Caught in a Web

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Last update at /special/conference/apwww95,Friday, 21-May-2004 09:47:34 EST

Caught in a Web - Australian Government network policy

Tony Barry
Australia National University Library, Centre for Networked Access to Scholarly Information. ACT 0200 Australia.
tony@info.anu.edu.au http:snazzy.anu.edu.au/People/TonyB.html

Abstract
The Australian Government has started to accept that the World Wide Web has a part to play in network policy . The two main inquiries set up to look at network policy were the ASTEC and BSEG inquiries and these have determined the main lines of policy
Initially the Government forecast the development of two disparate networks EdNA and CIN which did not reveal a holistic strategy and did not even specify any underlying protocol to be used.
This paper will explore in more detail the development and current state of government policy about the internet showing how without any direct intention this is now focussing on the use of World Wide Web for the delivery of information to the community and students.

Keywords :
Australia, government, networks, policy

Slightly more than a year ago I delivered a paper at the Questnet conference <URL:http://www.usq.edu.au/ww94/home.html>, Australian Governments on the Net, A baud rate mismatch, <URL:http://snazzy.anu.edu.au:/gov/augov/au.html>. In that paper I commented that -
With it's dispersed nature and the links with research organisations the Commonwealth Government sector has been most active on AARNet.
So incoherent has been the Commonwealth approach to AARNet that it has been up to individuals like Peter Talty of the Australian Computer Society and employed at the Department of Primary Industry and Energy to set up a demonstration Government Gopher. This gopher has pointers to the few government services that exist in gopherspace and notional links to departmental servers where none exists.
A great deal has happened since then. While the Commonwealth's actions and policies and not yet wholly coherent a great deal of energy has been put into creating services which are described though this paper. Much of what I have written here has been based upon the extensive documentation available across the network and the bibliography of this material I am compiling. <URL:http://snazzy.anu.edu.au/gov/augov/bibl.html>.
The Early Stages - GOSIP
The federal government's Information Exchange Steering Committee IESC <URL:http://snazzy.anu.edu.au:/gov/augov/questnet/IESC.html> was for many years the coordinating body for government standards responsible for implementing to GOSIP standard being responsible for facilitating Commonwealth moves towards a more open IT environment, based on open systems to the maximum extent possible
It is ironic that this desire for open standard stood in the way of the deployment of those standards which were building up in the internet. It was not until this body put forward the view that TCP/IP could be acceptable as an alternative to the international OSI standards -

This policy considers that adoption of TCP/IP standards is acceptable in the absence of suitable OSI conformant products;
<URL:http://snazzy.anu.edu.au:/gov/augov/questnet/OSIP.html>
That the deployment of TCP/IP became acceptable within Government. Initial deployment was rapid particularly in CSIRO <URL:http://www.csiro.au/csiro/csiro-web.html> and other Government based research institutions.
Over the last few months this has extended further and there has been a rapid expansion of Commonwealth Government based services . The National Library now provides web page giving access to them. <URL:http://www.nla.gov.au/oz/gov/federal.html> as well as to services provided by other levels of government within Australia <URL:http://www.nla.gov.au/oz/gov/ozgov.html>.
Policy development
The Commonwealth Government has been guided by a number of inquiries relevant to the development of the network. Two were of seminal influence - the Broadband Services Expert Group Enquiry and the ASTEC Enquiry into High Performance Data Networking. While there have been other inquiries of importance they deal with more specialised issues.
Most of the policy initiatives followed these inquiries and the BSEG report had by far the greatest influence.
BSEG
The BSEG report (Networking Australia's Future: Final Report of the Broadband Services Expert Group ) in the preamble to the terms of reference stated -
The inquiry will examine the technical, economic and commercial preconditions for the widespread delivery of broadband services to homes, businesses and schools in Australia
<URL:http://www.dca.gov.au/intro.htm#tor>
This reflected the Government's greater interest in the business, and in particular, the potential media role in networking. It appeared to owe more in its initial stages to media policy rather than that directed to social or information issues.
The Group held meetings with a range of interested parties and received submission from many groups some of which were published on the network by the groups involved. It is of interest that the secretariat of this inquiry and that for the ASTEC enquiry (described below), had considerable contact and seemed to share information despite being in separate arms of government with different motivations for their establishment.
In its interim report it made much of multimedia some mention was made of the potential of CDROMs in providing a vehicle for this format <URL:http://www.telstra.com.au/mirror/bseg/start.html>. The final report was directed more to networking and in this report <URL:http://www.dca.gov.au/toc.htm> it made a number of major recommendation <URL:http://www.dca.gov.au/intro.htm#sar-3> including -
The Expert Group proposes that a National Strategy for New Communications Networks be implemented based on three key elements: education and community access; industry development; and the role of government.
and
The Expert Group recommends that, with the spread of broadband infrastructure, broadband links be provided to all schools, libraries, medical and community centres by the year 2001. The Cooperative Multimedia Centres should also be linked to this network.
In the interim, the Group recommends that schools and libraries be connected to available narrowband digital links for access to information services such as the Internet.
They also made a number of structural recommendations to the Government -
National Information Services Council
The Expert Group recommends that, to provide leadership for the national strategy, the Government establish a National Information Services Council, chaired by the Prime Minister, and in his absence the Minister for Communications and the Arts, and including visionary and informed people drawn from industry, creators, carriers, users, consumers and researchers.
Ministerial Committee on National Information Services
The Expert Group recommends that the Government establish a Ministerial Committee on National Information Services, to be chaired by the Minister for Communications and the Arts, with membership including the Ministers for Finance, Industry, Science and Technology, Consumer Affairs, and Employment, Education and Training. The Committee would have responsibility for coordination of policy across the relevant sectors, including government use of networks.
<HREF:http://www.dca.gov.au/intro.htm#sar-3>
ASTEC
The ASTEC enquiry was established to -
(i) Examine Australia's requirements for national research data networks, including their use by universities, government research organisations, education and industry.
(ii) Examine the role of research data networks in providing data services for the wider community (including international developments) and the means of providing services.
(iii) Recommend appropriate actions that could be taken by the Commonwealth Government.
<URL:http://astec.gov.au/astec/net_nation/terms.hml>
The motivation behind this enquiry might well have owed more to some controversy relating to the degree of Government funding to AARNet as much as long term needs in network capacity.
Although directed to research needs it still said -
ASTEC recommends that the Minister for Industry, Science and Technology and other relevant Ministers promote and fund the use of global electronic information and communication services in selected programs, including the AusIndustry and BusinessLink initiatives, to three particular ends:

