of ourselves, we need the infrastructure to teach these skills. Think of the "Medieval Helpdesk" but this time the helpdesk is behind the technology curve. This brings us full circle - if the dominant professionals are not also "savvies", are they best placed to make the right decisions about what skills contemporary professionals should possess? I think not.

Time for a Specialist Comms Regulator

2010-04-07T09:15:00.073+10:00

With the ACCC increasing its staff ahead of NBN Co's ownership of the wholesale communications network, it is timely to consider a new, specialist communications regulator for Australia to tackle the issues of technological convergence which are largely being ignored in the detail of the NBN.

In 2001, the Productivity Commission found little evidence to suggest that a specialist regulator works any better than a generalist regulator. However, using a comparative approach at the industry level, researchers suggest that a specialist regulator generally produces better outcomes in the communications industry.

The current laws governing Australia's communications industries are outdated, and competition is better seen as occurring across all media communications industries rather than just '"telecoms" or "media".

The ACMA already has this mandate, but the regulator is really the ACCC's poor cousin when it comes to its impact on the communications sector.

Canada's policy and regulatory model provides an important example of how the Australian framework might function, with the ACMA or a similar body taking on the specialist role adopted by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC).

Already, NBN Co is creating a few challenges for the ACCC:

ACCC Commissioner Ed Willett: This is something of an uncommon process for the ACCC, [having to assess] an undertaking for a company which currently has no market power and no network. What rules should govern this new company to ensure a healthy competitive industry and positive outcomes for consumers are some of the questions we are grappling with.

Far be it for me to suggest that the ACCC cannot do its job, but comparison with other jurisdictions suggests that specialist regulators are not so focused on competition theory and are better able to take on a more active regulatory role in the industry. This is particularly important during interconnection negotiations which will no doubt take up a great deal of the regulators time and effort.

Why change to a specialist regulator? According to Roehrich & Armstrong (2002):

[A]n active regulator is more likely to produce an active negotiation [in interconnection arrangements].

At $43 billion, a little bit of the pie spent on a specialist regulator is surely a good investment. Why this issue never enters the debate over the NBN is certainly a reflection of the interests that are being protected, rather than a focus on the interests which should be being served.

3D television just a far-off dream for most Australians

2010-04-06T09:10:00.006+10:00

While sitting in my lounge room last night enjoying less-than-broadband speeds at the price of a 1.5 Gbps connection, SBS News mentioned that 3D televisions would be available in Australia from as early as next month.

The big problem is that there is no 3D content broadcast by Australian providers. But SBS may have other plans.

According to the Australian newspaper, the SBS is considering broadcasting a FIFA World Cup soccer match in 3D. The Australian also reported some findings of an Ipsos survey:

This week, a study from research firm Ipsos found 70 per cent of Australians were aware of 3D TV and 22 per cent said they would "definitely or probably" buy one. "There is definite excitement about 3D TV, which is interesting considering 53 per cent of the respondents haven't seen a 3D movie, let alone 3D TV," Ipsos executive director of media Mark Grunert said.

Movies and computer games are expected to drive demand for 3D televisions. But where does it all end? And is it really that simple?

This is how I have reacted to the slow implementation of new technologies:

After paying more than $350 per typical month for home telephone, Foxtel, broadband, two mobile phones (which included an iMate JAS-JAM - like a pretend iPhone) a few years ago, I ditched the mobiles and Foxtel. I also waited to see what would happen with the "Big Box". The result has been a more peaceful life (people called my mobile when they wanted something from me, rarely did I need it for me). Now, when I am away from my desk - well, now I am really offline. Try it sometime!
An inexpensive Bush digital set-top box fixed the old television problem, and a PC to TV adaptor means I can watch anything on the Net on my old TV - as long as the rest of my suburb is asleep because the broadband is always dialup at peak periods.
I am glad I didn't spend a cent on a big television now that 3D TVs are on the way. I will either save a fortune buying an "old" new flatscreen TV or a second-hand unit.

Assuming Australians are rational economic actors, it would simply be irrational to purchase a 3D television unless you were either very rich, or you happen to really need to see soccer in 3D. The figures from Ipsos certainly suggest that Australians are interested in the technology (even if they haven't seen a 3D movie), but will they pay for it?

My guess is they will not. And why? Because in terms of communications technologies, Australia is now caught in the past. Convergence is largely ignored and the traditional boundaries continue to dictate the structure of the media communications industry.

It is obvious that competition is the answer to the current state of the industry. But this doesn't just mean Telstra. The ABC and SBS are the only providers delivering full-length television shows via the Net. There is no incentive for the other networks to do so.

Competition requires a number of competitors. If the boundaries which currently separate the traditional communications industries in Australia were removed, there would instantly be more competitors and therefore more competition. No longer could the old players dominate their peculiar and protected markets.

3D television provides an opportunity for the old rules to be re-written. Television networks, pay TV providers and telecommunications companies could all compete with movie-makers and even computer game companies once the new game is played.

But until policy-makers choose to recognise that each new communications technology is another nail in the old game, policy will be the reason Australians are still dreaming about watching affordable 3D televisions in the years to come, and not a lack of demand.

Why we need the National Broadband Network: Some statistics

2010-04-01T12:00:00.007+11:00

There has been a ridiculous amount of criticism of the NBN, even though broadband in Australia is slow and expensive. Indeed, it can be so bad at times that a colleague pointed out recently how restrictive a typical Aussie broadband plan is compared to the UK - the download limits are such that students attempting to access content in an off-campus environment are disadvantaged by the cost more so than their UK counterparts.

Even the Wikipedia page about the National Broadband Network has an entire section devoted to "Criticism" with not a single word about why the NBN was ever needed in the first place. The Wikipedia contributors are happily arguing over NPOV (Neutral Point of View) contributions but not one mention of praise or of the need for reliable and inexpensive broadband.

Yet nobody has been saying: "The NBN will fix all these obvious problems, the NBN will be a good thing". Well it's about time someone did!

But let's start with the Oz Broadband experience: How bad is it? Let's take a look:

In the top end of town (subscribers with theoretical speeds above 5Mbps), Australia fares pretty well. But in the lower end (subscribers with less than 256Kbps), Australia and New Zealand are still in the pioneering days.

But that's not all. When we look at the average speed and the amount of data we can access on a typical broadband plan, the situation is much worse (note that almost 100% of plans in Australia, Canada and New Zealand have data limits, compared to only 13% of UK plans):

Just when you thought things couldn't get any worse, if you want to buy additional data, then Australia leads the pack at 5 times the price per Gb in Canada and 10 times the price in the UK:

So my colleague was right - when we are designing online university courses, we need to consider that Australian students are not accessing first class and affordable infrastructure.

We also need to get over the fact that the market has not delivered. The next time you hear criticism about the NBN, take a moment to reflect on the state of Oz broadband in comparison to the rest of the Commonwealth, and remind the critics why we need it.

We can accept that the way the NBN is deployed should be the subject of much debate, but whether or not we need the NBN is simply a dead argument. And so will the capabilities of young Australians if we cannot keep pace with the rest of the world.

NOTES:

(1) Data from Akamai State of the Internet Report, Q2 2009
(2) Data from OECD Broadband Statistics Sep-Oct 2008

Broadbanding the Nation archived by NLA

2010-03-31T09:00:00.003+11:00

Broadbanding the Nation was recently selected for preservation on Pandora by the National Library of Australia on 9 March 2010: http://pandora.nla.gov.au/tep/117322.

The blog can also be accessed in the archives via Trove: http://trove.nla.gov.au/work/37039338.

While you are checking out the National Library's archives, have a look at the project to digitise historical newspapers. While you are there, why not take a minute or two to correct any OCR errors?

Photo by Brenden Ashton via Wikimedia CC: By

NBN Co requests capability statements: So what does that mean?

2010-03-30T09:30:00.004+11:00

The Minister for Broadband's press release yesterday mentioned "another significant milestone in the rollout" of the NBN. But few would grasp the amount of detail in this sentence:

NBN Co will use the Industry Capability Network to assist the participation of small and medium enterprises and intends to require tenderers to prepare Australian Industry Participation plans.

So what does that mean?

NBN Co has issued a Request for Capability Statement (RCS) for the design and construction of the NBN's fibre access network. Simply, this means that NBN Co wants to identify:

Potential construction partners [who] will need to show they have the capability and capacity to design and deliver telecommunications infrastructure projects of significant size and complexity

Under Commonwealth procurement law, tenderers for this project may also be required to outline how they will be "providing full, fair and reasonable opportunity to Australian industry" to participate in the project. But will there be a range of SMEs involved in the build at the community level?

One of the success stories from Canada's early move into broadband was the process adopted by Industry Canada's Information Highway Applications Branch (IHAB) in the mid-2000s. In implementing its programs, IHAB:

operate[d] at the local, regional and national levels to assist Canadians and communities in overcoming barriers to information and communications technologies (ICTs). This include[d] the provision of a national community-led, partnership-based electronic delivery infrastructure platform based on community Internet access sites across Canada

Australia does not have the same intensity of community involvement, but NBN Co's announcement provides some scope for local businesses to participate.

The participation of small and medium enterprises (SMEs) is to be facilitated by the requirement for tenderers to submit an Australian Industry Participation Plan (AIPP). AIPPs are administered by the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research and look something like this. The requirement was introduced at the beginning of this year:

From 1 January 2010 tenderers for large Commonwealth procurements (generally above $20 million) will be required to prepare and implement AIP Plans (Dept of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research).

But how much of the AIPP process actually makes a difference for local SMEs? Is there scope for local businesses within the grand national plan?

It would seem so. One way that SMEs can become involved is through one of the 24 Industry Capability Network (ICN) offices. Here in the ACT, Business ACT in the Chief Minister's Department runs the local ICN which is an:

Australia & New Zealand wide network that helps businesses to maximise the opportunities that arise from purchasing requirements from both the government and private sectors.

Small to medium size businesses can subscribe to opportunities to participate in the NBN build through ICN.

While the organisational arrangements appear at face value to be unnecessarily complex, the replication of the ICN at state and territory levels is a good thing.

Yet there remains a distinct lack of broader community involvement, a factor which clearly helped Canada 's broadband take-up in the early 2000s.

But while Canada was once a global leader in broadband that status has recently been slipping. To make matters worse, many of Canada's Community Access Program (CAP) sites will no longer be funded. Marita Moll states that the worst part is that along with the end of the CAP:

15 years of good will and good work in communities will be destroyed with it

So while Canada slips behind, it will be interesting to see if Australia's attempt to catch-up via the NBN develops any good will with SMEs. It will also test whether the Australian industry participation policy is more than just a throw-away compliance requirement in tender submissions.

Photo of Stephen Conroy by Dr Ron from wikimedia.org. CC-By-SA

No good news for broadband in Palmerston via Gungahlin

2010-03-29T12:03:00.005+11:00

I had it all worked out. I would save a fortune every month by getting rid of my traditional telephone line and go onto a naked ADSL plan, a VoIP number for incoming calls and voila! My telephone bill is halved forever! No more would I be paying a stupid amount for a service I don't even use. YEAH RIGHT!

That is not how the system works, and I remain stuck in the telecommunications past. What's worse is that I do this in the national capital with the Black Mountain Tower in full view from just up the hill. Palmerston via Gungahlin.

I had to check with a few providers, and I was reluctant to take any random salesperson at their word before I turned off my landline forever. Fortunately, my plea for "someone who knows about the problems with the Crace exchange" didn't go unnoticed:

Unfortunately it doesn't look like there is much good news I can give you. The issues with the Gungahlin sub-exchange are something that I am well aware of.

First and foremost [naked ADSL2+], or any kind of naked, is not going to be available for you at that address. As the sub-exchange is basically a giant RIM it needs active phone lines to provide you with internet service. As much as we would love to be able to provide you with a [naked, ADSL connection] it just isn't currently possible.

Well there we have it. No VoIP for me and I struggle to develop Web 2.0 teaching materials using a dial-up speed at the cost of 1.5mbps. Palmerston via Gungahlin. Imagine if I lived on Sudley Station via Weipa?

Original photo by Bidgee on wikimedia.org, re-use via CC-By-Share Alike.

