Submission

Submission to the Broadband Services Expert Group, April 1994

Preamble

The National Library of Australia is a statutory authority which provides a range of library and information services to organisations and individuals throughout Australia. It has provided computer based services through communication networks since the mid-1970's, and currently operates the Australian Bibliographic Network and OZLINE services to more than 1,300 organisations, including all Australian universities, State and Territory libraries and a large number of other organisations in both the public and private sectors.

Introduction

While the Library has been a long-time user of on-line data base services located both in Australia and overseas, as well as being a data base provider itself, it has been heavily influenced in its current thinking by its most recent experiences with the Internet.

Over the past three or four years, the Internet, with AARNet as its Australian arm, has become the de facto global communication network for a very large number of people and organisations (presently estimated at around 20 million, with a growth rate at around 8% per month, i.e. doubling in size approximately every 9 to 10 months). The Internet reflects its origins in the United States research community, with the USA still comprising a high proportion of total network use, but the growth rate is relatively higher outside the USA. In the USA, the Internet has changed character significantly during the past two years. The network now extends well beyond its original government research and academic communities into the government sector generally, and into the commercial sector. Already the majority of networks connected to the Internet are commercial, and the Internet carries a large volume of traffic which is commercial in nature, or involves the link of commercial and non-commercial organisations, reflecting the increasing inter-working of private and public organisations in a modern mixed economy.

The remainder of this submission is organised against the Section headings in the January 1994 Discussion Paper of the Broadband Services Expert Group

Nature of, and Demand for, Broadband Services

It is our view that the Commonwealth Government must plan for all Australians to use the public data network for services delivered digitally to both homes and places of work, for a combination of entertainment, information and transaction purposes, as well as through a variety of publicly accessible terminals. This may be regarded as a natural extension of Government policies over many years in relation to voice telephone, television and radio access. The Library is not able to comment with any authority on the likely development of broadcast-type services such as interactive television, high definition television and digital radio, nor entertainment services such as interactive multi-media, video on demand and home shopping and banking. (These appear, however, to be well covered in the recent Work in Progress Paper No. 1 of the Communications Futures Project. Emerging Communications Services : an Analytical Framework. Bureau of Transport and Communications Economics, March 1994). We consider however that the Expert Group should be careful about extrapolating North American experience into the Australian marketplace. Australia's free to air television is generally of higher transmission quality than in North America, where much of the investment in cable television has been to enable homes to have a quality signal, for which home users have been prepared to pay. The market for HDTV and digital radio will be heavily dependent on the price of such services. With a very large number of Australians living in the capital cities and major regional centres, and a more limited tradition of home delivery services, we consider that demand for home shopping services may be limited, while home banking is also likely to have a very slow takeup, as most transactions either involve cash transfers or require the printout of information, both of which are difficult to provide in the home, and are rapidly becoming available through EFTPOS and ATMs.

The Internet

We consider that the potential for the medium term is best illustrated by recent experience in relation to the Internet and its Australian arm AARNet. The Internet is in our view important not because of its particular protocol structure (as an open systems alternative to OSI), but because it illustrates what occurs when an open network enables global two-way connectivity and interworking of high demand applications. In Australia, the use of the Internet (i.e. those networks interconnected through common use of the TCP/IP protocols for a variety of inter-operating purposes) is still dominated by academic and research organisations, in particular those large universities that have invested early in campus networking, permitting many academic staff to connect to the wider network. This reflects the fact that AARNet has been the only national TCP/IP network, and has been owned by the universities through the company established by the Australian Vice-Chancellor's Committee. Changes in policy by the AARNet Board have radically affected the ability of other organisations to connect to AARNet over the past 18 months or so. This has allowed:

  • Commercial retailing of Internet services by organisations such as Pegasus and Connect.com
  • Similar services by public access groups such as APANA and AUUG
  • Gradual connection of most state and territory government departments and agencies through gateways between state government computing networks and AARNet
  • A variety of other organisations, such as the National Library, other federal government departments and agencies, and a range of commercial organisations to connect to the Internet

Effectively, AARNet policy now allows any organisation to connect, subject to agreement on a price which is based on the speed of interconnection (but will move progressively to a volume-based charging mechanism from July 1994). Although, progress on wider interconnection has sometimes been slow - the National Library has for example only reached agreement in March 1994 on connecting the 1,300 members of its own Australian Bibliographic Network (ABN) to AARNet - AARNet's overall growth rate has been very fast, in line with the Internet as a whole. AARNet thus serves at present as the general Australian arm of the Internet, and its policies effectively control Australian access to the Internet. In part this is due to the very high costs of connecting any Australian network to the interconnection exchange (FIX-West) on the west coast of the USA. This has been a significant inhibitor for any other organisation, even if it were prepared to establish a TCP/IP network connecting, say, all Australian state capitals, from arranging its own links to the USA. Given the volume of Australian network traffic, it could be argued that it is not sensible commercially to duplicate such links. Consequently, AARNet currently is the research data network for Australia. But at the same time, AARNet is also the general purpose wide area network carrier for a large number of organisations. Through its "affiliate member" program, AARNet already receives a significant and growing proportion of its revenue from other than universities. For example, the National Library links to organisations both in Australia and overseas through AARNet, and many of the largest customers of the Australian Bibliographic Network (ABN) link to the National Library services through AARNet. It is therefore already apparent that to call AARNet a "research data network" (as implied by the current ASTEC Inquiry), except in the widest possible meaning of the word "research", is a misnomer. In practice, the success of AARNet and the Internet (indeed the phenomenal success of an enterprise which has doubled in size each year since establishment) can be attributed to the fact it has delivered the interoperability and connectivity facilities that most people want. These include the ability to

