[Osia-members] OSIA Membership Value & AOSD

[Jack Burton]

On Sun, 2018-01-07 at 13:54 +1100, Mark Phillips wrote:
> Feel free to use anything within the attachment that might  help.

Thanks. You raise some interesting ideas in your proposal Mark.

That's quite an ambitious programme of works, if taken as a whole.

I have a few comments and a couple of questions [for you or for anyone
else who wants to jump in].

First up, are you suggesting that OSIA needs to do everything on your
list in the short term? or if not, which of those initiatives would you
see as the highest priorities?

Re media exposure, yes you're absolutely right. We were just *starting*
to make some very small in-roads there a little over a year ago, but
even then that was one area which needed lots of improvement. The only
time I can recall OSIA achieving a much better level of exposure was in
the very early days (principally due to all the good work Con did on
that front at the time).

Re sponsoring LCA -- I must admit that I don't know what the
sponsorship levels were this year, but in previous years those
sponsorship levels that gave worthwhile exposure were beyond OSIA's
reach (as you can see from the annual report, our cash assets total
roughly $15k, so it would be hard to justify spending a third of that
or more on sponsoring one conference, even an awesome one like LCA). 

Not having a go at LCA here at all -- their sponsorship levels seem
completely appropriate for a conference of the size & reputation of
LCA. Just beyond OSIA's budget.

But we used to sponsor OSDC (which was more within our budget) from
time to time -- most recently the 2015 OSDC in Hobart. Nevertheless, if
OSIA *did* have substantially more funds, I agree that sponsoring LCA
would be a good thing to do.

Re putting out the proposed new website to tender, again the budget is
the blocker there (anyone who'd quote a fee low enough to fit the
budget would be unlikely to deliver a result any of us would be happy
with). But it could easily be done incrementally, in house and/or as a
collaborative effort by members.

Of course, all those things could be done much more easily if we raised
membership fees substantially (think the sort of rates that AIIA
charges) -- but then personally I don't think it would be reasonable
for OSIA to raise fees without *first* delivering far greater value to
members. As things stand, if my company got a renewal invoice for
$3,000 next year (instead of the usual $175), we would not pay it --
and I imagine that probably goes for most members.

Re schools -- that sounds like a great idea. I'm struggling to see how
its fits *directly* within OSIA's remit -- but it could be a good
opportunity for that collaboration with ACS/EA that you also called
for.

Re advocacy -- agree with all four of your points. Open standards is an
area that Ron has been especially active in, so I'll leave commenting
on that to him.

Re opposing innovation patents, note that that's something OSIA has
done a lot on in the past too. See for example OSIA's submissions,

to ACIP in 2013:
http://www.osia.com.au/drupal7/sites/default/files/default/osia_sub_201310_acip.pdf

to IP Australia in 2015:
http://www.osia.com.au/drupal7/sites/default/files/default/osia_sub_201508_ip_au.pdf

and to the Productivity Commission in 2016 (sections 2.6, 4.5 & 4.6):
http://www.osia.com.au/drupal7/sites/default/files/default/osia_sub_201605_pc_ip.pdf

Pretty sure I recall reading your independent submissions to most of
those inquiries too, coming from very similar angles to OSIA's.

If OSIA's weren't sufficiently obvious, I guess it comes back to the
valid point you made at the beginning about the need to increase OSIA's
exposure -- on which I agree with you.

One important point that I think should be added to your advocacy
topics list is government IT procurement. That's also something that
Con did some great work on in OSIA's early years.

Whilst OSIA hasn't said much *publicly* on government IT procurement in
recent years, quite a bit went on behind the scenes -- e.g. the work
that Cameron, Ryan & I did on the NSW ProcureIT matter in 2015 & 2016
and the preliminary interactions that Aimee Maree & I had with the PM&C
ICT Procurement Task Force in late 2016.

My own thoughts and Carl's (but not necessarily OSIA's) on that topic
from about this time last year can be found in our independent
submission to that inquiry here:
https://safecoms.com.au/pub/safecoms_sub_201701_pmc_ictp.pdf

Even though the Task Force's final report has been delivered and
responded to by government already (in August 2017 -- OSIA was
conspicuously absent at the ministerial launch -- I guess that proves
your point about exposure again), I still think it's worth engaging
with DTA during the implementation phase -- there is much that could
still be accomplished...

...and government IT procurement is the one area of public policy work
where OSIA's work, if successful, could have an *obvious* impact on the
bottom lines of those members who sell (or want to sell) their services
to government (and membership value doesn't get much better than that).


Okay, so I just wanted to make a few comments, but I've ended up
writing a bit of an essay again -- sorry about that.

In closing I'd just like to say thanks again for your list of
initiatives -- lots of good ideas there.

The fact that both you & Grant have called for a far broader spectrum
of activities for OSIA suggests that we may need to question one of my
assumptions, bringing us right back to the beginning of this post.

These questions are for everyone here, just as much as for Mark:

1. By assuming that the path back to success relies on having one clear
focus (whatever that might be) first, then adding extras only later,
once we're firmly re-established, am I not thinking big enough? Does the
OSIA of the future instead need to be a much larger beast, operating a
much wider array of initiatives from the get-go?

2. If the answer to #1 is "yes", are there enough people out there
sufficiently passionate about these things to step up, do the work and
do it well?

If the answer to #2 is "no", then clearly OSIA has only two options,
either: do many things with few hands, therefore do none of them
particularly well (not something I'd support); or cut its cloth to fit,
by choosing one or two areas to focus on and doing them well.

In that case, or if the answer to #1 is "no", we come back to my
original question:

3. Of the many things we could be (or perhaps even should be) doing,
which should be the highest priority (or two at most) for OSIA in 2018?