Broadband Wagon: White House=Killer Apps; Parliament House=Kill Broadband

2010-03-28T14:38:00.001+11:00

The Role of Student-Led Innovation in ...Killer Apps“ for Broadband Networks | The White House

After a week of trying to incorporate Web 2.0 technologies in the classroom while battling an extremely slow network with outdated computers running outdated software, things are not so good in the Australian broadband scene.

But in the US, the White House is encouraging students to get on the broadband wagon.

Australia has a long way to go. Even the basic capacity is missing. Two things make matters worse:

Sceptics who think broadband and educating students in the use of new media are passing fads; and
Slow networks, outdated computers and software systems run by conservatives.

It is always a challenge to balance standardisation versus innovation but in Australia the trend toward standardisation starts at the top and flows on down to the bottom. This is not a trickle effect, it is a bitter torrent.

As a nation, there is an urgent need to enable innovation around broadband technoligies, starting with the infrastructure and then moving into the education sector to encourage the use of new communications technologies. Not as an interesting aside, but as a necessary part of the teaching process.

Gone are the days of submitting handwritten assignments, we all accept that. But until we can accept that social media is the new word processor, we remain behind the eight-ball.

Thanks to Bill St Arnaud for this link.

Time to renew your "Do Not Call" registration: But will it make any difference?

2010-03-28T10:08:00.007+11:00

Who can believe it is almost three years since the Do Not Call register first opened on 31 May 2007? It is now time to re-register, but will it make any difference?

Who can forget the spectacular failure of the Do Not Call site as the beleaguered horde of telemarketing victims rushed to join? The crash of the Australian register was not unique, with the Canadian register experiencing similar problems when it was launched over a year later.

But does it matter? Recently, a number of my colleagues have been complaining about receiving telemarketing calls on their work telephone numbers. And not just from random 'Scamway' businesses but from some of the major banks and other *respectable* corporations.

The federal government is addressing this issue, but it seems for the moment the Do Not Call register is for private telephones only:

In the 2009-10 Budget, the Government announced plans to widen the scope of the Register, to allow the registration of all telephone and fax numbers, including the numbers used by businesses and emergency service operators (DBCDE website).

The worst thing is that the federal opposition disagrees. So much for corporate social responsibility and encouraging productivity. An unintended consequence of the register has been to re-direct telemarketing to consumers in the workplace.

But how much capacity does government have to regulate telemarketing, spam, scams and so on? It would seem that regulation of poor business behaviour would best be left to a combination of self-regulation and market forces.

But half the trouble is that the issues of telemarketing and spam are converged (all related to communications channels and marketing practices) while the legislation is still actively diverged along old ideas of communications technologies.

It would be good to see the major industry groups collaborate to encourage an acceptable way to conduct marketing - something along the lines of the Internet Industry Associations' Spam Code. Judging by the responses from consumers in both Australia and Canada, it is obvious that poor marketing techniques are an unwanted nuisance for most of us.

In short, it doesn't take a genius to see that poor marketing practices aren't good for business and there is clearly a role for government to regulate such practices. But government needs to stop trying to do it all alone. Granted that many *respectable* businesses are often the main perpetrators, but greater consumer involvement in a self-regulatory model just doesn't make it onto the policy radar.

In the meantime all we can do is hope and re-register.

Step 5: Sharing my Web 2.0 Teaching Tools

2010-03-26T08:59:00.002+11:00

This week all the hard work paid off when my ESL students were writing, learning new concepts, discovering new technologies, reading the news and even talking in the classroom. I trialled a wiki learning activity where students (in groups of two) answer a series of questions on the concept of globalisation. Students can copy and paste anything from the Net in order to answer the questions - no references necessary. I am sick of the blank faces in tutorial discussions so I thought this approach would work in the computer lab. As it turned out, every student was able to explain the globalisation in a variety of ways - they learnt more in one hour then they would have in a full week.

This morning I present my workshop on Assessment 2.0: Blogs, Wikis and Media Sharing to staff at UC. You can see the three main components of the web ‘architecture’ based on Google Blogger, Google Sites, and UC Space. I had originally intended to use Wikispaces but since there is no way to prevent this from being publicly viewable, I decided to use UC Space, UC’s Confluence-based Enterprise Wiki instead. The UC Space site linked here *should* be viewable by the public.

The Blogger Template has been endorsed by the branding people so that is a great start. I have finally completed an assessment rubric for the media sharing assignment.

But my favourite is THE WEIGHBRICATOR - my rubric calculator which enables you to individually weight up to five criteria. Now I have the format established, I will be using rubrics for most of my assessment items.

The next tool I intend to develop is a rubric template in MS Excel with the calculations underneath each cell. But I need to work out how to convert the rubric into html so I can integrate it with the LMS. SpreadsheetConverter did a good job with the trial version, so maybe this is worth the cost.

This morning’s workshop starts at 9:30am. I will collect feedback from the session and make this available on the weekend.

Step 4: Sharing the [Web 2.0] Love

2010-03-18T17:38:00.002+11:00

Trialling “Web 2.0 on the go” is not for the faint-hearted. This week was a major struggle to get through what needed to be done, with numerous problems along the way.

Most days, it feels like I am trying to drive a Lamborghini through the scrub. Each computer is different, each lecture theatre is different, each class a new problem to overcome.

The best move was to get all tutorial classes into computer labs. I am not sure how this will work out later once we are in full swing, but in the meantime, this week all students are signed up to the blog, have made at least one blog post and shared at least one media article on the topic for next week’s submission.

My plan is to develop a model for teaching using Web 2.0 tools that does not require staff to be ICT experts. There is a lot of talk about online and blended learning and incorporating Web 2.0 technologies in higher education, but there is very little in terms of policy, support, even clear legal opinion on copyright issues, duty of care for students in an online quasi/semi-public environment and so on to guide the trailblasers.

Next week, I will be running a workshop on how to use blogs and wikis as assessment items for staff at the University of Canberra. I am doing this as part of the development of our new Winter Term where I am a member of the UC Hothouse (see also the Tumblr blog).

Next week’s workshop will incorporate the following lessons learned:

Use computer labs for all tutorial classes unless you have documented or video recorded the complete instructions. Don’t believe the hype about digital natives - they don’t know it all about Web 2.0 and there will be lots of hand-holding.
Students hardly ever read their student emails. You will have to add at least half of the class to the blog manually because they don’t know how to do it.
Students don’t follow instructions. If you use the Firefox Portable set up I made available in an earlier post, students will forget to use it the next day. Many are unaware of how to add shortcuts to their desktops and many other simple skills shortages which will surprise you.
Google Blogger requires character recognition confirmation when there are a large number of blog posts. Students will become very frustrated because nobody can ever get these right the first time.
Google blogger will only allow up to 100 authors for a single blog. This one would be easy to overlook.
For the media sharing assignment, I have decided to ask students to write a summary of the article they are sharing. This has forced them to read the article, and I require them to comment on the accuracy of their colleagues summaries to make them read these articles, too. This means that each week, students will read three media articles relevant to the subject area. This will be three more media articles than many of them will read in a typical semester.
Use the tech-savvy students to help you in class. This gives them a great ego boost, and encourages the students to help each other. Once one “gets it”, other soon “get it” and a domino effect occurs.
Assume nothing, but don’t be discouraged. Once this week is finished, you will see that the digital natives really know how to use this stuff once they know how to use it. But you have to give them the kick-start. The students have started reporting how much they like the subject already!

The Squawk: Murray innovators release regional Web 2.0 community

2010-03-18T17:18:00.005+11:00

"The Squawk" is a social and business network for regional communities which provides location-specific content. The site has been "kicked off" by Regional Development Australia, Murray.

I am a big fan of this type of local innovation. In my comparative research into Canada's broadband industry, Australia is lagging in terms of the extent and intensity of community-based communications innovations. But not in the Murray.

In fact, the Murray region has been home to numerous communications policy submissions and leaders in many communications initiatives. And not just focusing on the Murray region, but developing models which could be deployed elsewhere. Regional Development Australia, Murray has been working on community-based wireless infrastructure for some time and pushing on through the legacies associated with Australia's penchant for single national solutions to communications problems. The motto "Think globally, act locally" comes to mind.

Local and regional initiatives must be at the heart of Australia's push to fix our poor standing on broadband. It would appear that the Federal Government's shift in attitude toward funding local and regional initiatives has aided the Murray region to continue its tradition of innovation, but more needs to be done. But this latest initiative is a step in the right direction.

The Squawk is a place where you can connect and share information with others near you. Use The Squawk to build and maintain social and business networks and find support within your regional community

Check out the community and join at www.thesquawk.com.au. Let's hope there will be many more local initiatives like this one and governments continue to promote innovation where it counts.

Communications Innovations: CSIRO must be given greater Oz status

2010-03-18T14:44:00.003+11:00

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) is arguably one of Australia's greatest assets. Yet little more than lip service tends to be given to this organisation even when its innovations are ground-breaking. To make matters worse, Australia rarely takes advantage of its discoveries in the early stages of adoption.

Traditionally, Australia runs a trade deficit in telecommunications equipment and has been a technology 'taker' since the Canadian Samuel McGowan brought the telegraph with him to Victoria in the 1854. McGowan had to improvise on several occasions to overcome the challenges of deploying telegraph technology where there were manufacturing skills and capability were rare.

Given that for most of Australia's telecommunications history, the telecoms equipment ndustry existed as a monopsony, it is little wonder that the industry never really developed. But it makes little sense why that should be the case now, unless Australia will simply focus on patenting new innovations.

For example, last year the CSIRO won a settlement for the use of its use of wifi technology by Hewlett-Packard, with many other well-known global communications companies in the firing line. The patent was registed in 1996 with hardly a sigh from the Australian community about the technology's potential.

Today, the CSIRO is producing another world's first with the miniturisation of a radio receiver onto a chip 5 x 5mm in size. The CSIRO has developed the chip with Sappicon Semiconductor which has its headquarters in Sydney. These chips will replace receivers used in radio astronomy which are currently the size of a fridge.

But there is not even a whisper from the traditional media.

The National Broadband Network could assist with the development of an innovative Australian communications equipment industry. Given its reputation, the CSIRO is well-placed to lead such an Australian revolution.

But the old debates over Telstra (not that Telstra is a laggard) and whether we need broadband at all are quietly ignoring a weak area of Australia' seconomy that makes no sense at all. In the meantime, Australians should be very proud of the CSIRO and give this national asset the status it deserves.

Once the rest of the world goes NBN the doubters will shut up!

2010-03-16T11:15:00.010+11:00

It is one thing to debate the details of the NBN implementation, quite another to think that things are rosy in Australia. But does it matter? At the rate that other countries are building their own NBNs, let's just hope that it becomes commonplace before the naysayers kill off another Australian innovation.

Australians are notorious for waiting for others to move first. The number of times we hear: "How can the government do this when nobody else in the OECD is doing it?" is just another tired example of cultural cringe. Australians can and should innovate.

The skills shortage in electronic communication in this country is nearing the ridiculous. Assumptions about digital natives are drastically wrong. Less people know how to use Web 2.0 or higher bandwidth technologies than most people think. Without an NBN, this skills gap will only increase in comparison.

Rather than embracing the NBN, we seem to be sliding into a debate over its actual worth. In the meantime, the rest of the world is doing what Australia is doing already. We can't even see when we are in the lead. Let's take a brief look around the world:

According to AustralianIT:

President Barack Obama has pledged to put broadband in every American home and his administration has already designated over $US 7 billion in economic stimulus money to expand broadband access in underserved communities.

Governments such as New Zealand are claiming that the private sector is simply not moving fast enough and are funding new infrastructure. Not everyone agrees but the government is moving forward. Developing countries such as Jordan in the Middle East are also funding a NBN (with private sector support). There are many more in the pipeline.

This morning's Australian Financial Review article makes a great case study to explain to my students why they are not allowed to reference Wikipedia in my classes. But how long will the argument against Australia's NBN stand up to comparative wisdom?

It is always difficult to be a first-mover in Australia. Sometimes it is not worth the hassle. But Australia has the opportunity to be a world leader. Let Australians innovate and stop talking about innovation while holding us back. Give us the NBN. Let's debate the implementation, but there is no argument against the NBN itself.

It is time for those who don't know what they are talking about to simply shut up and get out of the way.