  • exchange ideas with colleagues. E-mail is often thought of as a relatively "low-level" function of the Internet. In fact, the facilities of current mailing software include the multi-media attachment capabilities of MIME which allow the incorporation of other texts, sound, and still and moving images within e-mail messages. E-mail use has in our experience had a significant effect on the rate of advance, not in research and development, but in the more mundane application of new technologies to practice. An idea produced in one part of the globe can, with the aid of cross linked discussion groups, be taken up by literally hundreds if not thousands of others within days
  • share ideas with and receive feedback from groups through a variety of conferencing and discussion group techniques. Cross-linking of groups enables rapid feedback in the interplay of ideas, including from people originally unknown to the ideas' originators, thus creating new research linkages (N.B. This is particularly important for Australia, which is remote from most of the major development centres of the world)
  • obtain much information delivered automatically and conveniently to one's own office or home workstation (as with a subscription to a printed newspaper or journal but generally more targeted to information sources of particular interest) through electronic journal and newsletter subscriptions, and membership of discussion groups
  • with the aid of an increasing number of sophisticated retrieval devices such as Gopher, World Wide Web and WAIS, search and retrieve information in an ever expanding range of databases (free and for payment) accessible through the Internet, and download the results immediately to one's own workstation (again a significant improvement in convenience and at a very low distribution cost)
  • allow collaborative work on databases, texts, etc. by colleagues widely separated geographically without the need to meet regularly in person, thus saving time and funds
  • allow the sharing of specialised and very expensive computer based manipulation facilities, e.g. super-computer processing for modelling purposes, by researchers in institutions that could never afford to duplicate such facilities

(The AARNet submission will no doubt have provided details of the relative extent and growth in use of Internet functions.) Since these capabilities are so much in demand by almost all individuals, certainly those in employment in government and business organisations, it may be expected that the explosive growth in demand for such services will continue for the medium term. The Internet has demonstrated that current technologies allow them to be provided at very low cost. In the Library's view, all federal, state and local government bodies, plus all but perhaps the smallest businesses, are likely to want Internet type connectivity in the medium term, simply for the functions listed above. But it is also our view that growth will be fuelled from now on by an increasing range of applications requiring higher bandwidths than at present, where traffic mostly involves the transfer of text.

  • There is now a very rapid deployment of World Wide Web servers and clients which enable global hypertext links and the transfer of multi-media such as sound and images. As individuals acquire the higher level work stations with the software capabilities to receive sound and video, then multi-media transfers are becoming commonplace
  • The multicasting facilities being developed on the Mbone are in their infancy. The capability to selectively broadcast material to targeted machines is likely to be in heavy demand by business, education and academic/research communities
  • The use of the MIME extensions to the Internet electronic mail protocols will lead to much larger multi-formatted documents being transmitted as part of every day mail
  • Internet use for combined e-mail/fax transmission is only in its infancy. Once the fax transmission capabilities are widely known, there is likely to be a very high takeup rate. (There has of course been a very high takeup rate of fax transmission in the business community generally, in spite of its relatively high telecommunications costs)
  • Since the beginning of 1994, new software has been released which enables teleconferencing and videoconferencing to be carried out at low cost through ordinary desktop work stations (e.g. PCs and Macintoshes). This is a facility likely to have a very rapid takeup once known, since videoconferencing has the potential to significantly reduce organisations' costs of travel and staff time

There is no sign of any slowing of the rate of growth of Internet traffic currently - indeed if anything the growth rate appears to be increasing. (Traffic through the United States NSF backbone grew by an incredible 20.7% during March 1994). With the full opening up of AARNet to commercial applications this year, Australian business and government use of the Internet is likely to increase very rapidly. We consider that the Commonwealth Government needs to regard AARNet as a critical part of the present Australian "national information infrastructure", and needs to ensure that this highly successful development can be built upon for government and other national purposes, through an equitable sharing of the necessary costs of increasing capacity ahead of demand.