to facilitate better technology diffusion, especially to small and medium-sized enterprises,
including improved interaction between such enterprises and the research community;
to broaden industry and commercial access to national and international markets, including
programs aimed at the export of Australian electronic network resources and services;
to stimulate Australian industrial research and development in the generation of new
electronic network services.
<URL:http://astec.gov.au/astec/net_nation/reccomendations.html>
and its report <URL:http://astec.gov.au/astec/net_nation/contents.html> is available from the ASTEC server <URL:http://astec.gov.au/astec.html> as is a summary of the Governments responses to its recommendations <URL:http://astec.gov.au/astec/net_nation/response.html >. As a source of policy advice it was not sucessful as its central recommendation for a consortium to run the network was rejected.

Information Technology Review Group
Within the wider context of Information technology the Commonwealth was addressing matters of policy and the Minister for Finance commissioned a study by the Information Technology Review Group - Clients First: the challenge for Government information technology which reported on 1 March this year. <URL:http://www.nla.gov.au/finance/itreview/final/itrg-tc.html>
This report recommended the creation of a post of Chief Information Officer for government which was accepted.
Ground up coordination
There is a rapidly increasing amount of Government information on the internet as Governments get on to the bandwagon of the "Information Superhighway" with the hope of electoral payoffs and also use the potential of the network to delivery service information and useful social infrastructure. Due to the importance of the Government sector it is worth spending a bit of time on it.
Use of the net has been pushed both from the top and the bottom.
CSIWP
Within Government at the level of officials has endeavoured to provide further coordination -
The Government Telecommunications and Technology Conference (GTTC) established the Commonwealth State Internet Working Party (CSIWP) in September 1994 to develop a consistent approach across the Governments of Australia for the presentation and placement of Government information on public networks such as the AARNet/Internet.
They hoped to provide a one stop shop for Government information -
To facilitate access and the organisation of Government information, the CSIWP has developed an official hierarchical information framework which, at its highest level, is based on a Whole-of-Government Entry Point
<URL:http://www.nla.gov.au/finance/csiwp/>
Although they opted for this to be provided by the National Library <URL:http://www.nla.gov.au/oz/gov/>, the Office of Government Information and Advertising has also set up the "Official Signpost to the Australian Government ..." <URL:http://www.ogia.gov.au/> which seems to compete with the National Library. With greater reliance on graphics and photographs of ministers this seems to have been more successful at attracting politicians and Keating has a page there <URL:http://gov.info.au/pm/pmhp.html>.
CWISP appears to be quite active in trying to improve communication between the various levels of Government with respect to internet use and have published guidelines for this <URL:http://www.nla.gov.au/finance/csiwp/guide.html>
Commonwealth Internet Reference Group - CIRG
Within the Commonwealth Public Service the Commonwealth Internet Reference Group is an informal group of officials which promotes the use of the internet. It has done a survey of Australian Government Internet and Electronic Information Projects <URL:http://www.nla.gov.au/finance/csiwp/cirg/contents.html> which, although now dated, provides an interesting detailed look at departmental activity. It would benefit from being updated.
Formal Commonwealth policy
The Government has made a succession of policy statements which have been well documented by the National Library <URL:http://www.nla.gov.au/lis/govnii.html>. The first of these was the seminal Creative Nation statement by the Prime Minister last year.
Prime Minister's Creative Nation statement
The statement <URL:http://www.nla.gov.au/creative.nation/contents.html> in Oct 94 covered a much wider sphere rather than the network but central to it was the concept that content was the driving force and that the were economic benefits to be obtained from its sale. Some thing that rest uneasily with the traditional culture of the internet. The Prime Minister said -
But it is content which is absolutely critical: it is what we put onto the highway that really matters.
Australian content development industries already generate domestic revenues in the order of $8.4 billion and we have considerable strengths in areas relevant to the creation of interactive multi-media products. We have a strong and innovative film and television industry, recognised software skills an a long tradition of innovation and entrepreneurial endeavour.
However, if we are to create a market for Australian content both at home and abroad, we must make a fundamental conceptual shift to this new form of information packaging and presentation. In response to this, the Government has moved quickly to re-assess traditional policy settings across government.
After this lead up I found it a let down to have the main direction to be targeted to CDROM multimedia production. He further said -
Against this background, the Government has decided to take five specific and complementary measures costing $84 million over a four-year period. They are:
the creation of the Australian Multi-media Enterprise;
the establishment of Cooperative Multi-media Development Centres;
the initiation of a series of national Multi-media Forums;
the commissioning of CD-ROMs involving material from our major cultural institutions for
Australian schools under the Australia on CD program; and
specific assistance to foster our film agencies' move into multi-media.

Although later a more general support for networked information was expressed.-
Access to information for all Australians is an important element of Commonwealth cultural policy.
Information is a key resource for all Australians - for full participation in our society, and for our quality of life. The Government will continue to work with the States to ensure that existing information resources and the new networking technologies are widely available.
The Government will work with the States to enable the resources in libraries throughout the nation to become available to all.
This set the scene for the far more wide ranging statements of April.
April 6 statements
On April 6 1995 the Government made a series of major statements establishing further details of its networking strategy. The main statement was by the Prime Minister with supporting statements from four other ministers.

The Prime Minister announced " A National Strategy for Information and Communications Services and Technologies <URL:http://www.nla.gov.au/oz/gov/press/pm0495.html> and said -
To achieve this, we will establish an Ad Hoc Committee of Cabinet, which I will chair, which will consider the development of a national strategy on information and communications networks and services.
We will also establish a high level policy body within government, reporting to the Ad Hoc Committee of Cabinet through the Minister for Communications and the Arts. This body will provide advice on broad national policy issues, and also identify matters for discussion by government, industry and the community.
He also announced a new peak policy body -
I have established the National Information Services Council under the auspices of this peak body.
The National Information Services Council will be a high level discussion forum for broad policy issues, providing industry and community input into the Government's consideration of the issues.
This body was appointed in June <URL:http://www.nla.gov.au/oz/gov/press/pm6395.html> and first met on the 10th August <URL:http://www.nla.gov.au/oz/gov/press/pmnisc.html> and its papers were published on the network the next day <URL:http://www.nla.gov.au/pmc/nisc/aug95/nisc1.html>
To coordinate the operation of Government within this area the Prime Minister went on to say -
An important part of any national strategy will be addressing the Government's own use of communication services and technologies. We have decided to establish a Government Information Services Policy Board to coordinate a user-driven whole-of-government approach to the Government's use of these important services and networks. This Board will be chaired by a new position of Chief Government Information Officer in the Finance portfolio, and supported by an Office of Government Information Technology.
In this statement he refers to initiatives which were expanded in statements by his ministers.
Simon Crean, the Minister for Employment, Education and Training announced the establishment of the Australia Education Network (later Education network Australia- EdNA) <URL:http://www.nla.gov.au/oz/gov/press/crean0495.html>
Peter Baldwin, Minister for Social Security, statement entitled All Australian to Have Access to Information Technology announced the creation of a Community Information network (CIN) to provide access to networked services for the disadvantaged. <URL:http://www.nla.gov.au/oz/gov/press/baldwin0495.html>
Kim C. Beazley, Minister for Finance, in a statement entitled Government to Lead the IT Revolution " announced the establishment of the Chief information Officer position and the Office of Government Information Technology <URL:http://www.nla.gov.au/oz/gov/press/beazley0495.html>. Mr Andy Macdonald, who held a similar post in the Government of Canada was appointed to this post in June <URL:http://www.nla.gov.au/finance/ogit/pr2695.html>
Senator Peter Cook the Minister for Industry, Science and Technology announced a further ASTEC study to -
undertake an assessment of the adequacy of Australia's science base to contribute to the development of information and communication services and technologies.
<URL:http://www.nla.gov.au/oz/gov/press/cook0495.html>
All this policy activity generated a considerable amount of debate on the network. This was strongly fuelled by suspicions of undue influence that Microsoft may have had on the Government and a perceived lack of experience or knowledge within the Public Service of the internet. This is typified by the debates which took place on the "link" network policy email conference run by the author and Eric Wainwright at the National Library <URL:http://online.anu.edu.au/mail-archives/link/>
National Information Services Council
The first meeting of the Council was held just as the paper was completed and their has been no time to absorb the content. The papers have been published by the National Library on the network <URL:http://www.nla.gov.au/pmc/nisc/aug95/nisc1.html> and can be inspected there.
Major Government Information Programs
The groups mentioned in this ection and the policy bodies described about are shon in the following diagram.