Step 3: Assessment Items

2010-03-15T17:36:00.002+11:00

How do you replace an essay plan (worth 10%) and an essay (1500 words, worth 40%) with blogs and media sharing?

I have decided on this:

1. Media Sharing Activity:

Due by 9am Monday in the following Weeks:

    Sharing Topic 1 = Week 3
    Sharing Topic 2 = Week 4
    Sharing Topic 3 = Week 5
    Sharing Topic 4 = Week 6
    Sharing Topic 5 = Week 7
    You must comment on two other media article posts per week using the 'comments' function

Details: Each week, share at least one media article, using the AddThis application provided in Firefox Portable, and add the article to the blog with some of your own commentary of at least 80 words on the following topics:

    Topic 1: Industry Policy
    Topic 2: Competition Regulation
    Topic 3: Industry Regulation
    Topic 4: Assistance to Business from Government
    Topic 5: Trade Policy

2. Blogging Activity:

Due by 9am Monday in Weeks:

    Blog Question 1 = Week 9
    Blog Question 2 = Week 10
    Blog Question 3 = Week 11
    Blog Question 4 = Week 12
    Blog Question 5 = Week 13
    You must critique two other posts per week using the 'comments' function

Blog Questions:

Why did many governments believe there was no alternative to opening domestic economies to global competition? Use examples to support your argument.
Is Australian society elitist, corporatist or pluralist? Use examples to support your argument.
Should governments support industries which are not internationally competitive? Why or why not? Use examples to support your argument.
How much influence does the OECD have on Australian industry policy? Use examples to support your arguments.
Are corporations able to respond to society's needs faster than governments? Why? Provide examples to support your argument.

Click here to view the file I am using for today’s lecture. Please note that this is only one part of the lecture which will include research skills, using the library databases and various demonstrations.

I am not posting the recorded lectures outside of the LMS just yet, as I need to work through the copyright issues. I need to ensure my lectures do not breach the provisions of the new Flexible Fair Dealing section 200AB of the Copyright Act 1968 before I make this next move during the Winter Term.

NBN public hearings likely to be held in April

2010-03-15T16:52:00.002+11:00

The public hearings on NBN Co's ability to operate in the retail market announced by the Senate Select Committee on the NBN last week are likely to held in April.

See below the Committee's response from my email request last week:

Thank you for enquiring about the Senate Select Committee on the National Broadband Network public hearing schedule. The three public hearings are likely to be in April, the actual dates are still yet to be scheduled.

You can keep check on the following link:
http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/hearings/index.htm
for the hearing dates as they become available.

I will report back once the dates are confirmed.

Extended public hearings should focus on local initiatives for NBN

2010-03-13T11:21:00.006+11:00

The Senate Select Committee on the NBN announced in the media yesterday that public hearings will be extended until 30 March to focus on the part of the draft NBN legislation that will allow NBN Co to operate as a retailer.

Details of the hearings are yet to be released but I have contacted the committee for more information and will report back shortly.

In the meantime, two pressing questions have arisen in the NBN debate: 1) Should Telstra's wholesale and retail businesses be separated? and 2) Should NBN Co be allowed to operate its own wholesale and retail business?

If NBN Co is allowed to operate in the retail sector, we may have witnessed a costly exercise in re-inventing the wheel.

Previous governments were fond of using Telstra as a big policy lever. If political leverage was needed, simply pull the big lever and Telstra did the government's bidding. T3 changed that forever, although the government's 17% share in the telco meant that the policy lever was still within reach - until Sol Trujillo took away the handle, that is.

So is the government's insistence on NBN Co's retail operations simply a way to re-establish the old policy lever?

Maybe. But there might also be some logic to NBN Co entering the retail market. For example, in areas where there is insufficient competition or limited retail services, NBN Co might be able to break long-established pockets of poor service. Palmerston via Gungahlin is a case in point, with NBN Co or TransACT expected to break the service deadlock with the support of Senator Kate Lundy.

On the other hand, we might just be recreating the Australian way of doing communications policy by sticking to the single national solution.

The Coalition are not happy about the proposed break-up of Telstra and there is some merit in extending the public hearings on NBN Co's proposed retail operations.

But separating these two issues is simply wrong.

If Telstra is forced to separate, then NBN Co cannot operate a retail arm. Otherwise, we return to telecommunications business as usual - the reason Australia became a broadband laggard in the first place.

But the public hearings and the focus on NBN Co's proposed retail operations provide an opportunity for local operators to be involved in the NBN. If NBN Co is given the go-ahead for retail operations, there will be little scope for local operators to deliver retail or last-mile services.

Instead of allowing NBN Co to operate in the retail market to fix existing pockets of poor service (like Palmerston via Gungahlin), the government should call for tenders from the private sector and enable community and municipal proposals to be considered.

The public hearings proposed by the Senate Select Committee on the NBN may be the last opportunity for the local element of the network to be developed. But this approach flies in the face of the federal government's desire to re-attach their handle to the old school policy lever.

In short, if NBN Co is given the go-ahead to provide retail services, then we can expect to have a brand-new, $43 billion, re-invented wheel.

Step 2: Solving the Browser-Consistency Dilemma

2010-03-12T17:48:00.003+11:00

How do you provide a consistent browser experience?

Firefox Portable has solved one of the biggest dilemmas - not all browsers and machines are the same, and I need to ensure that all students have access to the required tools.

In the past, access to required learning tools was delivered to students on a CD-ROM. For example, Deakin University provided all off-campus students with the Deakin Learning Toolkit:

“Students receive a Deakin Learning Toolkit. This contains basic written material introducing the website, services and support available. They also receive a CD, which gives them the necessary software to become connected and lots of information about support services, how to connect to the web, library resources, faculties and courses. The CD is designed to set up the students with all the necessary resources and information for them to begin their studies.”

Higher bandwidth has overcome most of the distribution challenges of the past. But just try and organise a large group of students to access a particular add-on in a particular browser which must be at a particular version and on a machine with the correct plug-ins and apps installed. Not once has this ever been possible with a 100% success rate in more than a decade of computer lab teaching!

With Firefox Portable, I set up the browser with the add-ons I require students to use. For the media-sharing assignment, I have decided upon the AddThis add-on for Firefox. The choice was based on the ability to restrict the choices of sharing sites in the button to Blogger only. To see the set up, a zip-file containing the full portable browser (as delivered to students) is available here.

With a class of over 60, separated into two computer labs, the first shock was to see the entire class turn up to a workshop which is deemed quasi-compulsory. The next challenge was that every fifth computer did not have java installed, so registering for a Google account required access to a mobile phone to retrieve the SMS code. Surprisingly, most of the students simply entered their phone numbers, retrieved the code, and wetn on with their registration.

By the end of the one-hour workshop, every student had registered a Google account, logged into the blog (I had to mass email the students beforehand and add late enrolments during the class), and posted a comment. Some had even downloaded Firefox Portable and added it to their student desktop (on the roaming profile). Those who had installed Firefox Portable had all attempted the use of the AddThis add-on. In the next workshop, this process will be complete and we should be able to start with the blogging and media-sharing the week after.

Lessons for next time: Ensure everybody has a Google account before arriving and have full written or video-recorded instructions on how to download and install Firefox Portable. Also, check whether the roaming profile is big enough to handle the 35mb required by Firefox.

Blog 'comments' provide Spam Act loophole for Oz spammers

2010-03-12T12:41:00.008+11:00

Have you received one of these comments on your blog yet?

"There are many Australians that use wireless broadband as an additional home broadband service, allowing them the convenience of being connected to both the home and office while out and about or when traveling. -- http://www.let.com.au"

Now check out the search engine results here. As you can see, this is clearly a form of spam.

But not according to the Spam Act 2003. I received this response from the ACMA to my query from last week:

The Spam Act 2003 covers unsolicited commercial electronic messages. This includes emails, SMS, MMS and iMS services.

Under the Spam Act, the distinguishing feature is that a commercial electronic message needs to be sent via an Internet carriage service or any other listed carriage service to an address connected with an account of some sort.

In the case of the posting commercial messages on blogs, the blog itself and not an account (such as an email address) is used to receive the message.

Therefore, such postings are not within the scope of the Spam Act.

Obviously it is difficult to keep up to date with spammers and their techniques, and in many ways Australia was a pioneer in introducing legislative protection from spammers.

Nonetheless, the spammers seem to have the upper hand in extra-territorial matters. Interestingly, it has been two telecommunications companies who have posted spam comments on my blog.

While domestic communications networks remain tied to territorial jurisdiction, it would seem that a Wilsonian approach to solving the global spam problem is needed. The ITU has shown some leadership in this role although the international institution views 'appropriate legislation and effective enforcement' as the best means of reducing spam.

But businesses can also play a role. Recently, Microsoft received court approval to shut down the Waledac botnet.

And what of Australian businesses? At the moment, blog comments are not counted as spam and it would be difficult for any domestic government to police. But what about updating the Internet industry code of practice? I will attempt to submit something to the IIA about this issue and will report back later.

Step 1: Managing the Web 2.0 Environment

2010-03-12T04:00:00.001+11:00

The Assessment Items

Two main assessment items are being addressed in this first project:

A group blog: This activity requires students to write a number of blog posts, with a set word limit, each requiring references using the APA referencing system. Students are required to comment on a set number of their colleagues’ posts.
A media sharing assignment: Students are required to identify and share a set number of media articles related to set topics, and then comment on their colleagues’ articles.

The Web 2.0 Challenge

A significant challenge for teaching in the Web 2.0 environment is developing efficiencies which can be up-scaled to large numbers of participants. After using Facebook as an optional channel for online participation in 2007 (with about 200 participants), I found the effort required was not worth the ‘wow’ factor which some students experienced, even though participation improved dramatically.

Working in an online environment with large groups also means waiting for participants to perform simple tasks like registering new accounts (such as Blogger or Facebook) and requesting new passwords to forgotten email accounts. Further, it is surprising the number of 'digital natives' who have not received a 'digital education'. For example, out of a class of 65 students aged 18-22, only two had blogged before. The administrative tasks are therefore a major obstacle.

Purpose-built learning management systems (LMS) provide better administrative controls to monitor and keep track of participants' contributions. However, LMS do not give students experience with common Web 2.0 applications. I am focusing on assessing the learning outcomes, which include contextual and conceptual knowledge, but in a Web 2.0 environment. The approach is designed to develop students' generic skills in online written communication. While the online environment is a secondary focus, it tends to require the most effort.

The Web 2.0 challenge, then, is to minimise the transaction costs yet provide students with a genuine Web 2.0 experience.

The Browser Drama

In the near future, we should have access to a hosted blog-aggregator or buddypress site. In the meantime, I have set up a simple, private Google Blogger blog and invited students to join as contributors via their student email. During the first computer lab session, numerous problems with web browsers emerged, such as outdated versions, a lack of plugins or no flashplayer or java installed. The usual forgotten email passwords occurred, too, but there is little that can be done other than allowing plenty of time and providing concurrent activities for those who are better organised.

Without a blog aggregator, I decided to use just the one group blog to enable me to keep track of all students and control access to outsiders. But the media sharing activity proved to be a difficult. The different browser characteristics also prevented some students from posting comments during the practice run. I had originally intended to use digg.com for the media sharing, but without an aggregator the setup time seemed daunting.

After dicussions with UC Hothouse colleagues today and some trials this evening, I have decided on the following solution:

Firefox Portable enables the browser environment to be controlled. I have set up the relevant add-ons, and the blog and other instructions have been set as the home pages. Because Firefox is self contained, I will set up a html intro page with instructions for using the browser with the blog. The entire browser is 35mb so I can set this up on the LMS page for students to download to their flashdrives. I have also located a number of old marketing flash-drives that I can provide for students who need them. This has solved the browser problem.
I tested a number of sharing apps that integrate with Blogger. I found the AddThis function the best as it enabled me to restrict the sharing choices to Blogger only. This means that students can simply search the Net for relevant media articles, and then use the AddThis button in the browser to share the article via the blog.

This is where I am up to today. Tomorrow I will be testing this approach during the computer lab workshop. The next steps are to solve the browser consistency dilemma and then the identity drama, but more on that later.