Government Services

We wish to comment particularly on the potential demand for networked access to government information and services. [This does not appear to have been well covered in the Communications Futures Project Work in Progress Paper No. 1. Emerging Communications Services: an Analytical Framework, and we refer the Expert Group to the comprehensive study of the Office of Technology Assessment in the USA - Making Government Work: Electronic Delivery of Federal Services. OTA-TCT.578. Washington, D.C., U.S. Government Printing Office, Sept.1993]. The OTA Study in our view presents good evidence to suggest that public access to government services could be much improved, and delivery costs of present services reduced, through a much more coordinated Commonwealth Government approach to networked delivery of services. This report appears to have had a significant impact in the U.S.A., and there is a rapid deployment of U.S. government information services currently becoming available on the Internet. At present in Australia, at the State Government level, there is a very rapid increase in Internet connectivity through gateways between State Government networks and AARNet. At the federal level development has been greatly hampered by the lack of any Commonwealth Government policy and mechanisms enabling effective interconnnection of federal departments and agencies. While e-mail connection is now spreading rapidly in some agencies, Commonwealth Government use of Internet type facilities has been very small to date, except in a small number of research oriented institutions such as CSIRO, the National Library, the National Botanical Gardens and some other research agencies, particularly in the environmental area. There are a wide range of government purposes that might be met more effectively through the use of wide area networking education. Already there is a significant use of networking for educational purposes - in schools, e.g. the Nexus service in South Australia, TAFE, e.g. in New South Wales and Queensland, and the universities, e.g. by several DECs and in particular the ADEnet experiments. The Open Learning Electronic Support Service (OLESS) development will facilitate a significant expansion of open learning applications through networking to communities all over Australia health. The Commonwealth Government is in the early stages of establishing a health communications network. Given the high transaction rates between government departments of health, hospitals, GPs, pathologists, other specialists, insurance providers, university medical departments, etc., the potential of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of health services is immense. Again, those involved are spread right across Australia, in both rural and urban areas. Some of these applications require higher bandwidths, e.g. the transmission of x-ray and CAT images environmental data. A vast amount of environmental monitoring data, and other data relating to sustainable development is collected by a variety of Government agencies. Networked access to such data would be of considerable value for a whole range of public and commercial purposes library, information and cultural services. A significant proportion of information is now being produced in machine readable form, as a direct by-product of word processing, publishing and even the scanning of older documents. A growing proportion of this information is in image format, or comprises material of an audio-visual nature - photographs, video recordings, audio tapes, etc., for all of which it is now technically feasible to transmit through communication networks (albeit slowly where the bandwidth is limited). If information is produced and stored in machine readable form, recent developments on the Internet have indicated that the extra cost of making this information accessible through the network is very low. This is leading to a very rapid increase in the amount of material which may be retrieved over the Internet. Combined with the use of sophisticated retrieval software such as the World Wide Web, this is leading to a very rapid increase both in total transmissions and in the transmission of formats requiring higher bandwidths. [Note: Since 1992, the national libraries of Australia and New Zealand have been co-operating on a project to develop a National Document and Information Service (NDIS) which will:

  • provide "resource discovery" services to the Australian and New Zealand communities - that is, services which inform these communities about the existence, location and availability of documents (print, audio-visual, and electronic) in libraries and related information services
  • provide access to electronic documents (as full texts or images) either directly, or through gateway services, and
  • support request and delivery services for these documents

The NDIS is planned for implementation in the third quarter of 1996, and AARNet and the Internet are regarded as critical facilities for successful delivery of national library and information services] Network access by the community offers tremendous opportunities for libraries and other cultural agencies such as museums and galleries, which are generally funded largely at public expense. Commonwealth and State governments have invested large sums over many years in building up Australia's key heritage collections. Yet these collections cannot be easily displayed and there are significant limits to the touring of exhibitions around Australia. Networking can provide the public with access to images of items within the collections, and realise much greater use of the public investment (as is currently being demonstrated by the Smithsonian Institution in the U.S.A.). It can also enable the cultural institutions to market a whole range of products based on their collections, for which both individuals and other organisations are very willing to pay. Similarly the services of other Government agencies whose role is primarily information supply, such as AGPS, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and the Patent Office, could be delivered more effectively and cheaply via network access. individual transactions with government. Most government agencies spend significant funds on inquiry services for the public, each investing separately in phone facilities, shop-fronts, etc. Given appropriate design, there is considerable potential for multi-agency community information centres sharing the same network infrastructure, e.g. by information kiosks in shopping centres, train stations, etc. or through community service points such as public libraries, SkillShare sites, or Telecentres, which allow public inquiry and transactions with all layers of government. (Note: The information kiosk development is in its infancy in Australia, with the Brisbane City Council having gone furthest in development in the Info Brisbane project, but is strongly under way in North America with the InfoCalifornia project; and the Canadian Government has advanced plans for its national InfoCentres development, as a "single-window" to the federal government, of which a forerunner is the Nova Scotia One-Stop Centres for access to government). These initiatives could potentially increase significantly the networked traffic between governments and individual members of the public. For full cost effectiveness there will be a need for a much higher level of collaboration between government agencies than occurs at present. An example in the research community is the research grants process where the present system for lodging submissions, assessments, notifications, etc. could be improved dramatically in speed and efficiency through the use of electronic templates and electronic reviewing processes. In the United States many government agencies are routinely making all publicly accessible information freely available over the Internet, since the costs of provision is so low. A major U.S. project to study how such information may best be located is currently under way, the GILS (Government Information Locator Service) project. In at least three states, e.g. California, there is legislation mandating such provision for defined categories of material.

General Government Efficiencies

There is increasing evidence that networked linkages between parts of organisations can lead to major improvements in communication and cost-savings. Examples include the Department of Social Security's 'TOP Channel' video network, and video-conferencing by the Federal Court of Australia. The National Library is beginning to benefit from use of electronic mail linkages between members of its various committees spread around Australia. Cost-benefit studies remain to be completed, but we consider that effective inter-connection of Commonwealth Government agencies for electronic mail alone would realise considerable savings and efficiency improvements. Considerable savings are feasible also in the processes of the considerable interaction between Parliament and government departments, and between central agencies such as the Departments of Finance and Industrial Relations and other areas of government. The establishment of CommTel within the Department of Administrative Services may provide an opportunity for much improved inter-agency sharing of communication facilities between central and regional offices and the various parts of agencies. But we consider that this process needs a considerable boost and detailed studies if efficiencies are to be realised within a reasonable timeframe. We consider that this needs an urgent examination of the present roles of both CommTel and the Information Exchange Steering Committee, to ensure more effective overall future collaboration between government agencies.

