Huge bungle coming up

This will cost billions and may never work properly. When will they ever learn?

The Queensland Government is beginning a massive technology transformation program following a whirlwind tour of some of the major technology providers in the US. A four-person delegation led by Information and Communications Technology Minister Robert Schwarten visited Seattle, San Francisco, Texas and Toronto and met representatives from tech heavyweights Dell, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and Google. The trip was to assist the design and implementation of the Technology Transformation Project, aimed at consolidating storage and network services across state government departments.

The project will make the Government's IT services arm, Citec, the central provider of government technology infrastructure and services. The work is being done in three phases: the foundation infrastructure project (FIP), the consolidation management project (CMP) and the application rationalisation project (ARP). The Department of Public Works has started the FIP, which will consolidate almost 60 data centres and servers in just three data centres with tier three redundancy. The Government has leased 2300sqm of floor space at the newly built Polaris Data Centre in Brisbane and expects to move into it early next year.

The ARP, which will standardise management of all agencies' technology platforms, is being piloted in public works, and five other agencies have expressed interest in being part of the next phase of the project. TTP is expected to be completed by July 2010.

Mr Schwarten said findings from the US trip would help deliver new e-government services announced by Premier Anna Bligh earlier this year as part of the Q2 initiative. Applications include hospital patient systems, traffic congestion modelling and analysing systems, and managing student performance in schools. "The technology we have looked at has enormous appeal for a citizenry that wants to remain connected," Mr Schwarten said. "We want people online, not in line, in the next generation. "The decisions we made previously about shared services and the rationalisation and consolidation of systems are underpinning the future direction of providing more e-government services."

The Government is also close to deciding how to strengthen the role of the state chief information officer, particularly enabling greater authority over agencies' technology governance. That position would certainly become a very senior one, Mr Schwarten said. "That's something I'm about to go in 10 minutes to a discussion with the Premier," he said. " We are certainly going to go ahead with the establishment of that position being a very senior role."

Source






School science curriculum to be further watered down

The kids are going to get vague generalizations and warm feelings instead of knowledge

The traditional school science subjects of biology, physics and chemistry will disappear until the senior years of school under a draft national science curriculum that proposes teaching "science for life". The curriculum, released yesterday, proposes one science course through to Year 10 in which students will explore the big ideas of science, drawing on knowledge from the three traditional disciplines. In the senior years of 11 and 12, the draft proposes three common courses in physics, chemistry and biology, and suggests a fourth more general science course with an emphasis on the applications of science.

The draft is a fundamental shift in the approach to teaching science, away from a focus on facts to fostering students' own inquiries and experiments. It argues that a science curriculum should develop science competencies, give students an understanding of the big ideas, expose them to a range of science experiences relevant to everyday life, and give them an understanding of the major concepts from the sciences. "It is also acknowledged that there is a core body of knowledge and understanding that is fundamental to the understanding of major ideas," it says.

The author of the draft, science education professor Denis Goodrum of Canberra University, said the major challenge of a national science curriculum was to engage and interest students by linking science to their everyday lives. "What we have to do within our curriculum is marry contemporary issues with underlying basic science," he said. Professor Goodrum said the curriculum was not simply to train future scientists but had to provide all students with the scientific skills and knowledge to understand the voltage in their homes or complex issues such as climate change. "Surely a lawyer should have a better understanding of scientific principles in a rich way, just as a medical doctor or a businessman or social worker," he said. "All these areas have a social scientific dimension which is important."

The proposal to drop the traditional disciplines was supported by science education professor at Flinders University, Martin Westwell, who said the advances in science happened at the boundaries where the disciplines intersected. Professor Westwell said the only place where people studied or practised biology, physics and chemistry was in universities. "If you ask a professional scientist what their speciality is, they don't identify as a physicist, biologist or chemist but as a neuroscientist or other," he said. "If you push them, they'll tell you the name that was over the door of the faculty where they did their degree."

Professor Westwell said learning scientific facts and knowledge was fundamental, but had to be balanced with teaching scientific concepts and inquiries. "Perhaps there's been an overemphasis on the stuff taught in science rather than learning about science, about some of the big ideas," he said.