2010-03-11T12:22:00.001+11:00

What does it mean to be a Lecturer 2.0?

As society moves from the bad old days of the “closed, formal, and protected” educational institution to the “open, inclusive, and shared” educational revolution, there are numerous challenges which will only be addressed by those brave enough to enter uncharted territory.

Lecturers in Australia face a very different environment to their US counterparts, many of whom have been Lecturer 2.0s for some time. Significantly, issues of copyright, duty of care for students, availability and access to higher bandwidth, and a culture which is particularly awkward with higher technologies in traditional institutions, Australian lecturers have many issues to work through.

So I will attempt to be frank and open about my experiences in an effort to become a Lecturer 2.0. While this blog may be predominantly cathartic, I hope that it provides some value for others who attempt to navigate through the big picture and the small picture in an institutional environment which is yet to provide a network of lighthouses.

It's Fraud Week. So get active and report scammers and spammers!

2010-03-02T08:37:00.007+11:00

The Australasian Consumer Fraud Taskforce launched the 2010: Online Offensive—Fighting Fraud Online! yesterday and have provided some great tools to keep an eye on online fraud.

The SCAMwatch Radar provides warnings and alerts on the latest scams. Telstra have also released information on Fraud Week, which runs from 1-7 March.

According to the ACMA (cited by Telstra):

[M]ore than one-third of Australians [encounter] a scam in a 12 month period

Online scams have become a fact of online life. Indeed, spam has been increasing on almost all social media sites. During Fraud Week, I have decided to install the ACMA's SpamMATTERS software and have reported a number of constant spammers who annoy me in a variety of ways.

One area which doesn't appear to be captured by the Spam Act 2003 is the annoying trend where spammers make fake blog comments. These are becoming increasingly difficult to identify and are bulk-posted on topic-specific blogs.

Most recently, I received a comment which read:

There are many Australians that use wireless broadband as an additional home broadband service, allowing them the convenience of being connected to both the home and office while out and about or when traveling. -- http://www.let.com.au

If you do a quick Google search of the above text, you will find that the same post has been made on numerous blogs which are related to telecommunications.

This is the first such blog comment spam I have received which links back to an Australian company (I do not know if the company is aware of the comment spam), but I have reported it to the ACMA using their complaints and enquiries form.

I will report back on any response on this matter, as I understand that the Spam Act 2003 does not cover blog comments directly. But in the meantime, Fraud Week is an appropriate time to be deliberately active in reporting scammers and spammers.

The Draft National Curriculum: A Model for Policy Feedback Online?

2010-03-01T11:55:00.031+11:00

This morning, the draft K-10 National Curriculum opened for public feedback, comments, and discussion. This represents a significant improvement in large-scale online policy participation on an issue of wide appeal. And rightly so, as there are few families who will not be affected in some way by the standardisation of the K-10 curriculum.

Usually, I am not a fan of standardisation. But an issue which does need to be sorted out is the differences between states. And not just in the curriculum.

As a ten year old, I experienced the joy of moving to Queensland from NSW. I left NSW in Grade 5, and landed in Queensland in Grade 5. One sister left Grade 3 and landed in Grade 4, whereas another sister went from not being at school to being forced into school halfway through the first year. Different ideas about grades and commencement ages and so on played havoc during the foundational period of our education.

The curriculum was very different in a number of ways, too. The only real similarity was that we sang 'God Save the Queen' followed by 'Advance Australia Fair' with both the British and Australian flags unfurled every Monday morning. Our idea of the world was pretty much wrapped up in that weekly indoctrination process.

With the draft national curriculum up for feedback, I was quite concerned about how history will be taught. History is an important subject, but I was really worried that a particular view of history would be included to reinforce a nationalist idea of Australian identity.

By using the intuitive search functions, I was able to discover that my fears were unfounded. Although there are certain aspects of Australian history covered, this has not swamped other aspects of history. There is plenty of scope to broaden aspects of the history curriculum, but it does not resemble the Howardian view of Australian brain-washing that I envisaged.

Although there seems to be an ambiguous mix of copyright and Creative Commons 2.5, it is pleasing to see the use of the Creative Commons licensing in the online consultation portal.

The website is quite good, too. One feature of the National Curriculum website I like is that it requires you to provide your personal details and to login to view the content. I understand that feedback can be provided anonymously, but at least there is some control over how people participate.

Others might suggest that this is a bad thing. But I am fast being converted to the idea that if anyone is going to participate in public life, then their identity should be clear. Indeed, the anonymity of the Net is not as self-assured as it once was, as an 'anonymous' Perth reputation-slammer just found out.

Conversely, recent attempts to restrict political comment in South Australia were quickly terminated by a backlash of public opinion. But is political blogging the same as policy participation? I think not.

I argue that political blogging is more about the debates that occur before and after an item finds its way onto the policy agenda. But once an item is on the agenda, and indeed is about to be implemented, the rules need to change. Political bloggers and anonymous commentators can influence policy implementation and voters' decisions, but it makes little sense how anonymity is helpful when engaging in participation that is supposed to be meaningful.

Why? Well, it is one thing to live our private lives publicly (to paraphrase something I heard on the radio recently about social media), and another to actually participate in public life. Facebook are dealing with this problem right now.

But surely participation implies that others know who they are actually engaging with?

It might be appropriate for anonymity during the early stages of the policy cycle where a solution is being sought to a policy problem, but once an item is firmly being addressed by a particular policy, it makes little sense why anonymity should be required to take part in public debate.

Voting, surveys and opinion polls are obviously a different matter. And of course, journalism and 'the fourth estate' as means of keeping governments in check should not be confused with direct policy participation.

Clearly, there is a time and place for anonymity in the policy process. And there is certainly some way to go in enabling greater participation in deciding which policy problems find their way onto the policy agenda.

In short, the draft National Curriculum consultation provides a useful working model on how governments should enable public input on important policy issues. For me, the openness has allayed my fears of government-mandated history infiltrating primary and secondary education.

The opportunity to provide comments and feedback on the draft National Curriculum ends on 23 May 2010.

Staying up to date with broadband policy

2010-02-25T14:58:00.002+11:00

I have been looking into open source applications which can provide a single page to preview the media releases from the major broadband policy actors. What I wanted was a start page where I could determine which links appear, and then share the page in a way that others could see the start page just as I did.

Applications such as Feedly tend to predetermine your preferences and are difficult to share. On the other hand, Google Reader allows you to share feeds and updates in real time, but only as individual articles which are not 'sticky'. Fortunately, I have found a solution using an application called iFound.

iFound is useful as it enables me to add only the links I wish to monitor, and I can then share the link so others may do the same. It also provides a preview screen when you hover over each webpages' snapshot. The preview is large enough to identify any recent changes to the site.

I am hoping that my iFound page will enable me to keep up to date with the major policy actors in the broadband 'industry'. I am still updating it, and I intend to do the same for each country I compare. In the meantime, any comments or suggestions are most welcome.

Participation & Communications Policy

2010-02-24T12:09:00.009+11:00

Things are certainly looking up when you receive an email linking to the Minister for Broadband's press release, and then when you visit the site, you are able to use the ShareThis functionality on the page to automatically blog about the press release.

See: Draft Legislation Released for NBN Co Operations | Senator Stephen Conroy | Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy

While there is still a long way to go, those interested in communications policy now have greater access to the policy process than in pre-Web 2.0 days. Nonetheless, it takes a great deal of discipline for the casual observer to keep abreast of issues as they arise.

For example, submissions on the Digital Dividend Green Paper close tomorrow. The submission guidelines are quite useful, especially the questions at the end of each section which provide some structure for potential submitters. But you would have to know that the Green Paper was being developed last year and that it opened for submissions in mid-January.

At least in theory, it would be quite possible for the non-expert to have their say in certain elements of the policy process. But industry knowledge is essential if you are to stay informed.

In addition, the available technologies make it possible for interested citizens to be involved, but the trick is to know how. A simple model for the casual observer is to subscribe to the Media Centre of the Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, monitor items of interest which appear from time to time, and then note the deadlines for submissions where relevant.

It is hard to imagine how the average citizen could ever have been involved in such a process in a paper-based system. However, there is still some way to go.

Being able to comment on the Green Paper is fine, but what about being involved in the drafting of the Green Paper? One of the biggest problems with public consultation is that it often occurs after the important decisions have already been made.

There were opportunities to participate in the Green Paper process through industry groups such as AMTA (and I am sure there were others). But how can we monitor all that is going on. And, how can the casual observer do this for free?

I am finding Feedly quite useful to monitor numerous websites in an easy-to-follow format. But I am not aware of a convenient 'map' of the industry to help others do this. Ideally, I would like to see something like LobbyLens freely available to citizens for relevant industries.

Nevertheless, participation in communications policy means much more than writing submissions. But should it be the government's responsibility to enable participation in detail? Creating accessible resources for interested participants may be the most important contribution citizens can make to the policy process. I am currently working on such an industry 'map' and will make it available in the coming weeks.

University of Canberra goes 2.0

2010-02-20T10:54:00.012+11:00

This year, the University of Canberra is introducing an intensive Winter Term to give students 'greater flexibility and opportunity' to either fast-track their degrees or spread their study load across three teaching periods.

A local initiative, born out of a combination of a growing local tech-savvy community (sharing ideas via local Web 2.0 tools such as yammer) and an institution-wide support program that is bringing the higher education sector kicking and screaming out of the dark (unlit) ages, means the University of Canberra is going 2.0.

I have been dreaming about introducing blogging and other social media tools into the curriculum to fill a growing gap in students' online communication skills for some time. Now, with the support of the institution, this dream will become a reality in the new Winter Term.

While I have been using Facebook and blogs in my teaching for many years, the intensive Winter Term presents some challenges to teaching delivery which are difficult to overcome using traditional teaching methods. Halving a traditional semester should not mean simply cramming traditional teaching and assessment methods into a shorter period - it calls for a change in how we deliver the educational experience. Enter Web 2.0.

This winter, I am replacing my standard face-to-face teaching with a fully-online subject. Typically, my subjects focus on generic skills such as written communication in addition to subject-area content. This does not necessarily mean that my subjects will be designed specifically for distance education (although being fully-online provides this option), but it means that I can expand the generic skills component to include written comunication online.

Given the increasing presence of Web 2.0 capabilities in traditional career streams, the opportunity to incorporate Web 2.0 assessment items in my curricula has been a long time coming. Nonetheless, Web 2.0's social element enables a deeper level of sharing and learning which will help to overcome the shorter timeframe.

The traditional essay will be replaced with students writing blog posts on subject-area topics, and being required to comment on their colleagues' blog posts. Media sharing applications such as Digg, ScribeFire and ShareThis will be used to facilitate the sharing process. While many of these applications will be 'old hat' to inhabitants of the blogosphere, I am constantly surprised at the number of 'digital natives' who have not had a 'digital education'.

While I believe the traditional essay is the cornerstone of best-practice in developing formal written comunication skills, it would be a mistake to think that blogging is an 'easier' form of writing. Indeed, the added technical skills and the exposure to a wider audience require as much care and attention as an academic essay. Moreover, blogs and social media sites are gradually being recognised in academic referencing systems, even though in Australia blogs are ineligible for an ISSN. There is some way to go.

In addition to students blogging and sharing media articles, we will be developing a series of multimedia materials ourselves. This means we can overcome the problems of incorporating multimedia materials in teaching online due to restrictive copyright laws (or at least the constant threat of breaches of copyright). The Creative Commons licencing regime provides an appropriate mechanism to share such resources without losing the all-important academic acknowledgement.

But how will we know if we are successful? Student feedback is the easiest measure:

Michael De Percy Feedback Summary 2004-2009

View more presentations from Michael de Percy.

But student feedback alone is insufficient. What will prove the usefulness of 'Teaching 2.0' is the longer term effect in the latter years of the student experience. For example, our focus on written communication skills in first-year units has paid dividends in second- and third-year subjects with many colleagues reporting that they can now focus on the subject content and concepts, rather than re-hashing skills which should have been learnt in the formative stages of higher education.

One element of feedback which is difficult to obtain until after students graduate is feedback from employers. Next year, I am hoping to add a work-integrated learning aspect to my 'Subjects 2.0' by enabling employers to participate in the feedback process. This is much more difficult to implement than it appears.

