From: pte900@jatz.aarnet.edu.au (Peter Elford)
Newsgroups: aus.aarnet
Subject: Re: Uni Research Network Threatened
Date: 16 Dec 1992 23:04:44 GMT
Organization: Australian National University
Distribution: world
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Albert Langer (axl867@huxley.anu.edu.au) wrote:

: AARNet cannot operate effectively with owners who think it is only
: worth employing a couple of staff and who aren't able to organize 
: R&D for upgrading AARNet when a $13M grant is available.

: It's way past time for AARNet client sites to take over from the AVCC and
: second a small fraction of their own computer centre staff to give AARNet 
: a viable organization. Two or three staff is simply absurd and continuing 
: to tolerate this utter stupidity by the AVCC is costing the client sites 
: heavily. Mishandling a $13M R&D grant secured in the budget should be enough
: to focus attention on what to do about the AVCC. 

These are two of the most accurate and relevant paragraphs I ever seen
from Albert (and boy have we seen a lot of paragraphs from Albert!).

I would add an observation that the lack of staffing and a near
total lack of committment to provide a linear increase in funding
to match exponential growth, are both functions of how AARNet is
structured. AARNet is currently "an activity of the AVCC" that is
funded in part by "contributions" from the AVCC members. Decisions
on link upgrades and similar items are made by the collective decision
making process of the Vice Chancellors [ I don't know about you, but
when Vice Chancellors start uttering words like "FastPac" and "Megalink"
I get very nervous - they should never be exposed to such things ].

I am told the AVCC is considered the single most powerful lobby
group in Canberra. I (personally) don't believe it is the right
organisation to operate a value added network service.

The only way this will change is by convincing the *Vice Chancellors* 
(not the AVCC which is just a representative body) that they should
in some way get out of the networking business. It is unlikely this
will happen unless the Vice Chancellors start to receive some feedback
on what is happening (why should they change something they never hear
anything but good reports about ???). I might also note that a whole
bunch of network and system managers winging will not be looked upon
favourably by the average Vice Chancellor (the computing people always
want more money - never do anything useful with it).

The voices that matter within the university sector are the research
and academic staff, and their *traditional* support services such as
libraries. If anything is going to bring about change it will be heads
of research schools complaining that they are loosing a competitive
research edge because they cannot collaborate with their peers overseas
(I had such a conversation yesterday - *extremely depressing*). It
will be libraries indicating they are moving to increase their use
of the network and thus expect it to deliver a high quality of service.
It will be academic staff complaining they cannot deliver distance
education services.

I cannot reach these people from where I sit ... 

--
Peter Elford,                             e-mail: P.Elford@aarnet.edu.au
Network Co-ordinator                      phone: +61 6 249 3542
Australian Academic Research Network      fax:   +61 6 249 1369
c/o, Computer Services Centre             pager: +61 6 245 3035
Australian National University            post: GPO Box 1142     
Canberra, AUSTRALIA                             Canberra ACT 2601
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