Community Networks

In the United States and Canada, there is now a very rapid growth in "community networks" and 'Free-Nets" operated at relatively low cost by local communities to provide public access to local information, and also low cost access to wider Internet services. Some of these have been established by voluntary effort on the part of individuals and community organisations, but an increasing number are supported by local government as a more effective means of interacting with their communities, often based on public libraries or local government offices. Community networking initiatives are currently active in the ACT, Newcastle and the outer east of Melbourne, to our knowledge. Software is now available at a price of only US$2,000, which enables small local communities to dial up to a relatively small local computer such as a Macintosh (situated, say, at the public library) and thence obtain access to electronic mail and some other services of the Internet. "Rural datafication" (as it is called in the USA) is receiving considerable attention in North America, as a means of delivery of a range of government services to rural areas, and to enable remote communities to have access to facilities similar to those available to city based people. Such network access is seen as a means of stemming rural depopulation, allowing viable businesses to be located in remote areas, and the delivery of more effective education, including training such as that connected with the agriculture and other rural pursuits. We note the difficulty in estimating the rate at which demand may increase for the above services. In many cases, the demand increases will not be market driven in the normal sense. Many services will develop only if interactive network access is available to homes at reasonable cost. Several services will be developed by governments as more effective substitutes for existing delivery methods, e.g. in open learning, in health, for payments and other government transactions with the public and with specialised communities.

Delivery Technology Options

The National Library has relatively little experience in this area but the current state of technologies appears to be well set out in the Communications Futures Study Work in Progress Paper No. 2. Delivery Technologies in the New Communications World. Bureau of Transport and Communications Economics, March 1994. The Library strongly considers that any attempt by the Expert Group or the Federal Government to "best guess" the most effective delivery technologies over the medium to longer term are doomed to failure. The rate of development of basic communications, technologies, computer hardware and software is now so rapid and proceeding on such a broad front that it is very difficult if not impossible to predict which transmission methods are likely to be most economical in even three years time, let alone the longer term. We have several good examples before us from the past few years, including the relatively growth of TCP/IP protocols as against OSI, the potential for delivery of pay TV via different technologies, and the development of ADSL - all of which suggests that attempts to "pick winners" with technology are likely to be at least problematical and probably counter productive. With Australia's population distribution, the underlying delivery technologies, in our view, are likely to be a mixture of all the available cable and cable-less systems for some time to come. The development of ADSL and similar techniques, and improved compression methods generally are likely to extend the capabilities of the present large investment in twisted-pair copper cable to deliver extra services into the home and small businesses for some time to come. Within high-density population centres, optical fibre, coaxial cable and microwave are all likely to have a place, as they are over the longer inter-city hauls. For remote areas, and for broadcast services generally, satellite is likely to remain competitive. We are also of the view that wireless-based technologies, combined with a range of portable voice and data communicators, are likely to become significant in the medium term as a means of connecting individuals to their main workplaces and to networked services generally. With changing industrial awards, and the advent of portable computers with advanced capabilities, there is some likelihood of a significant increase in the extent to which employees link to their workplaces from home, car or field stations. We consider therefore that a key Commonwealth Government role in relation to delivery technologies is to set public interest outcomes as aims rather than to support particular technologies as a means of delivering those outcomes. We realise that large communications utilities, broadcasting and entertainment companies, and other service delivery groups all have vested interests in promoting one technology or another, depending on their ownership or rights to use certain communication methods, and will place considerable pressure on the Federal Government to regulate technological competition in their interests, but we urge the Government to resist such pressures and to set public policy objectives in technologically neutral terms. The Commonwealth Government's overriding objective should be to ensure even competition between emerging delivery technologies. With deregulation of the common carriers, now permitted to develop value-added services, it is in our view also essential that the Commonwealth Government's own equity and social justice objectives are not unreasonably constrained by commercial priorities of distributing services into the home, but ensure reasonable development of the two-way interactive capability that will be needed for access to government information and services. Pressure to provide video to the home should also not be allowed to prevent the continuation of reasonably priced access to voice telephone and electronic mail services running over the same communications channels (particularly for ADSL and hybrid fibre/coaxial developments planned by the common carriers).