Although I am generally opposed to centrally-controlled policies, what would be useful is a government-led initiative to encourage greater community participation in University 2.0 initiatives - something that Web 2.0 technologies enable in an efficient manner.

In the meantime, the University of Canberra has gone 2.0, proving that while the institutional wheels turn slowly, they do turn.

Not-so-happy reaction to NBN in Mt Isa

2010-02-18T16:01:00.002+11:00

Conroy digs himself a hole in outback | The Australian

While the rollout of the NBN on the Australian mainland is great national news, it seems that not everybody is happy about it. Never mind that Australia is already well behind most of the OECD in broadband connectivity. Surely the magnitude of this investment is begging for an educational program to promote the use of higher bandwidth?

The problem stems from the centrally-controlled and disengaged manner in which the NBN is being rolled out - another major program dominated by political and business elites. Nonetheless, to catch up on the opportunities lost by successive governments since the Net became widely available in 1992, there is little option but to get the infrastructure out as soon as possible.

Missing from the multi-billion dollar investment strategy is any attempt to educate potential users about the benefits of the NBN's capability. Users must be involved in the process if there is to be any national improvement in the lack of online skills which are surely the product of more than a decade of neglect.

The trouble with centrally-controlled approaches to network technologies is that the human element of the network is not viewed as an integral part of connectivity - which is ultimately the reason for the investment in the first place.

Mainland NBN Begins

2010-02-17T15:32:00.004+11:00

Today's announcement by the Minister for Broadband is great news: the NBN has finally commenced on the mainland. It is a nice change to see rural and regional areas targeted for the commencement of backbone infrastructure. While the returns may not be as immediate, the longer term is looking much better.

It is becoming increasingly apparent that the social aspects of the digital divide, particularly in education, are a result of the last decade's inaction from the federal government.

That is not to say that the current government's focus on Net censorship hasn't distracted the debate from more important issues like providing all Australians with adequate connectivity. But at least now there are some tangible signs that the wheels of the NBN are actually turning.

More info: Regional Blackspots Program

Re-defining the Last Mile

2010-02-08T21:29:00.009+11:00

I found a recent post by the Dodgy Goatee quite insightful, particularly this quote:

We tend to think the problem is solved when we solve the technology problem but the human innovation, the human problem, still remains...

I mistakenly read the 'Last Mile' as a social science comment on the techo-term which usually refers to the medium that connects the end-user's big screen to the provider's big pipe.

Late last year, I worked voluntarily with a Jordanian business to help them enhance their use of Facebook. While the workshop was a success, I had this lingering feeling that there were many deeper issues to comprehend. Indeed, access to high speed Internet in Jordan was less of a hassle than here in Gungahlin - so why was it so hard to find information online?

With all the hype about innovation, I wonder if the situation in Australia is really that different. Sure, having a website now might be no different than having a fax machine in the 80s - it is a necessity for businesses and governments. But is that enough in a Web 2.0 world?

I am tired of thinking about the lost opportunities from the finance and resource gatekeepers who assess the risks of implementing new technologies, waiting and waiting until the last possible moment before giving the go-ahead for technologies that are really yesterday's next best thing. By the time the previous innovation becomes commonplace, there is always somewhere new to be.

It would seem to me that the real last mile is not the wire or airwave that connects the big screen to the big pipe, but the mindset that prevents the opportunities from becoming realities during their heyday. While the momentum needed to bring an innovation to fruition might be fraught with transaction costs which are too much to bear, it would seem that those who are able to adopt new technologies faster than others would experience a window of competitive advantage.

The most important last mile, then, is that big obstacle between the big screen and the big open mind - the end-user. Yet many end-users wish they had the skills to implement the big idea, only the transaction costs appear to be too high.

Is there a solution? To me, the start point is to understand why humans do what they do, but more importantly, why they don't do it. The social sciences provide us with the tools to answer such questions, something which the last few decades and their focus on behavioural economics have had little to say other than how to encourage users to purchase the elusive physical last mile.

To make matters worse, the research culture in Australia was set back decades by previous gatekeepers of research funding, who deemed the humanities and the social sciences to be a waste of time and money. Little wonder that social scientists have been reluctant to step outside the so-called non-economic areas to challenge the status quo.

But if history has taught us one thing, it is that history tends to repeat if we refuse to learn the lessons of the past. If we take any other network technology developed over the last two centuries, we see technological innovations hindered by human obstacles which eventually gaive way a generation or so later to large-scale take-up and sighs of 'I wonder how we ever got along without technology X'.

The minefield of obstacles between innovation and implementation are the real last mile, and this is the area most worthy of further research.

Australia & Jordan: A Quick Broadband Comparison

2010-02-05T21:54:00.001+11:00

After a four-month break from the Australian broadband scene, it was interesting to return home to find that online censorship is still making the news. Returning from Jordan, a country which has just slipped to 'not free' in the recent Freedom House rankings, I was surprised to find that iiNet had survived a breach of copyright challenge from Hollywood while the South Australian Government had attempted to restrict online political debate. It seems that freedom remains a relative concept in global terms.

Although Jordan differs from Australia on all aspects social, political, cultural and economic (GDP per capita in Jordan is about 13% of that in Australia), an interesting feature is the proliferation of mobile telephones and the use of Wimax technologies to deploy broadband services throughout the Kingdom. Recently, a second submarine cable has been deployed which will improve the Kingdom's connectivity with the rest of the world. Although connectivity is almost a non-issue for wealthier Jordanians, unlike Australia, Jordan's challenges come from a lack of access to computers and a high level of computer illiteracy.

However, Jordanians can access the Net from a growing number of knowledge stations deployed throughout the Kingdom, Net connectivity is at 12% of the population and mobile connectivity stands at 86% of Jordanian families. I purchased a basic mobile phone for JOD 25 (about AUD $40) and found the service inexpensive (by Australian standards) and impeccable. Indeed, using Zain's network, I was able to make and receive calls throughout Jordan, and even while in Bahrain and Jerusalem at barely more than the cost of a within-country call.

I was able to access the Net faultlessly and at least 2.5mbps in both Amman and Aqaba, using ADSL and Wimax from a variety of providers including Orange (the now-privatised Jordan Telecommunications Group), Zain and Batelco. Interestingly, the speed of the Net in Jordan was better than it is here in Gungahlin tonight!

Although I have plenty of ideas to thresh out, a recurring theme in my ongoing cross-national study of broadband deployment indicates the importance of establishing anchor tenants such as schools, hospitals, libraries and other large-user sites when establishing broadband networks.

It would appear that Jordan has been getting on with the job while Australia is caught up in the politics of it all.

While political freedom in Jordan may not compare well with Australia, it would seem that Australia is not racing away in the broadband stakes. But then, it is all relative.

On Sabbatical! New research findings next year...

2009-07-16T19:40:00.006+10:00

I am on sabbatical until January 2010, so I will not be blogging for a while.

Over the next six months, I will be researching broadband outcomes in Jordan, continuing my comparative study but this time adopting a least-similar approach. In Jordan, I will be focusing on the phenomenon known as "technology leap-frogging", where nations without legacy infrastructure are able to skip the typical evolutionary approach to infrastructure deployment which tends to affect the highly-industrialised nations.

Cheers,

Michael.

Victorian Premier John Brumby launches Youtube Channel

2009-07-09T09:40:00.002+10:00

Victorian Premier John Brumby has launched a Youtube Channel where Victorian citizens can ask questions of the Premier. Questions voted in the top 5 will be answered by the Premier on the channel.

This is a great initiative but the response from the traditional media has been lukewarm.

NBN on the right track

2009-07-02T13:36:00.007+10:00

While we wait patiently in Palmerston via Gungahlin for faster and more reliable broadband connections, today's announcement is good news:

The Rudd government has named six broadband-deprived areas as the first recipients of its $250 million cash injection to kickstart the $43 billion national broadband network in rural areas.

Following the announcement of the roll-out in Tasmania, it is good to see that 'Emerald and Longreach in Queensland, Geraldton in Western Australia, Darwin in the Northern Territory, Broken Hill in NSW, Victor Harbor in South Australia and South West Gippsland in Victoria' are being fast-tracked for the NBN.

It is important that the least served areas receive the access first. It is easy to complain about poor broadband services, harder to imagine life without any.

One of the issues for the Commonwealth is that the approach to deploying the NBN infrastructure is quite novel in Australia. As has been seen in Tasmania, the decentralised approach has been let down by a lack of engagement with citizens and stakeholders.

It is unfortunate that the highly centralised approach to communications policy in Australia is such a political issue. Broadband is crucial infrastructure and its lack will affect Australia's international competitiveness whether we like it or not. I am convinced that only non-users or those who already have fast and reliable Net connections would disagree on the importance of broadband for our national prosperity.

But one aspect which is still overlooked is the correlation between citizen involvement in the process and the corresponding take-up of services. While many may be disinterested (or even uninterested) in the process, there are plenty of individuals and groups who are keen to be informed of or involved in the roll out. Such community champions are being underutilised by government.

To be sure, things are changing quickly and recent moves such as the Gov 2.0 Taskforce and Public Sphere are helping to change 'way things are done here'.

It will be interesting to see how NBN Co will function - moving the deployment one step away from politics could be a good thing - but the company must engage with stakeholders. This is a real challenge for those who will lead the charge. The $43 billion price tag will always keep the NBN in the top level of political issues. But leadership may just be the key.

Public Sphere Model: Local issues must be next

2009-06-26T16:13:00.012+10:00

Senator Kate Lundy's innovative approach to citizen engagement using social networking tools and new media is proving very successful in enabling citizens to have a voice in policy development. So far, the model has focused on giving citizens a voice in Government 2.0.

The obvious next step is to see the model used to engage with citizens on local issues. I have been arguing for some time that we need a balance between centralisation and decentralisation.

To borrow Roger Clarke's concept (from Public Sphere #1), centralisation leads to systemic failure, whereas decentralisation leads to sporadic failure. It would seem a balance between the two is appropriate for a connected world.

The trouble I see at this point is that Australia's approach is highly centralised, and we are lacking in capabilities (infrastructure and culture) to engage in a decentralised environment.

That is not to say that centralisation is all bad. The idea of 'centrality' (as opposed to 'centralisation'), particularly leadership from federal politicians (such as Senator Lundy), is crucial to enabling local communities to take advantage of the benefits of new media (leading to decentralisation).

As I argued in my presentation at Public Sphere #2 (see video below), we need to develop decentralised research and learning facilities at the local level to overcome the problems of our deep-seated tradition of central control.

Feedback from some of the 'tweeters' at Public Sphere #2 suggested that my idea of 'centres' for social innovation went against my approach of avoiding 'centralisation' (and I agree).

After discussions today with an emerging community of online collaborators at the University of Canberra, I mentioned this feedback and we came up with the label 'Social Innovation Exchanges'. Stay tuned for some online initiatives in this regard soon.

So where to next? I think the Public Sphere model of short presentations - video recorded, live blogged, tweeted and then followed up with blog comments and a briefing paper (with wikis to be added soon) - would work well for citizen engagement on local issues.

For example, activities such as the recent consultation on the future of the Scullin shops would have been a great issue to experiment with the Public Sphere model on a local problem.

Starting off with a fairly innocuous issue is important to get the model right for local communities, as it would enable interested parties to present their views - even if they could not attend a particular public meeting - about the issue for public review without being too controversial.

There are many opportunities and challenges ahead in the digital future. What we do now in the quasi-digital present will be an important step in the evolution of new media models for citizen engagement.

I have conceptualised where we are at now using the 'forming, storming, norming, performing' process (outlined in much of the project management literature) in the presentation below.

Keep your ears to the ground about current developments at the University of Canberra. We have a proud and strong community which lends itself to an actively engaged and online 'Community 2.0'. But more on this in a future post!

Public Sphere: Government 2.0 - Michael De Percy from Kate Lundy on Vimeo.

Wikis to broaden policy debate | Australian IT

2009-06-23T12:22:00.019+10:00

I didn't think this would happen for some time. But here it is: Public Sphere made it to the news:

Mr Tanner told the second Public Sphere event in Canberra that Web 2.0 tools such as blogs and wikis had allowed citizens to "bring their knowledge, perspectives and resources inside the tent" of government.

