Carrying out productive, generative and altruistic activities. Everything a computer does now is requested by a user. Whether acting as a typewriter or doing abstruse scientific visualisation it is still only doing things for us. Maintenance and organisation are very low level activities, but for a conscious system very necessary. We still do not have active machine systems which can do this, though many aspects of the task exist.
Independent action is the first real indicator of consciousness.
A system should initiate the task of finding necessary data and modifying code to its own ends. This could be in generating or searching a particular category of information which that other is 'thought' to use themselves. Like finding a book that you know a colleague is interested in. Then there's the purely altruistic action of buying a present for a friend. Also, a system might work independently on a problem so that it can generate useful answers, receiving positive feedback about its usefulness.