Crispin Hull

Computer users are untying themselves from the desk.

The independent International Data Corporation reports sales of notebooks and laptops grew almost twice as fast a desk-tops in the past year.

Australian sales of mobiles went from 90,000 in 1992 to 129,000 last year _ a 45 per cent growth. Total value was $413 million and the 1994 projection is $500 million.

Toshiba headed the list with 21 per cent, with Compaq closing fast at 18 per cent and Apple third at 15 per cent.
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The public sector is doing better at “”sticking to its knitting” than the private sector, according to a survey by accountants Ernst and Young on “”outsourcing” information technology.

Outsourcing is management jargon for getting others to do what you do not specialise in yourself _ sticking to your knitting. Thus accountants should contract the cleaning to someone else, rather than hire their own people to clean.

The survey showed nearly 40 per cent of government organisations were outsourcing over half their IT services, compared to only 15 per cent of the private sector.

Public-sector managers cited better service delivery and a means to access technology as the reason; private-sector managers citied cost and the reason for not doing so.
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There are any number of programs to help you find a data file. ISYS, the Find File on Word, Windows File Manager, Norton Utilities, X-Tree and so on.

But what about graphics files?

What if you have images created by several different programs, clip art and faxed and scanned images all over the hard disk? How can you find what you want, when you want it?

An Australian company, Softword Publishing Pty Ltd, has come up with ThumbsPlus which goes through the hard disk, grabs a thumb nail of each graphics file and annotates it for size, dates and location.
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If it is introduced by the Assembly it will break new ground for democratic processes in Australia,” she said.

The move towards citizens’ initiated referendums was a welcome one, but such complex and landmark legislation should be dealt with in detail by a committee, she said. Her fellow independent Michael Moore had indicated a willingness to chair the committee. It should report back before the last sitting of the year so it could be dealt with before the election.
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The age of government paper-shuffling is drawing to a close.

The Australian Government Publishing Service announced last week a major electronic publishing development and there are signs of greater E-mail use in government and greater public demands on government to accept e-mail as a standard way of doing business.

The AGPS announced it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Canberra-based SoftLaw Corporation for electronic publishing within government.

At present most departments have four or five critical internal-use publications which are forever being updated. They are usually one or more Acts of Parliament, some regulations, a set of head of department’s instructions and perhaps a manual or two on how the department administers its Acts.
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The new seat, made necessary because the ACT’s population had grown faster than the national average, was carved out of the two existing seats, Fraser and Canberra, which at the last election were had the most (94,000) and second-most (90,000) electors in Australia.

The two existing seats were safe Labor seats, but it was thought that the new seat might be a possibility for the Liberals if the carve up was right because some of the inner south suburbs of the affluent and well-heeled are more likely to vote Liberal.

Last week the electoral redistribution committee for the ACT published its proposed names and boundaries for the new seats. Objectors have until July 27 to lodge an objection. Objections will be considered by an augmented committee.
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Schools are in danger of being by-passed by the information super-highway, according to Apple’s managing director in Australia, Steve Vamos.

He identified the need for more and better hardware, attitude changes, resolution of copyright issues, ease of use and reasonable costs if schools were to benefit from the IT revolution.

Computer ratios of one in 10 or 20 students were not enough, he said. Students needed individual access and access out of school hours and beyond the school walls. Otherwise the information highway would pass Australians schools by.

“”Many schools still cannot share information between classes, let alone between districts or countries,” he told the “”Information Highway and Australian Schools” conference in Sydney last week.

Beyond hardware, though, he warned that information overload could be a problem.
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The electronic law market is about to get more competitive and better for consumers.

Lawyers and others who use Commonwealth statutes and case reports are likely to be beneficiaries of a government project designed to bring the law to the people.

The Attorney-General’s Department has put its Scale service into Australian Government Publishing Service shops for people to browse Commonwealth statutes, regulations and court judgments for nothing. There will be a formal opening of the service soon (when the pollies come back from the winter break most likely).

However, SCALE is virtually unusable by the new generation of computer users who demand point-and-click. The department has let a tender to put a friendly Windows, Mac and DOS face on it so ordinary mortals can find the law on cheques, social security, native title or whatever.
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Townhouse development in Old Red Hill should be stopped, a heritage consultant to the ACT Government, Professor Ken Taylor.

Professor Taylor recommended the Territory Plan be amended with the aim of protecting Old Red Hill’s cultural heritage significance.

Some residents welcomed the report yesterday but were concerned that the Heritage Council’s draft citation based on the report was vague and could permit townhouses and multi-resident dwellings.
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The Territory Plan, which became law late last year, has changed the fabric of residential land tenure in the ACT: the market, development opportunities and residential amenity.

Initially, the plan was greeted with silent acclaim by developers and ostrich-like apathy by all but a few residents.

Before the plan, land uses were fairly rigid. People in single-dwelling areas could, by and large, expect the housing profile of their suburb to stay the same. People were more worried about vacant land being built upon than by existing houses being demolished for units.

The Territory Plan changes that. It allows existing single-dwelling blocks to become two-storey multiple-dwelling blocks and for the title to be divided. Everywhere in the ACT. The only limit was to meet footprint criteria, including set-back and plot ratios.
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