Politicians and bureaucrats will have to overcome the old and reflexive mistrust over the release of information, and learn to accept that citizens will assemble and combine it in new ways, he said. We also have to accept that when we open ourselves to public discussion through chatrooms, blogs and online forums, we won't always like what we hear.

The link to the original article is here: Wikis to broaden policy deb ate Australian IT

Some related sites or those mentioning 'public sphere':

Government 2.0 Taskforce launched today

2009-06-22T14:46:00.014+10:00

I participated in today's Public Sphere #2: Government 2.0 event in Parliament House, Canberra, where Finance Minister Lindsay Tanner and Special Minister of State and Cabinet Secretary Joe Ludwig announced the launch of the Government 2.0 Taskforce. The Taskforce has a website using open source architecture with a Creative Commons 2.0 licence.

(photo courtesy of Stephen Collins)

The Taskforce is a great initiative and has a public competition running until 3 July to design the banner for the website. It appears that the Taskforce will advise the government on the use of Web 2.0 technologies and will also provide funding to assist innovative uses of new technologies for citizen engagement and open access to government information:

The Project Fund is a $2.45 million fund available to the Taskforce to support the development of Web 2.0 tools and applications that either enable engagement between government and the community or support the innovative use of government information.

Members of the Taskforce, chaired by Dr Nicholas Gruen, include:

The Project Fund is being provided through a partnership with Microsoft, with Cisco providing some of the 'telepresence' infrastructure for the group. Funding will be provided on a competitive basis:

[T]he Taskforce will run competitions that will invite interested individuals and groups to submit ideas and Web 2.0 designs to the Taskforce for consideration and potential prizes and other benefits such as funding for pilots.

It would seem that Gov 2.0 has commenced in Australia.

Business 2.0: Consumer Culture in Australia

2009-06-20T13:17:00.012+10:00

How does Australian consumer 'culture' impact upon a businesses' ability to engage with customers using new media?

I recently wrote about Australian civic culture, so today I take a look at Australian consumer culture. Let me make it clear that when I talk about 'culture', I usually mean 'the way things are done around here'. If you have ever tried to introduce new ways of doing things in your work (or any group setting for that matter), you have probably heard the cultural context expressed as 'that is not the way things are done around here'. When businesses try new approaches to customer engagement, the phrase is not uncommon, too. So I have penned a few thoughts below on consumer culture in Australia and how businesses might be able to overcome some of the barriers. It is not an exhaustive examination but this might be a worthy future research project.

Some initial observations concerning consumer culture in Australia:

When I first wrote a pdf newsletter (years ago) for a professional organisation and emailed it to members, there were many complaints. 'Take me off the email list'; 'The file is too big and it took me X hours to open my email app'; 'How did you get my email address?'.
In a community forum, the culture was so constrained you had to be very apologetic if you dared to have a voice. It was OK to advertise the latest cookie drive, but not to advertise a discount on a commercial product or service - that was just plain 'wrong'. But the culture is changing rapidly.
In most government forums, anything which is slightly commercial is usually unwelcome. There is a time and a place for marketing (unless you are a major sponsor, of course).
On most new media apps, everybody is an expert in making you money online. Predominantly from overseas. Indeed, it might even be legitimately 'unAustralian' to market oneself as such.
If you have ever hear an acquaintence mention 'I would like to discuss a business opportunity with you', you now know which firm they are talking about and you haven't gone back for a second take.
The Do Not Call register was so popular the server crashed in the first few minutes of operation. But then again, so did Canada's.
When a company launches a consumer information campaign in Australia, it is deemed to be 'corporate propaganda' (but public-funded advertising telling us how good a new policy will be hardly gets a mention).
The traditional media is quick to point out when new media 'fails', especially if it can be construed in such a way as to support so-called 'mainstream' views of the world.
On some new media forums, so-called 'businesses' will follow you, only to unfollow you once you follow them back. This annoys me no end.
I cringe when I buy a pair of cheap sunglasses and the salesperson says 'the system won't let me complete the sale unless you give me your address and telephone number'.

So how are 'things done' around here? I am convinced that the first hunch is not necessarily correct. It is important to take an objective view of things.

For example, to test the community view of things in (2) above, I set up a voluntary survey using VotApedia. The results were surprising: the apologists achieved only 35% in favour of the conservative, polite approach to broadcasting information. It seems that in many ways the 'culture' may have been the domain of the vocal minority. The culture has changed since others have become confident enough to have a voice. We need to conduct more research into the dynamics of online engagement and take the findings seriously.

But how does this relate to business?

First, I think it is important to acknowledge that one negative comment from a customer, journalist, participant or other observer is not necessarily representative of the group. If the 'negatives' happen to be very vocal, it is easy to develop a skewed view of the whole. Adequate market research is the key.

Second, managing customer expectations is essential. Customers want everything, right now, for free. You can never meet all their desires, but you can manage what they expect from you. This is where new media represents a major improvement on the old-style engagement mentioned in (1) above. Email provides a sense where we must respond or at least take some action (such as deleting the email), whereas it is too easy to ignore something that is not interesting in new media forums.

Third, it is difficult to sort the wheat from the chaff. Points (4) to (9) above make this a difficult task. Competition is great for consumers, but how can the average consumer make an informed decision when there is too much information? Information must also be comparable and the dilemmas created by 'fine print' make the task very difficult, even if a customer wanted to engage with a business. Conversely, if a business tries something new and the news media takes a particular view of it, then things can go publicly wrong. I am hoping this will change as the number of participants increases.

Fourth, the artificial delineation between business and government suggested in (3) above is really just that: artificial. To say that business is not a legitimate participant in a liberal democracy denies the actual role of the liberal democratic state. I am certainly not a proponent of free markets, but markets exist because of the state. To think otherwise is simply naive - companies should not have free reign but neither should governments. Indeed, such naive views tend to be counter-productive by creating a culture which restricts civic participation, reduces innovation and prevents new ideas or new players from entering the marketplace.

So what can businesses do?

I argue first that businesses must establish their legitimacy. Point (5) suggests that sneaky marketing practices will lead to short-lived business opportunities. Twitter, for example, is looking into a beta version of Verified Accounts to deal with the issue of legitimacy. Establishing legitimacy takes time, too, but there must be an element of 'genuineness' about the process. New media provides numerous opportunities for customer engagement.

But how can a business be genuine with customers? I think the first step is to engage online with existing customers, rather than using new media as an opportunity to gain new customers. This would, in my view, overcome the appearance of being 'spammed'. And it must be more than an attempt to collect information from customers without offering something in return - see point (10) above. I happily use Google's tools because I get access to a capability by simply sharing my data and I know others do the same.

Another area which businesses tend to overlook in Australia is educational institutions. Sure, there are plenty of Australian Research Council linkage grants designed to encourage greater interaction between researchers and business, but these are for the most part the domain of the superstars only. I often draw upon educational material from North America and advertising is a part of the material. I doubt North American students would moralise the use of advertising funding for educational material production, but I can imagine the furore such an 'innovation' would cause in an Australian university!

I have also found that it is useful to 'interconnect' the face-to-face experience with the online experience. I have written about this elsewhere on social policy engagement with youth online. There are many opportunities for businesses but I think it will take some time before Australian consumer culture views customer engagement as more than just a way for businesses to increase sales. The involvement of businesses in the higher education sector, in particular, would demonstrate a more meaningful connection with society. Getting a foot in the door would be another matter, but this has already happened in terms of email outsourcing and so on, so why not in teaching?

One observation of using new media in my teaching suggests that there must be an equal amount of openness on the part of both lecturer and student. While some of my colleagues' research suggests that students see lecturers online as an invasion of privacy, I have not had this experience. When we tried Facebook as a teaching tool a couple of years ago, the student satisfaction correlated with the number of students who opted to use Facebook. But I (and consequently my tutors) tend to be quite open in the online environment. Where the lecturer acts as a 'lurker', rather than a participant, the results tend to reflect my colleagues' findings. I would not be surprised if a principle of 'equal openness' could equally be applied to a customer engagement model.

Some hasty generalisations

It is difficult to make an empirically-verifiable generalisation about consumer culture and how this might affect businesses' ability to engage with Australian consumers using new media. Nonetheless, I will make a few 'hasty generalisations':

Businesses must establish themselves as legitimate participants in the online environment.
Australian consumers tend to view attempts by businesses to engage online as a an infringement on consumers' personal time, especially when the engagement is unsolicited.
There should be 'equal openness'. If the customer must provide all their personal details and contribute to marketing statistics, then the business must give something in return.
Businesses should be given more opportunites to participate in the higher education system, and not just with the superstars. After all, businesses are the real customers of universities (if you think this statement is incorrect, see my earlier comment on the role of the state).

New media provides many opportunities for businesses to enagage with customers, but there are a few issues which must be addressed. Rather than viewing these as cultural impediments to businesses, it is arguable that businesses have a duty to amend their practices to suit the consumer culture. That is not to say that businesses need to meet the unreasonable demands of consumers, but at least meet the realistic expectations of consumers (avoiding unsolicited spamming is an obvious example). But on reflection, I think that Australian consumer culture is less of an impediment to customer engagement than civic culture is to citizen engagement. But while the stakes are higher in the latter, the benefits might just be more tangible in the former.

Can Australian civic culture accommodate Gov 2.0?

2009-06-19T20:49:00.009+10:00

On Monday 22 June, I will be speaking at Senator Kate Lundy's 'Public Sphere #2: Government 2.0' at Parliament House in Canberra. Program details are available here.

The ideas for my presentation are developed from my work at the University of Canberra where I have been experimenting with new media in teaching and research for some time. My experience from numerous consultations with community groups and involvement in social media also informs the ideas outlined in the slideshow below:

Public Sphere 2 - Gov 2.0

View more OpenOffice presentations from Michael De percy.

I am not convinced that Australia's civic culture sits comfortably with open government and online policy engagement. While there are plenty of interested citizens and groups, my prediction is that there will be a period of 'cultural' upheaval as citizens (who historically have not been involved in formal democratic processes) gain greater access to government.

The demands of citizens will arguably multiply as citizens come to expect more opportunities for active engagement with governments at all levels. This trend, which has commenced in the US, will no doubt permeate the news media as events unfold there. In the meantime (and enabled by new media), blocking citizens from accessing government information will be like holding back the proverbial tide.

But the education sector has a significant role to play in providing citizens with the skills to become effective participants in open government. One of the major challenges is that educational institutions are part of the fabric of Australian civic culture. Indeed, I would argue that a culture of openness is yet to develop in our educational institutions.

How we meet these challenges will require significant cultural change. How we get there means there are very interesting times ahead.

NY Senate to 'open up'

2009-06-19T18:14:00.003+10:00

Thanks to Twitter:

RT @JeffreyPeel RT @dalezak: Wanna see the future of politics? http://open.nysenate.gov #opengov #gov20 #g2010 - way to go NY!

New York is opening up access to state data for use by citizens. This is fantastic news!

During a number of recent presentations, I have argued that all sorts of public information should be available for use by citizens. My favourite example is the bus timetable information in Ottawa which was developed by Canadian citizens. The OC Transpo service is already second-to-none in my experience, so this adds an extra value dimension.

I am very keen to see if something similar could be developed by citizens in Canberra, especially so I could work out how to catch a bus in Palmerston via Gungahlin. But can you freely access the information?

I say more power to the people. In the meantime, mash away NY!

Australia beats US for broadband access | Australian IT

2009-06-19T16:14:00.004+10:00

The release of this media report on Australia's international broadband standing raises some interesting issues.

While I agree that broadband penetration should be measured by households, not individual connections, there are several other issues concerning how broadband is measured.

A major problem is how 'broadband' is actually defined. The OECD still uses 'always on' with a download speed above 256kbps. Hardly broadband in the Web 2.0 era.

Synchronous (two-way) 1.5mbps is generally accepted as the minimum speed for adequate teleconferencing facilities, and this is the measure Canada adopted in the early 2000s. The ACCC's earlier reports on broadband adoption in Australia have used 200kbps or above. This measure significantly lowers the bar.

Further, the methods of collecting data are problematic. The OECD relies on 'theoretical' best speeds and advertised prices, in addition to government-produced estimates and statistics, in ranking member countries.

