Forum Co-chairs
Prof. Rodney J. Clarke, University of Wollongong, NSW
Dr. Sander Zwanenburg, Curtin University, WA
John James, University of Wollongong, NSW
Purpose
ACIS is an opportunity to get all of the thought leaders in our community at one event. Introduced this year at ACIS is the IS Disciplinary Forum. The aim of this forum is to use the opportunity provided by the conference, to mobilise our academic community to foreground issues, circumstances and possibilities and that have an impact on our discipline and our tertiary education institutions. The emphasis is on identifying those issues, circumstances and possibilities particularly as they relate to policy. The forum has two aims, to consolidate and communicate policy priorities sourced from the academic IS community itself and also implementing these insights in order to support, develop and promote the Australasian IS Community.
This forum is supported by all of the major associations that have a stake in Information Systems in this part of the world- the Australasian Association for Information Systems (AAIS), the Professors and Heads of Information Systems, New Zealand (PHISNZ) and the Australian Computing Society (ACS).
For the first time this year, the AAIS is developing an opportunity at ACIS to discuss issues of importance to us as a discipline and profession, especially those issues that have a policy dimension, while attempting to involve as many voices in the IS academics and IS professionals as possible.
Part A: Crowdsourcing Questions (Prior to the Conference): A virtual meeting will be conducted in late August/early Sept with the purpose of crowdsourcing questions considered by academic participants to be critical to the sector and discipline. The purpose of this meeting is to identify keys issues of interest to the IS Community and to rank them in terms of importance. An invitation will be sent out on the Community Lists (IS-AUS and IS-HODS) announcing the event as a whole. Extended abstracts are requested from contributors with espoused positions on questions that emerge at the virtual meeting. Examples of questions might be, ‘government changing regulations on overseas students’, ‘university executive mismanagement and potential government inquiries’ or the ‘disruptive role of AI in the sector’ etc.
Part B: IS Disciplinary Forum (At the Conference): Conducted at the ACIS Conference, the crowdsourced questions will be fleshed out arguments and positions will be explored. The forum will have elements of a large-scale group facilitation session. Issues and Arguments will be identified. Courses of action will be discussed. We will record the discussions and in real time build mind-maps for each of the discussion questions.
Part C: Policy Formation (After the Conference): Post-conference and after further consultation from colleagues, one or more policy documents will be drafted and made available digitally. In this way, the discipline can form up policy that effects positive change for the Australasian IS Community. The purpose of Part C is to consolidate the discussions into a draft green paper eventually leading to a white paper, to be published in our own AAIS Preprint service (also about to be launched latter this year) and available to the community at large.The AAIS Executive undertakes to directly use the findings published in the whitepaper to help shape its policy directions and activities.
The AAIS Executive undertakes to directly use the findings published in the whitepaper to help shape its policy directions and activities.