EdNA
In announcing the intention to set up this network Simon Crean announced -
For the first time Australia will have a network which will link all schools, TAFEs and universities and other education and training providers across the nation, as well as internationally through a service network and modern technology for interactive communication
<URL:http://www.nla.gov.au/oz/gov/press/crean495.html>
Those of us who had been using AARNet for the last four years considered there was some hyperbole in this statement.
His Department (DEET) from it's server has now given further details of how this service will operate and some basic information on how a tender will be let for the service. They stated -
A number of principles have been set out to guide the process of establishing a national network service. Key principles include the following:

The service must offer national coverage.
The service must, over time, provide a vehicle for convergence of
current networking initiatives, including, for example, Open Net.
The service should meets the needs of all sectors, school,
vocational education and training (VET), further education and
higher education.
The service should be fully accessible
individuals and institutional users should be able to access
the service at affordable rates regardless of location.
all mainstream reception infrastructure should be able to
access the service.

<URL:http://www.deet.gov.au/edna/estbmsg2.htm>
This was very reassuring to those who had the impression from press reports that the the Government was going to be so fooolish as to use a proprietry technology such as Microsoft Network. On-going documentation for announcements on EdNA are available through press releases mounted on the DEET server and can be inspected there. <URL:http://www.deet.gov.au/edna/presrels.htm>
OpenNet
OpenNet describes itself as -
OPEN NET was established late in 1994 with a Federal Government mandate to bring modern electronic infrastructure to open learning.
OPEN NET's board is chaired by Brian Johns, leader of the Broadband Services Expert Group, whose recent report is a blueprint for the nation's network future.
OPEN NET provides a local call access to the Internet and World Wide Web, supported by a Help Desk and Local Access Points.
Educational providers from schools, TAFE, universities and business are bringing their courses on-line.
<URL:http://www.opennet.net.au/profile>
It will be interesting to see how a body established to deliver educational services across the network will fare. The technology will rapidly come within the reach of any educational organisation wishing to project their course information remotely via the network in competition with OpenNet and each other. Many universities are already doing this internally and on the net there is no distance.

The Community Information Network -CIN
The Minister for Social Security, Mr Peter Baldwin, set down the principles under which CIN would operate -
Over the next few months I will be examining options for a National Community Information Network (CIN) which will link a range of community facilities around Australia, including libraries and community organisations, into a public computer network. I will take a submission to Cabinet in August concerning its implementation.
This schedule seems to have slipped to later in the year. He also said -