The Akamai 'State of the Internet' report, I understand, uses data actually collected from participating servers worldwide. The Quarter 4, 2008 report records Australia as well below both the US and Canada in terms of 'fast' broadband. To make matters worse, Palmerston via Gungahlin (see earlier post) has theoretical speeds of 1.5mbps which drop to below dial-up each evening.

Until the problems of data collection and reliability are resolved, I remain very sceptical about reports which claim Australian broadband is more accessible than in the US.

See the full article: Australia beats US for broadband access Australian IT.

Bloggers to have greater say in legislative debate | Australian IT

2009-06-15T15:15:00.001+10:00

The article (below) in Australian IT is a promising sign of the times. The issue which we will face soon is how we educate people to operate in the new policy environment. Universities will play a major role here. I will be speaking about some of these issues at the next Public Sphere event on 21 June 2009 at Parliament House.

Article: Bloggers to have greater say in legislative debate Australian IT

Netiquette: The next big challenge

2009-06-14T21:34:00.011+10:00

Time and again, I am seeing online participatory forums reduced to public arguments which lead to a reduction in participation (and subsequently constructive discussion) in otherwise positive online communities.

Most of the arguments are about what content is 'appropriate' for inclusion in a particular forum. This is hardly surprising, but it does not bode well for our digital future.

Broadband networks will enable more people to connect online in ways which are yet to be devised. But as with most innovations, the limits to connectivity are not all related to technology. I have argued elsewhere that technology is not entirely deterministic; nor is it entirely constructed by society.

Technological momentum is a middle-of-the-road theory which suggests that both technology (and its potential uses), and society (and the way society uses technology), each have an impact on the possible futures and uses of broadband technologies.

But in most of the relatively 'localised' social networks I have observed, recently there have been many bouts of conflict. This suggests that the momentum of technology has advanced, while society and its uses of the technologies are yet to evolve. I would argue we are on the cusp of a change in how we, as humans, interact, as the evolving public e-sphere empowers the voices which for a long time have been excluded from a public hearing.

How we proceed will determine the extent to which our increasingly collective views of enabling an empowered society are more than just rhetoric.

In many regards, there was some merit to the 'old ways'. Content was filtered by the hierarchies which govern the provision of information. Easy to control when you are a one-way broadcaster, but much more difficult to control when you are involved in an any-to-any conversation.

In the past (at least increasingly since 1975!), content which was viewed as racist, sexist, or in any way viewed (by the majority, or at least the law) as discriminatory, was simply excluded. Open up the communications network to the masses, and the situation changes dramatically.

As more people are exposed to the rigours of public life (which broadband and new media participation ensues), the need for an institutionalised sense of Netiquette is fast becoming a priority. Incorporating 'Netiquette' in educational curricula is a necessary next step.

One of the biggest impediments to an ideally inclusive digital future is how our educational institutions will deal with the challenge of emerging ideas about Netiquette. The extent of exclusion from earlier ideas of the 'public sphere' is well documented. But the voices which will be heard in the emerging 'public e-sphere' will be hard for the old hierarchies to hold back. Historically, education is the most effective way to deal with such challenges.

The emerging ideas about 'Netiquette' will require a great deal of soul-searching if the traditional gatekeepers are to play a useful role in the digital future. At this stage, it is difficult to imagine a future without gatekeepers. Nonetheless, it is obvious that the 'rules of entry' through the information gates must be changed for the better if we, as humans, are to benefit from the potential provided by modern communications technologies.

Presentation at the 4th Annual Broadband Forum

2009-06-13T10:23:00.008+10:00

On 11 June, I presented some of my research findings to the 4th Annual Broadband Australia Forum at the Sydney Harbour Marriott. There is a tendency for academics to get caught up in their own silos, so having an audience of prominent industry players was very helpful. I have included a copy of my presentation below.

Informa: A comparison of broadband policy: Canada & Australia

View more OpenOffice presentations from Michael De percy.

NBN: Tasmania gets it right

2009-06-13T09:27:00.005+10:00

With the Tasmanian Government's $12.7 million contribution to the NBN, there are some early signs that 'the times they are-a changin'. Co-investment and greater cooperation between all levels of government are essential if we are to get the most out of the NBN.

Interestingly, local councils have a strong showing in the submissions to the NBN regulatory reform paper and these will hopefully encourage greater involvement by this often-overlooked level of government.

It would seem timely that in addition to NBN Co., a national research institute be established to facilitate innovate uses for the forthcoming NBN. CANARIE Inc in Canada is a very good example of how this organisation might look.

However, CANARIE is not directly controlled by government, and this is where Australia consistently misses out. CANARIE are considering all sorts of innovative approaches to broadband networks.

For example, the 'homes with tails' idea suggests that individuals and local communities could invest in their own fibre connections. This idea would see the fibre connection to the home become a part of home ownership.

The Tasmanian decision is good news and represents a significant change to the centrally-controlled approach to communications infrastructure which is predominant in this country. Building Australia's innovative capacity is an important 'next step' in ensuring that this historic investment in infrastructure will be worthwhile.

But a research centre based on the CANARIE Inc model is yet to be discussed, and it is timely that such an organisation is established in Australia.

Sour Grapes? Sol Trujillo was right

2009-06-12T11:23:00.002+10:00

In my latest ABC Unleashed article, I argue that Sol Trujillo was right. The sour grapes belong to politicians.

Pipe Dreams: A vision for a connected Australia

2009-06-08T12:44:00.003+10:00

Click to Play

Presentation on Australia's possible broadband future by Senator Kate Lundy, Professor Keith Lyons and Michael de Percy, University of Canberra, 21 May 2009.

The live blog from the event (by Pia Waugh and Minh-Tam Nguyen) is available here.

Kate Lundy’s Public Sphere #2: Government 2.0

2009-06-07T13:30:00.001+10:00

Senator Kate Lundy has organised the next Public Sphere event on Government 2.0 to be held at Parliament House on 21 June. The event is free, but attendance is limited. You can book a seat here.

This event will include international speakers via video conferencing.

As per the format, speakers will have 15 minutes each but this event will run from 9am to 5pm. You can submit a presentation ‘abstract’ via the website if you wish to speak at the event.

Targeting Telstra: The negative side of separation

2009-06-06T16:38:00.013+10:00

Recent media reports again have Optus suggesting Telstra should be structurally separated. This would no doubt help Optus to compete more effectively in many ways and might even help with improving competition, leading to cheaper prices, more customer choices and so on.

But there is a negative side. Despite the urban myths and the political rhetoric, many studies (1) indicate that small businesses do not contribute to innovation and employment to the extent that large businesses do. Indeed, Telstra is one of Australia's major innovators and employers. If Telstra is functionally or structurally separated, how will this impact upon innovation? Telstra is also a large employer, so what about employment?

The (functional or structural) separation debate needs to be visited carefully. Some of the questions which are escaping the onslaught of Telstra-bashing include:

What will Telstra look like once its wholesale and retail arms are separated?
How will this affect innovation and employment, especially during the global financial crisis?
Telstra is one of the top telcos in the world. How will Telstra's separation affect its international competitiveness?
If the government is going to let Telstra buy 49% of the NBN, will the NBN company utilise Telstra employees?
Who will train the people needed to run the NBN company? Will it be necessary to duplicate Telstra's expertise to run the NBN?

These are some of the questions which remain unanswered, and there are no doubt many more which will need to be addressed.

In the meantime, the consultation on regulatory reform has fallen back (at least in the news media) on how to constrain Telstra; not on how to make the ailing system work.

The reform consultation provides a major opportunity to fix a problem which has plagued Australia for close to three decades. Telstra is only one small part of the problem but it is popular to blame the world-class company for woes which have never really been its fault.

Leo Gray, Sydney specialist media barrister, pointed out what needed to be done years ago:

[W]e do not have a systematic body of communications law which allows new technologies and new uses for old technologies for that matter, to be conveniently slotted in to their correct place in a single integrated regulatory framework (cited on p. 29 of the 1989 Standing Committee on Transport and Communications Infrastructure Report)

The problems associated with technological convergence were raised by the then Australian Broadcasting Tribunal (ABT), calling for a 'radical overhaul' of the broadcasting, telecommunications and radiocommunications laws. Despite the expert voice of the ABT, the policy changes were hardly radical.

But the problems have mostly fallen by the wayside and pragmatic solutions remain elusive. Instead of focusing on the regulatory system and getting that right, the focus is on how to reduce Telstra to a non-world-class company, reduce its innovative capacity, and most likely reduce the number of jobs the company provides.

The situation hasn't really changed much from the 80s, and getting it right means breaking from the old ways. Regrettably, focusing on Telstra will make it great for the other telcos, but leave the benefits to citizens (which technological convergence enables) suspended in the future. The trouble is that the benefits have been there for decades.

Notes:

1. See, for example:

Ács, J. & Audretsch. D.B. (1990) Innovation and small firms. Cambridge: MIT Press: 16.

Hoffman, K. Milady, P., Bessant, J. & Perren, L. (1998) 'Small firms, R&D, technology and innovation in the UK: a literature review'. In Technovation, Vol. 18, No. 1: 39-55.

Nooteboom, B. (1994) 'Innovation and diffusion in small firms: Theory and evidence'. In Small Business Economics, Vol. 6, No. 5: 344-345.

Worries mount on ABC web ambition | Australian IT

2009-06-01T14:17:00.002+10:00

The ABC is moving into the digital age quickly. Yet commercial networks are screaming 'unfair advantage'. Who will lead the charge: government or business? It seems government can do it, but the private sector won't because there is no money in it for them. Seems tragic that improving Australian content and access to communications infrastructure will be hindered by self-serving and entrenched interests.

Not that commercial interests are necessarily bad - but in this case the old ways are holding back the digital economy and consequently, Australia's international competitiveness.

[Broadband] Life in Palmerston via Gungahlin

2009-05-31T17:34:00.008+10:00

My family first established themselves in Australia at Tenterden via Guyra, NSW in the 1850s. Such addresses were quite common in Far North Queensland where I grew up and once worked as a surveyor's assistant: Sudley Station via Weipa, Queensland, for example.

I never thought I would find myself within view of Parliament House with an address like Palmerston, via Gungahlin. But here I find myself every Sunday night.

For some time, Gungahlin, the fourth satellite suburb of the Australian Capital Territory, has been left behind in the generally outstanding infrastructure available to Canberrans. It is common knowledge that the Gungahlin region experienced very little access to typical metropolitan services (and continues to do so) for many years since the region's establishment.

There have been many improvements in recent times (for example, greater presence of emergency services - with a response time second to none), but the simple things still matter:

No bike racks on the buses to Civic (at least via Palmerston);
No responses from contact via the TAMS (formerly DUS, effectively the 'local council' of the ACT) website about local issues;
No local 'diner' (can you believe the G Spot is now closed? - once apparently the only roadside food vendor in Australia with Foxtel).

But these things pale in comparison to the access to broadband services.

I pay for a 1.5mbps connection that delivers approximately dial-up quality services lately, every Sunday evening. A far cry from the problems experienced 40 km away where people can't even get television reception, and in remote regions where Net service is even worse. But the place I live in is the capital of our great nation, not a remote region.

So, I now refer to my address as Palmerston via Gungahlin. A place where you would expect to receive metropolitan-level services, but receive remote region services in full view of Parliament House. Bring on the NBN - and who really cares who pays for it? I am happy to have my taxes pay for a connection that works, rather than 'user-pay' for a connection that doesn't.

NBN 'breathtaking'

2009-05-20T09:36:00.004+10:00

Larry Smarr, one of the early pioneers of the Internet, says:

the Rudd Government's announcement last month of a new broadband network is "breathtaking" and puts Australia at the forefront of government policy around the world embracing "intelligent infrastructure".

Pipe Dreams: A vision for a connected Australia

2009-05-18T11:44:00.004+10:00

The University of Canberra is hosting a free public seminar on Thursday 21 May 2009 from 12:30pm to 1:30pm. Details of the event are available here: http://www.canberra.edu.au/announcements/current/pipe-dreams.

Speakers:

Senator Kate Lundy: New Media and Citizen Engagement
Professor Keith Lyons: Connecting communities: Bandwidth and incandescence
Michael de Percy: Broadbanding the Academy: Changing the rules of the gam

Please indicate your attendance by emailing me: michael.depercy@canberra.edu.au.