Industrial Opportunities

The Library wishes to comment primarily on information services opportunities. With global interconnections and the development of fault-tolerant computing systems allowing twenty-four hour operation, the Australian marketplace is becoming accessible to services developed in North America and Europe, as well as in the south eastern East Asian time zones. In these circumstances, Australian information services that wish to succeed even in the Australian marketplace, but particularly if they wish to export services in the Asia/Pacific region, will have to be competitive on quality and price with large overseas information suppliers. If the Australian economy is to be competitive over the longer term, then our industries will have to have efficient access to the information resources needed for them to operate at world best practice levels. They also will need to have connections with purchasers, suppliers, etc. which ensure cost effective transactions. The development of EDI and other electronic commerce facilities is likely to be significant here. As the Commonwealth Government is a major purchaser, it is in a position to significantly affect the rate at which EDI can benefit Australian business efficiencies, and streamlining of government purchasing generally. The existence of a high quality national network, with skilled personnel support, is likely to attract multi-national companies to locate Asia/Pacific oriented services in Australia. A major reason for the strong federal government interest in the development of effective national information infrastructures in the U.S. and Canada has been the realisation that networked services are likely to be critical to those countries' future competitiveness (see for example the report of the U.S. Council on Competitiveness. Competition Policy: Unlocking the National Information Infrastructure, Washington, D.C., December 1993, the report of the Californian Public Utilities Commission. Enhancing California's Competitive Strength: a Strategy for Telecommunications Infrastructure. San Francisco, November 1993, the National Performance Review Accompanying Report. Reengineering through Information Technology . Washington, D.C., USGPO, September 1993, and press statements by the Canadian Minister for Industry Canada). There is good evidence that much of the growth in modern economies is driven by entrepreneurial smaller business. Network access allows small business, particularly if located outside central city areas, opportunities to market products and services more readily, as well as better use of industry services and information sources generally. Australia's competitiveness goals are not likely to be achieved unless Australia continues to develop world class networking capabilities. Since information based industries are clearly a growth area for the future, government policies which support the development of more locally-sourced network components, and more particularly software and services developments, are likely to be advantageous nationally over the longer term.

Impacts on the Australian community

Universal Access

The Library considers that the Government should ensure "universal access" to the public data network at reasonable cost for basic purposes, no matter where in Australia people are located. This is analogous to Commonwealth Government policy over a long period, in requiring Telecom to meet its community service obligations in enabling access to the ordinary telephone network. In our view, the need for universal access is even more vital for future information networking, since all businesses and government services delivery will become increasingly dependent on network connections for effectiveness. The principal of universal access has been established very early in the United States government's national information infrastructure policy development as a means of reducing the increasing gap between rich and poor in that country. Teleworking may well equalise opportunities for people located in disadvantaged areas generally. Network access also offers the physically immobile, whether through age or disability, a means of continuing communication with colleagues and friends across the world, and is in line with general Commonwealth Government objectives for social justice and equity.

Education

The Department of Employment, Education and Training (DEET) presently has recommendations before the Minister relating to the further development of an Open Learning Electronic Support Service (OLESS) for delivery of open learning services. The OLESS development is likely to be heavily dependent on AARNet for its effectiveness. Delivery of open learning on an equitable basis throughout Australia will require a means through which students can obtain network access at reasonable cost. While the OLESS service is being developed in the first instance only to serve the Open Learning Agency of Australia, it is envisaged that use of the infrastructure would be extended rapidly to other open learning purposes for higher education, TAFE and schools. Further extension in line with Australian goals for 'lifelong learning' and improved competencies in workplaces need to be considered relatively early in these developments. The open learning development offers a tremendous opportunity for the Commonwealth Government, if it seizes the initiative, and the OLESS project is developed in an appropriate way. We are concerned that the OLESS initiative appears to be seen far too narrowly at present, with Government, and even within the DEET portfolio. If open learning electronic services are to be available equitably throughout Australia, in both rural and urban communities, then means will have to be found to enable students to link at low cost to networked facilities for registration, communication with tutors and other students, assignments, electronic mail, library catalogue access and group conferencing. This will need to include links from home computers to nodes at local call rates, and also for students without home computers or with computers incapable of providing the higher level capability such as teleconferencing through access points in the local community. Community access points could best be situated in public libraries, telecentres, TAFE institutions and schools, as appropriate to each community. But the establishment of these links for open learning also creates an infrastructure which could, if designed properly, be shared for a whole range of government information and services provision. Indeed, the more such infrastructure can be shared for government purposes (across Commonwealth, State and local levels) the more cost effective is likely to be the investment. [As discussed above, there are a wide range of government purposes which could be met through shared access points. These issues are fully covered by the recent comprehensive report from the Office of Technology Assessment in the United States referred to above].

Intellectual Property Rights

The issues of intellectual property rights in a fully networked environment are complex. Many existing arrangements are likely to change, and existing publishers and distributers will be affected and not all may survive. The objectives of government policy should be to ensure that interests of the creators of intellectual property are adequately balanced against those of the public, as with current 'fair dealing' arrangements under the Copyright Act. The creators are not necessarily the same as the present copyright owners in the print environment, who are often the publishers and distributers who have been necessary for widespread distribution of printed material. Much published information is produced at public expense and government departments, in universities and other research establishments, and then onsold to the public through a variety of commercial arrangements. Much of this information is capable of being distributed very cheaply to the community via networks, and taxpayers should not be asked to pay heavily a second time for access. On the other hand, individual creators are entitled to have their economic and moral rights respected. As the technology develops, legislative changes will be required, and there needs to be an ongoing broadly based group considering these issues and advising the Commonwealth Government on desirable changes in intellectual property legislation, rather than the Government being forced to react to lobby pressures at short notice. [The Library will be separately providing advice to the Copyright Convergence Group inquiry established by the Minister for Justice. The Library regards policy changes arising from the Convergence Group's work as of critical importance for the future flow of information in Australia. It will be essential for Government policy to arrive at the appropriate balance between the public interest in ready access to material and the reasonable rights of future creators of material]

Privacy

This is also a complex issue. The aim of government policy should be that the standards applying to freedom of information, privacy, free speech and unreasonable surveillance of individuals apply in relation to networked communication as they do in other communication areas. There is already concern in North America about potential software developments which could allow government security agencies to tap individuals networked communications without their knowledge or specific authorisation by legal authorities. Individual rights need to be adequately protected through such offices as the Privacy Commissioner and Ombudsman, while censorship and regulatory constraints should be no more than in other communication areas.