The network will provide access to information and communication facilities such as e-mail and bulletin boards to people who do not have a computer
As a first step in this process the Government is establishing the Community Information Network (CIN) which will soon be operating in selected sites, to provide public access to these emerging new technologies.
<URL:http://www.nla.gov.au/oz/gov/press/baldwin0495.html>p> CIN is now set up and can be accessed from the network as well as from the trial sites <URL:http://www.cin.gov.au/>. The Department has now held further deployment pending a evaluation of progress so far. The need for community access to the services that are to be provided by EdNA and access to CIN from within EdNA seems to have cause some reconsideration of how these services are to be deployed.
The deployment of CIN could have been handled more sensibly. The use of a new operating system still in test (Windows95) running on discarded 386 PCs which lack the capacity to do justice to this OS ensured that the service would repond slowly and would be more difficulty to support. Id did however make the initial experiment cheaper to mount and this may have been to rationale.
A key concern for any service provided by government must be access to objectionable material, however defined, and how to avoid community distress and political backlash. The government appears to have gone through some extreme contortions to examine this issue setting up no less than three studies of the problem -

Department of Communication and the Arts. Report on the Regulation of Computer Bulletin Board Systems, 8 August 1994 <URL:http://www.dca.gov.au/bulletin_board/report.htm>
Consultation paper on the Regulation of On-Line Information Services, 7 JULY 1995 <URL:http://www.dca.gov.au/paper_2.html>
ABA to investigate content of On-Line services, 8 August 1995 <URL:http://www.dca.gov.au/media_files/abarel.htm>
Ultimately, they will have to accept that placing controls on material transmitted over networks, is more akin technically to controlling what is said on the telephone than it is to what is printed in a newspaper. Any policy should recognise this otherwise it will not only appear foolish but be ineffective.
GEMS
The Government Electronic Marketplace Service <URL:http://caspa.das.gov.au/GEMS/GemsHome.html> is provided by Purchasing Australia within the Department of Administrative Services and is
an electronic information service that offers both buyers and suppliers purchasing advice, policy information and tender opportunities via the Internet.
<URL:http://caspa.das.gov.au/GEMS/general/geninfo.html>
Telecentres
The Department of Primary Industries and Energy maintain a network of rural telecentres for rural workers. These predate discussion of the use of internet technology and their future will be interesting. the wider deployment of the internet via CIN and EdNA may well eliminate the need for them or change the rationale for their operation.
"Private" programs
While Government has been very active in pushing networking technology a number of areas have provided some assistance in mounting material.
Two major projects are mentioned here.
The Australia National University through it's pastime project has mounted over 20 years of Parliamentary proceedings and other material for the Commonwealth Parliament although only the current year is available to the public <URL:http://pastime.anu.edu.au>. This trial is currently under evaluation
The University of Technology in Sydney and University of New South Wales have mounted the complete Commonwealth consolidated legislation although apparently the Attorney General's Department is not supplying updating information to them. <URL:http://austlii.law.uts.edu.au/au/legis/cth/>
Within the realm or a "private" endeavour is the "link" electronic conference hosted at ANU which has provided a public forum, for a number of years, to actively discuss policies for the development of network information service . This list now has a widespread membership drawn from all levels government, the media, education and politics. It has provided a forum for ideas to be aired and policy proposals to be disseminated and discussed. This is an open mailing list and subscriptions can be placed by emailing the message "subscribe link" to majordomo@www.anu.edu.au.

Conclusions
In the last year there has been a complete reversal of the Commonwealth Government's attitude to the internet. The pressure for this seems to have come from two levels. At the political level, Ministers have recognised that a major new communications medium is unfolding and that its use and deployment would be seen to be progressive step. This it typified by Justin Gile Clark's paper at AUSWEB95 Yes Minister, It's on that Web thing <URL:http://www.scu.edu.au/ausweb95/papers/future/giles-clark/>. As a federal election is due soon we can expect a flurry of new superhighway announcements towards the end of the year.
There can still be concern that key policy makers continue to see CIN, EdNA and the internet as separate networks and that somehow and for some reason information can and should be isolated into separate categories for which the technology for access differs. It is still an error into which we could fall. We did so last century. It was called the "broken gauge" problem. Hopefully we will not do it again as the results this time would be more serious. The internet is the standard gauge of our age.
At the public service level individual enthusiasts within Government have driven the deployment of WWW bottom up, typified by the work of those associated with CSIWP. It is likely that it was the senior management level within the public service which provided some brake on development although currently there seem to be less of that.
What does seem to be unusual and very welcome is that public debate on the deployment of the network is being actively aided by policy material being published on the network via WWW, often at the same time or earlier than it is made available in paper form. Much of this is due to the work of the National Library which has been prepared to put resources into finding and making available such material as they see that the future of libraries will be involved with electronic material as much as paper.
Electronic publishing via WWW is not being seen as an "extra" component of public debate about the network and the deployment of services but as a vital component of it and this is clearly a sign of what is to come.
I am indebted to members of the link email list for a number of suggestions which have improved this paper. Errors however are mine.
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