CSIRO: Pleasantly Public

2009-05-13T18:41:00.007+10:00

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) has been at the forefront of research for a very long time. Most recently:

The CSIRO has won its long-running battle to enforce a patent on technology used in Wi-fi connections that have become virtually ubiquitous in laptops and other devices around the world.

read more | digg story

The CSIRO is a statutory authority operating under the Science and Industry Research Act (1949).

The achievements of the CSIRO are so numerous it would take me too long to develop the list. Most lists on the Net appear to be segregated by reseach area, the achievements are so comprehensive.

In addition to Wi-fi technology and defending its patent, CSIRO has also ventured into the Creative Commons area. My favourite application for teaching (and soon research) is a *relatively* little known wiki-based application called VotApedia.

I have always wanted an application which enables the capacity to gauge audience opinion. Like 'the worm' used during political debates. VotApedia provides this capacity through mobile phones (you call a number which corresponds to your answer - to an engaged signal for free) or through the web (like SurveyMonkey, but CC).

In my lectures of about 460 students, VotApedia is perfect for providing 'the worm'. But I have also found it useful to gauge opinions about almost anything. It took me about two minutes to set up a quick web survey today to investigate respondents' views on Net etiquette on a particular application. Poor survey design on my part, but an interesting experiment nonetheless.

The CSIRO is one of the more successful Australian statutory authorities. Statutory authorities have been one of the more useful innovations in the Australian political system. The approach should have been used to deploy the NBN. Regardless, the CSIRO deserves credit for the work it does. Often overlooked and undervalued, but certainly at the bleeding edge of innovation in Australia.

And it is pleasantly public. Well done, CSIRO, and more of the budget to you!

Wowsers beware: Public Sphere 2.0 is here

2009-05-12T16:37:00.004+10:00

Last week I attended Senator Kate Lundy's 'Public Sphere: Higher bandwidth for Australia' at the ANU. The event raises many possibilities for enhancing the citizen experience.

My musings on the event have been published by ABC Unleashed here.

Presenting my research at UC

2009-05-11T12:21:00.004+10:00

On Wednesday 13 May, I will be presenting some of my research findings at the National Institute for Governance, University of Canberra. The event will run from 12:30pm to 1:30pm in Building 6, Level B, Room 34.

Details of the event are available here.

NIG - Broadbanding The Nation

View more documents from Michael De percy.

Broadband Reform: Getting it right

2009-05-11T11:56:00.002+10:00

I have written a piece for Open Forum, an independent public policy think tank, on broadband reform. My blog is also 'Blog of the Day' today at Open Forum. You can read the article here.

Some interesting broadband statistics comparing Canada & Australia

2009-05-06T16:43:00.008+10:00

I have put together some interesting statistics from the OECD, Aikima, Statistics Canada and the Australian Bureau of Statistics to compare broadband in Canada and Australia. Given the similarities (apart from the Big Mac Index purchasing power parity indicator), there is plenty of reason to argue that 'competition' or lack thereof has not been a significant factor in the differences in broadband adoption and take-up.

Click on the picture below to see the table.

Kate Lundy's Public Sphere

2009-05-03T05:05:00.005+10:00

Already the impact of citizen engagement using new media is providing opportunities for politicians to develop creative ways to enable greater participation in policy development.

Senator Kate Lundy is an active user of new media and will be hosting a forum on 'High bandwidth for Australia' at the ANU on Wednesday 7 May 2009. Details are as follows:

Workshop details
Topic: The opportunities and issues around getting high bandwidth Internet in Australia
Place: Australia National University, Seminar Room 101, in the Department of Computer Science Ground Floor
Date: 7th May
Time: 8.30am for a 9am start till 12pm
Agenda: To be published by 5th May, but short 10 minute talks with simultaneous online discussion and questions
Social Media: Twitter: #publicsphere or blog: publicsphere or ”Public Sphere”
Online Participation: via Twitter using #publicsphere as the tag. Participants both in the room and remotely will post questions to @katelundy and comments and feedback on the content as it is being presented to #publicsphere. Speakers will see the questions as they come up and be able to deal with them either throughout their talk, or at the end. By driving everything through Twitter we hope to effectively be able to both encourage and capture different perspectives from all participants, local and remote.

This workshop provides an opportunity for citizens to participate either face-to-face or online. The workshop will also provide an excellent case-study of how citizen engagement can occur in the New Media era.

You can RSVP for the event here.

OpenAustralia: Community and the Net

2009-05-03T03:52:00.004+10:00

A recent venture by Open Australia to list 'real' politicians using twitter is a fine example of the capability of the emerging Net community in Australia.

The use of new media in bringing citizens closer to their representatives is not everyone's cup of tea. But organisations such as OpenAustralia, which aims 'to make it easy for people to keep tabs on their elected representatives in Parliament', are certainly moving in the right direction.

The use of new media enables people to be involved in the emerging public e-sphere. For most citizens, work and family commitments make it difficult to participate in democratic processes. With technology making it easier for citizens to participate, the dreams of cyper-citizenship and e-democracy are fast becoming a reality.

New media presents many challenges to governments and traditional approaches to citizen engagement. But community organisations now have access to an efficient and cost-effective means of providing information to citizens and influencing public debate.

Once the NBN becomes available, community participation in the public e-sphere will likely increase. Organisations which take advantage of new media in the early stages are likely to establish their credentials for years to come.

Legitimacy remains an important element in democracies, but with the ability to remain anonymous on the Net, many people are wary of e-democracy in practice. The Net community has a role to play in providing such legitimacy, and OpenAustralia is to be congratulated for taking some of the first steps with their latest initiative.

The NBN: Visionary Nation-Building or Bliss for Video Addicts?

2009-04-30T11:10:00.012+10:00

It seems the NBN will solve all sorts of problems. But there are very different views on each side of the political divide. It depends on the potential benefits we perceive high-speed access to the Net will bring us.

Here is what the NBN will do, according to our political leaders:

Broadband Minister Stephen Conroy: Productivity benefits of smart grids (internet-enabled electricity grids), digital tracking of goods (e.g. RFID), new broadcasting opportunities, remote health diagnosis and patient monitoring, real-time freight management, video conferencing, telecommuting and advanced science and research applications.

The Opposition: A faster network for downloading movies.

ACT Politicians at the Bleeding Edge

2009-04-24T17:04:00.002+10:00

Party politics aside, when it comes to needing the help of a local representative, most of us are rarely disappointed. Maybe the outcome doesn't necessarily suit us, but my experience of being an active adult citizen for the past 21 years has not provided a single instance of poor form from a local representative.

But in the ACT, many local representatives (of all political parties) are moving toward the 'bleeding edge' of technology and actively engaging with citizens. This presents advantages and disadvantages for politicians.

I have always been an advocate of the Net as a great freedom machine. A place to find information that was previously limited to professionals; a public sphere which provides accessibility to more citizens (who tend to be overwhelmed by work and family commitments) than can be found in face-to-face engagement.

While undertaking my undergraduate degree (online at Deakin University) in the 1990s, I was struck by the power of the Net. One of my lecturers, Dr Andrew Vandenberg, was working on the ideas of cyber-citizenship at the time. But much of what we discussed in the mid-1990s was only a pipe dream then.

So it is pleasing to see that advances in technology are making those early ruminations a reality. However, as we have seen with the Fake Stephen Conroys et al, there are many issues to be worked through.

The good news is that in the ACT, many of our representatives are at the 'bleeding edge' of technology adoption. This is a brave move on their part: while following the Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader may be passe, it is much more involved for politicians without the resources of more senior representatives.

More on this later, it seems that putting together a list of politicians who are already engaged in New Media is a good place to start. If you know of any, I would appreciate you posting the links as comments. Segregating the real representatives from the fakes is a necessary first step - any ideas how this could be done are most welcome!

ISP Filtering: Evidence-based policy or policy-based evidence?

2009-04-23T16:49:00.004+10:00

What constitutes evidence in policy-making? Is it a case of making policy based on evidence, or making evidence to support policy?

Obviously, an ISP filtering trial will provide evidence about the success/usefulness/cost etc of filtering Net content at the ISP. But what about the 'evidence' which suggests that Australians do not want mandatory ISP filtering?

The point I am making is that the use of the term 'evidence-based policy' is purely spin in this instance - in effect, it is policy-based evidence-making.

Why do we need evidence on a policy which nobody wants? The Minister for Broadband was provided with considerable 'evidence' on ABC’s Q&A recently: http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s2521164.htm.

Indeed, the results of Netspace’s customer poll on compulsory ISP filtering were quite conclusive (with a sample size of 10,000).

But what 'evidence' do I need to suggest that ISP filtering is a case of putting the cart before the horse? The major problem for us lowly citizens is getting access to the evidence when even the federal opposition needs to use FOI laws to get access to the government’s information. What chance does the average citizen have?

I maintain that ISP filtering is a side-issue. Nonetheless, it is good to hear from the Minister for Broadband that the NBN will be rolled out on a fast-track plan where market failure in broadband access is occuring:

The ACCC has confirmed that places with only a single provider of backhaul services include: Geraldton in Western Australia, Mt Gambier in South Australia, Broken Hill in New South Wales, Mildura in Victoria, Mt Isa in Queensland, and Darwin in the Northern Territory.

Connecting the Big Tube to the Big Screen

2009-04-23T11:39:00.003+10:00

I like the ITU's explanation of 'broadband'. What surprises me is that there has been little push by firms to come up with a consumer-friendly setup to connect the Big Tube to the Big Screen.

PayTV (especially in Australia) is an absolute rip-off. There is simply not enough content. Meanwhile, there is so much content on the Net but it is expensive to buy all the equipment and difficult to obtain the know-how to set up a Big Screen with a PC for watching Net content.

If I had a Net business, I would work out the least expensive way to setup the Big Tube to the Big Screen and package the equipment with a Net plan so that I would never have to be 'broadcast at' again - I could simply 'tune-in' or find what I wanted when it suited me.

In the meantime, I would be interested in any ideas on how people are veiwing Big Tube to Big Screen content. I just hope it happens in my lifetime and is not thwarted by the interests of those who wish to keep me stuck with free-to-air television programs which are little more than Big Ads.

Minister for Broadband: How much 'evidence' do you need?

2009-04-22T18:16:00.008+10:00

Optus will participate in the government's ISP filtering trial. If I was an Optus customer, I wouldn't be now! Imagine knowing that your ISP was blocking your access to the Net? The Big Brotherness of the whole idea is just unpalatable.

According to the Minister for Broadband, the justification for the trial is to provide 'evidence':

"The participation of Optus will help ensure the government obtains robust results from the pilot, which will inform the evidence-based development of our ISP filtering policy"

Evidence-based policy, as the process is known in policy circles, is meant to provide a rational means for developing policy. It fits comfortably with the ideas of the rational, choice-making individual operating in a market economy. Yet not everyone agrees that policy-making can ever be a rational process.

But the problem is so irrational it must be poking the Minister for Broadband's eye out. How much evidence is needed to prove that ISP filtering is unwelcome in Australia's liberal democracy? Do you really need the statistics to prove that this policy deserves to be scrapped now? Has there been a single voice which supports the idea of ISP filtering? How much evidence do you really need to stop pushing this policy?

This feeble attempt at 'evidence-based policy' should be called what it is: nothing less than a sham.

This post was me exercising my right to free speech. Regrettably, Optus customers may have trouble viewing my post.

Traditional media on the ropes?

2009-04-22T08:41:00.003+10:00

Since refusing to pay the ridiculous prices for PayTV services, I have been reduced to watching free-to-air television. Watching 'Today' this morning, I notice that the traditional media is increasingly turning to youtube, Facebook and twitter for content.

The content on 'Today' consists of a significant portion of New Media snippets. Even the Hollywood session was dominated by twitter and youtube.

'Today' has become 'The Footy Show' of New Media. Commentary on youtube videos and so forth is a bit like watching former footy players talk about what is happening on the field. It seems the traditional journalists are increasingly taking on this role as 'former' and commenting on the breaking stories emerging from New Media.

Does this mean the traditional media is on the ropes?