Research and Development

The Library wishes to comment only on research and development in the networked applications areas. Wtih so many new technological capabilities in development there is a strong need for research and development effort to trial new functions. In the areas of communications technology, Australia already has strong R&D effort in the telecommunication companies and a wide range of communications hardware and software suppliers. The current weakness is in the trialling of applications. It is noteworthy that with the development of the national information infrastructure initiatives in the United States, and to a lesser extent in Canada, there has come the development of a strong series of federal government competitive grant programs, such as the Digital Libraries Initiative. the Rural Datafication Program, and the Telecommunications Information Infrastructure Applications Program. The criteria for Australian Research Council grants make it difficult for projects focussed on pilot developments rather than research per se to be funded. The concentration of R&D funds in the cooperative research centres in this area, following government decisions at the end of 1992, is generally agreed not to have been successful in promoting workable applications. One possibility would be to designate networked applications as a priority area for funding under the DEET National Priorities (Reserve) Fund scheme, but this would still largely exclude institutions other than universities. What is needed is a grants program which will encourage smaller scale pilot networked developments across a wide range of public and private sector organisations.

Education and Training Requirements

It has been found that most people are able to use simple network services such as transaction facilities (e.g. at banking ATM machines, and in the few pilot information kiosk experiments) and very basic electronic mail without too much difficulty. We may expect also that home entertainment services, e.g. video on demand, will be developed so as to be usable easily by the public. But it is true that any reasonably effective use of networked facilities involving database access, and indeed the full features of current electronic mail systems, requires a good deal of training. Even though user interfaces are becoming easier all the time, the need for training in effective use of information is likely to require attention at all levels through the formal education process. For those in the workforce, the prime training burden is likely to fall on employers, and the Government is able to influence the speed of skills development through the competency approach to training and the Training Guarantee Act. But for others, particularly older people, there may well be excluded from effective use of government services unless there is some means of providing assistance and training at the community level. Libraries, telecentres, skillshare centres, schools and TAFEs are all likely to have a part to play in this area, and effective training may well be linked to the role of these institutions as community access points in each locality. We recommend that a study of the training requirements for effective use of Open Learning networked services be carried out early in the implementation of the Open Learning Electronic Support Service implementation and the results used for consideration in the design of further services development. In the meantime, with the sheer volume of services available through the Internet, even with advanced search and linking tools such as gopher, World Wide Web and WAIS, the average network user needs considerable assistance towards effective network use. AARNet has established a working party to enquire into the needs for an Australian network information service, and the AARNet Engineering Working Group is enquiring into the future of such essential network tools as archie and veronica, which are currently being run on a shoe-string, and with much voluntary effort. These investigations and existing facilities are grossly under-resourced. There is an urgent need for first-class network support services, which will prevent unnecessary duplication and waste of effort and Federal Government resources for Australian users of the networks.

Funding Mechanisms

The Library does not wish to comment in detail on this issue. We consider that attention needs to be given separately to the funding of:

  • trunk route capabilities enabling effective national and international communications for all purposes, public and private (noting that special funding of very high bandwidth users may be required to enable the interests of majority low bandwidth users to be protected - currently a problem being addressed by the ASTEC Inquiry in relation to AARNet)
  • adequate capacity "tail" connections to the home and businesses which permit two-way communication (i.e. not just delivery of broadcast services or video on demand)
  • the relatively high bandwidth "tail" capacities needed by a small number of individuals and organisations, e.g. for super computing linkages, remote medical diagnostics
  • development of desirable government information and services delivery in areas such as education, health and efficient citizen/government transactions

Since much of the underlying communications infrastructure will be shared for a variety of public and private purposes, we assume that the basic communications infrastructure will be built through a mix of investments by the commercial sector, together with government involvement where a market driven approach is likely to fail to meet public objectives, or for specific government purposes. Since effective interconnection for government services delivery is unlikely to occur without coordination of capital investment across agencies and, indeed, levels of government, mechanisms will need to be established to provide a greater degree of Federal Government coordination then is the case at present.