Professor Goodrum said contemporary issues should be included in the curriculum as a way of providing a meaningful context to students, such as cloning, stem cell research, global warming, water conservation and recycling, and hybrid cars.

The draft curriculum blames science curriculums of the past for being too full of content, which students memorise rather than understand, for turning students off the subject. The draft proposes science education start in early childhood, with children's play used to develop an awareness of their world through observation and using their senses. In primary school, the curriculum focus is recognising questions that can be investigated scientifically and investigating them.

The big ideas cover order, change, patterns and system, with suggested topics including weather and how clouds form, sound and how it travels, plants and their reproduction, and the night sky covering the stars andplanets. In Years 7 to 10, the curriculum focuses on explaining phenomena involving science and its applications, covering topics from earth and space science, life science and physical science. The big ideas to be studied cover energy, sustainability, equilibrium and interdependence, form and function, evidence, models and theories.

Source





Rudd 'risks rise of dole bludger army'

SWEEPING changes to welfare laws will encourage a "new army of dole bludgers" and make it almost impossible for the unemployed to lose benefits, the Coalition claims. The Opposition has signalled a new battlefield on social security by blasting the Rudd Government over work-for-the-dole reforms.

Bowing to pressure from the welfare lobby, Labor has softened John Howard's "mutual obligation'' laws - which required unemployed people to find work or lose entitlements. Instead of an automatic eight-week suspension of the dole, those failing to turn up for training or work experience will lose a day's pay of $42.98.

The Government argues its more compassionate approach will cut dole queues and better tackle the long-term unemployed. But the Coalition partyroom is this morning expected to vote against the draft welfare changes - signalling a tough battle ahead in the Parliament. Shadow Minister for employment participation, Andrew Southcott, accused the Government of going soft on welfare abusers. He claimed the Coalition's social security compliance program had been watered down "to the point it will be completely ineffective - a hollow facade''. "There are loopholes in this you could drive a truck through. It will not be not be long before we have a new army of dole bludgers,'' Mr Southcott said.

The Minister for Employment Participation Brendan O'Connor said he was "disappointed'' by the Coalition's approach. He claimed the new "no show, no pay'' provisions will be more effective in removing incentives for people to stay on welfare. "If you don't have job seekers looking for work or undertaking training, then they will be on welfare longer,'' Mr O'Connor said.

The Government is puzzled by the Coalition's stance and believe it signals a harder line against its welfare reform agenda. The changes will affect more than 600,000 people who receive the Newstart Allowance, Youth Allowance and some parenting benefits.

The Opposition believes the changes will encourage more people to work in the cash economy and be paid under the counter - rather than register for work. "Deliberately missing a job interview is completely unacceptable and yet the only penalty for this behaviour will be $42.90 for a single person who is unemployed,'' Mr Southcott said. "It will be next to impossible for someone to have their welfare payment quarantined under this system.''

Source






Kyoto treaty 'a waste of time' say half of Australians

Mr Rudd's much-lauded ratification of the Kyoto Protocol has had no beneficial effect on climate change, said 44 per cent of 1122 news.com.au readers. Just 14 per cent of people said Kyoto had helped curb the effects of climate change. Another 41 per cent believed more time was needed before any result was apparent.

The Government is acting on the concerns Australians have about the issue, a spokeswoman for climate change minister Penny Wong says. "The Rudd Government understands that Australians want to tackle climate change and we have set out a plan to do so," the spokeswoman said. "Our plan to tackle climate change has three pillars: reducing carbon pollution, helping to shape a global solution, and adapting to the climate change we can't avoid." A proposed carbon reduction scheme is one of the ways to help fight climate change, she says.

Men are far more likely to be climate change sceptics than women, according to the survey. While 85 per cent of women said there was enough evidence to link human activity to climate change, only 54 per of men agreed. Men were also twice as likely as women to believe Australia's signing of the Kyoto Protocol was of no benefit. About 55 per cent of Australians believed climate change would alter day-to-day life over the next decade, and about half said it was "truly possible" to resolve the issue. Two-thirds of Australians said they took environmental factors into consideration when buying goods.

Source