Standards

The experience of the last few years in relation to open systems development and a comparison of the advances made both in the OSI and Internet TCP/IP standards environments, suggests that the Commonwealth Government should be wary of committing to any particular means of achieving open communication goals. The acceptance of standards and protocols will ultimately be determined by economic factors in the marketplace. We consider that the role of Government in this area should be primarily to ensure that the standards adopted by communication carriers be such as to permit interconnection and interoperability between service providers and individual service users, regardless of the particular technologies used to deliver the services - for example coaxial cable, microwave, satellite, etc. This is analogous to the present telephone network. An open system outcome from the consumer viewpoint is what is required. Applications and services should as far as possible be independent of the underlying communication standards. We consider that adequate international standards development mechanisms are in place at present to enable a gradual integration of OSI and TCP/IP capabilities, and the ongoing development of standards relating to multi-media such as JPEG and MPEG, but that it is now urgent that the Commonwealth Government amend its GOSIP policies (as recommended for the United States by the Federal Internetworking Requirements Panel) to encompass interoperability solutions which may be provided through both OSI and TCP/IP. This is likely to have a significant influence in speeding up interconnection of Commonwealth Government departments and agencies in the short to medium term, and permit easier collaboration on delivery of networked government services. One area which we believe requires focussed attention by Government at present relates to standards for home and small business connection via the existing twisted pair telephone structure. It will be many years, even with the development of GSM mobile communications permitting connectionless linkages, before the majority of people outside major populations centres have options other than connection through their existing telephone connections. It is therefore crucial that the standards to be based on developments of the ADSL/HDSL type be developed in a way that permits two-way use of the existing telephone infrastructure for a variety of networking purposes (as opposed to simply for home delivery of video on demand for example). If this is not the case there will be large disadvantaged sectors of the population for many years to come, particularly in relation to delivery of government information services. (The Universal Bi-directional Interactive system being implemented by Groupe Videotron in Canada deserves examination).

Scope for Industry Cooperation

The Library wishes to comment only that "industry cooperation" should be seen broadly. In the proposed development of its National Document and Information Service, the Library's goals can be met only through the bringing together of the skills of its own staff with those of commercial systems, integrators and software and hardware provision by a range of sub-contractors. If networked applications are to be developed successfully, there will need to be a high degree of collaboration between service providers, carriers, and computer/communication suppliers. The establishment of clear public objectives for development are likely to assist in guiding all those involved in these developments towards forming the collaborative arrangements needed.

Role of Government

It is important in our view that the advice of the Expert Group regarding the appropriate roles for Government be widely based and not simply "within the context of existing telecommunications policy". The issues raised by this inquiry go far beyond the narrow "telecommunications" perspective and far beyond the boundaries of the Communications portfolio. As we have argued, the future effectiveness of government delivery of services, the future competitiveness of Australian business, and the quality of democratic life in Australia is likely to be heavily dependent on the Commonwealth Government's development of policies which allow widespread and equitable access to networked services. We consider that government has the responsibility to create an environment in which desirable forms of economic and social activity can flourish, and to intervene in areas where market failure is demonstrably occuring or inevitable to ensure a national benefit (but not to intervene except where justified). There are several roles for the Commonwealth Government in this area: Establishing the directions for overall communications development in the national interest In our view, this is the key role for the Commonwealth Government, and one that only it can perform. The Library considers that overall policy directions for the development of networked services in Australia are now urgently needed. We believe that it is important that Government accept the concept of a 'National Information Infrastructure' as underpinning future developments in business industry, government and Australian society as a whole. This is in line with Government's overall planning for other major infrastructure areas, such as roads, railways, and energy. While the communications environment in the USA is very different to that in Australia, we commend to the Expert Group the broad principles set out in the US Administration's Communications Act Reform White Paper (Draft section 703 Statement of Purposes), viz.:

  • To enact a flexible, adaptable regulatory regime that encourages the widespread provision of broadband, interactive, switched, digital services to a wide range of persons and places, including but not limited to homes, businesses, classrooms, libraries, hospitals and clinics
  • To encourage the development of broadband, interactive, switched, digital services, while ensuring that current services relied upon by the public, including basic telephone and cable television services, continue to be provided at reasonable prices and at high levels of quality
  • To remove unnecessary and artificial barriers to participation by the private sector in communications markets, while ensuring that consumers remain protected from any anticompetitive activities, and that communications networks that serve the public are interconnected and interoperable
  • To encourage private investment, promote and protect competition, and encourage flexible, responsive government action with regard to communications networks
  • To harmonise regulatory provisions ... in order to provide a more unified, streamlined approach to regulation of broadband, interactive, switched, digital services, thereby avoiding the imposition of conflicting or duplicative regulatory burdens on communications service providers
  • To provide ... flexibility in the regulation of such communications services, so that regulation can keep pace with the rapid technological and marketplace changes that pervade the telecommunications and information industries, while preserving and advancing traditional universal service goals, and ensuring just and reasonable terms and conditions for competitors and consumers alike
  • To ensure the [regulatory] authority to treat similarly situated firms similarly, rather than regulating firms according to the technology they use to transport information
  • To ensure provision, on a non-discriminatory basis, of open access to communications networks for information providers and consumers
  • To facilitate the realisation of the goal that private sector activities result in the connection of all classrooms, libraries, hospitals, and clinics.... to the information infrastructure [Note: This is already being implemented in some States, e.g. North Carolina]
  • To promote an open information marketplace, with services offered at reasonable prices, based on consumer demand, with expanded access to the information infrastructure
  • To promote and develop a society where information is easily available to all people, including disadvantaged, disabled, low-income, and rural users, as well as educational, medical, and small business entitities, among others
  • To advance substantial governmental ... interests in promoting a diversity of views provided through multiple outlets, by enabling individuals and organisations alike to publish and otherwise make information available in electronic form, including the development of local community networks
  • To provide the [regulatory authority] with flexibility to tailor its regulations so that it can prevent abuses of market power that could harm consumers or impede competition, while ensuring that government regulation promotes new entry, innovation in technologies and services, efficient investment in infrastructure development, and full and fair competition in the offering of telecommunications services to the public

These principles could easily be adapted to the Australian situation, and provide a framework for a future overall communications policy. If detailed policy is to be developed effectively in an environment which is rapidly changing, then the Government will need ongoing mechanisms for advice which provide a balance of interests. We consider that the importance of communications policy for all sectors of Government, the commercial sector and the public generally is now such that two levels of advice mechanisms are required:

  • a broadly based advisory council which includes representatives of all sectors of the community outside the Commonwealth Government - telecommunications, computing, broadcast, entertainment, education/research, information providers, community networks, State Governments, etc. This could be analogous to the United States Advisory Council on the National Information Infrastructure , or the recently formed Canadian Advisory Council on the Information Highway. It is clearly important that the advice of the Council be public.
  • a working group to develop principles and directions for the Commonwealth Government's own activities and policy as a supplier of services and information, which include representation across a wide range of provider departments and agencies.

As a provider of information and services As we have argued above, we consider that there is a very considerable potential for the Government to improve the way it interacts with its public across a large range of government purposes. As one example, the National Library has many thousands of unique paintings, photographs, manuscripts, oral history and other works. At present potential users of this material have to come to Canberra to view it. With appropriate community access to networking such materials could be viewed and used all over Australia, indeed over the world. The potential for networked community access to Parliamentary material, to maps, to government publications generally, is immense. With the very great range of interactions between federal and State government departments and agencies, the scope for efficiencies both within government and in government/public transactions is significant. There is a very large expenditure in interaction with the public at present, and little coordination of activity between Commonwealth Government departments, and even less between federal and State agencies. We consider that realisation of public benefits, and significant government savings will only occur if there are clear federal government objectives for networked services delivery, and mechanisms established to enable agencies to work together on coordinated approaches. Planning should be based on making the use of government services as simple and convenient as possible. This is likely to require 'one-stop' centres or public access points at the community level. Effective electronic directory service is also likely to be crucial for access, and this also requires inter-agency collaboration. As the largest single information provider the Commonwealth Government is in a strong position to influence other governments and the Australian information marketplace generally through support of testbed projects relating to information delivery to the community.

Recommendations

The recommendations that follow are based on the analyses set out in the body of the paper. The convergence of the telecommunications, computer, entertainment, information and research industries through the carriage of services over common global networks is causing unprecedented changes in all these industries. New technologies are being developed at a rapid pace. In these circumstances, we believe that the primary consideration for the Commonwealth Government should be to ensure the development of effecive mechanisms for ongoing policy development in a rapidly and changing environment. Primary considerations are:

  • The development of a Commonwealth Government statement of principles for future communications policy
  • Establishing effective mechanisms for the ongoing development of public policy which will provide an appropriate balance between competing interests in the public and private sectors
  • Establishing policies and effective mechanisms for the development of networked delivery of government information services
  • Ensuring universal and equitable access to networked facilities, as an extension of the existing community service obligations in relation to voice telephone services
  • Ensuring fair competition between different technologies in which organisations in the computing, telecomunications and entertainment industries may have vested interests in ensuring a particular technological solution, i.e. ensuring a technologically neutral market driven development path
  • Ensuring that whatever technical systems are used for the carriage of information, the communication carriers be required to adhere to standards which permit two-way interoperability between different carriers and for users with a range of access capabilities
  • Ensuring appropriate attention is given to intellectual property rights and personal privacy, i.e. the networked equivalents of freedom of information, freedom of speech and copyright
  • Establishing a competitive grants program which will assist with the piloting and testing of networked services developments which may be in the national interest
  • The short to medium term objective of ensuring that AARNet, as the de facto Australian arm of the global information network, continue to develop in a manner that protects the public interest and cost effective access by the very large number of Australian individuals and organisations now dependent upon it for a wide range of services in Australia and overseas

Recommendation 1. That the Commonwealth Government adopt a clear set of principles for its public objectives in relation to future communications policy. Recommendation 2. That the principles for future telecommunications policy should encompass the following objectives:

  • Universal and equitable interactive access with digital data networks for all Australians, regardless of their location
  • Fair competition between different communications technologies i.e. a technologically neutral development path
  • Free flow of information, balanced by appropriate attention to safeguards on personal privacy and intellectual property rights
  • Promotion of open, equitable and cost-effective interactions between government and the public

Recommendation 3. That the Commonwealth Government establish a broadly-based national advisory mechanism, with a membership representative of public and commercial interests, to advise on ongoing policy for the national communications and information infrastructure Recommendation 4. That the Commonwealth Government

  • establish a Task Force to recommend on strategies for the more effective networked delivery of federal government information and services
  • establish a broadly-based inter-agency committee to promote and coordinate the effective delivery of networked services across Federal Government departments and agencies

Recommendation 5. That the Commonwealth Government establish a competitive grants program aimed at pilot development of networked applications which may lead to the more cost-effective delivery of government information and services (including such areas as education and health). The program should be open to both government and commercial sector organisations, and encourage cross-sector collaboration. Recommendation 6. That the Commonwealth Government recognise AARNet's present key position as the Australian arm of the Internet, and ensure that Australia's Internet access capability develops in the medium-term in a manner which benefits the Government's overall objectives for education, culture, research, and the effective overall delivery of government information and services. Recommendation 7. That the Commonwealth Government fund a study of the educational and training implications of the development of networked services, designed to provide policy advice on strategies for effective community access to such services.

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