President's Newsletter - 20th October 2007
AAIS Activities in 2007
The main effort this year has been in response to the RQF exercise, promoting
the IS discipline to RQF in collaboration with Graham Pervan (ACPHIS), Steve
Elliot (IS Board of ACS) and Shirley Gregor.
Most importantly, we have established with RQF that information systems is a
separate discipline in its own right with different mores and culture to computer
science and software engineering. This means that we are able to submit separate
rankings of journals and conferences for the purpose of the RQF assessment exercise.
We also successfully nominated Shirley Gregor to represent the IS community
at the RQF workshops in February 2007 and more recently Graeme Shanks to represent
the community on RQF Panel 4 (the panel that is likely to assess the majority
of IS RQF submissions). We also successfully objected to DEST revising RFCD
codes to move Business Information Systems from the business area to a consolidated
IS grouping in the technical computing area.
Currently the AAIS Executive Committee is actively engaged in the development
of the journal and conference ranking lists – given the different and
parochial opinions evident in an eclectic discipline such as IS, not as straight-forward
as it might appear!!
Finally, we have over the past five or six years maintained a concerted effort
to have IS representation on the ARC MICS Panel (the panel that is likely to
assess the majority of IS ARC grant applications). Janice Burn, Graeme Shanks
and Michael Rosemann have represented the community in this respect as IS representatives
on the MICS Panel. Michael’s term ends in December 2007, but we have recently
been informed that our nomination for 2008/09 was unsuccessful.
These initiatives have had a significant impact in maintaining the position
of information systems as an accepted discipline in the research community.
AUSTRALASIAN JOURNAL OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS (AJIS)
AJIS is now published electronically under the editorship of Craig McDonald.
The current issue and back issues (main issues, Volumes 1 to 14) are available
at:
http://dl.acs.org.au/index.php/ajis
In 2007, AJIS has continued to be produced in hard copy as well as electronically.
In 2008 the hard copy will no longer be produced and AJIS will become solely
an electronic journal. The editor and editorial board believe that this will
increase the accessibility and impact of AJIS.
When AAIS assumed responsibility for AJIS in 2006, a management committee and
editorial board were established to advise the editor. The advent of RQF means
that these are to be reviewed with the aim of ensuring that AJIS is ranked as
an A or A+ journal for RQF purposes. The editor is keen to establish a team
of associate editors and the editorial board needs to have an international
flavour in order to achieve these aims. The AJIS management committee and the
AAIS executive committee will be working on this initiative in 2008.
Retiring AIS President Michael
Myers has reported agreement on the following AIS value proposition:
AIS is the premier global
association for Information Systems academics enabling
• Scholarship and development of new knowledge
• Dissemination and publication of IS research
• Teaching, learning and professional development
• Networking and collaboration with scholars and practitioners
• Advocacy for the IS field
A value proposition is a summary of the benefits that members receive by becoming a member of the association. Michael believes that this statement succinctly summarises the benefits of becoming a member of AIS. This value proposition strongly aligns with the similar statement adopted by AAIS in 2006.
The AIS Council meeting held on 15th June 2007 approved a number of initiatives
including the following which may be of interest to AAIS members:
• The affiliation of Information Systems Journal (ISJ) with AIS. ISJ,
currently published by Blackwell-Wiley, will carry the AIS logo and the electronic
version will be free to all AIS members;
• That the launch of an accreditation initiative for Masters programs
in information systems be seen as of strategic importance for the association
and the field;
• The establishment of three new Special Interest Groups – one on
Services (SIGSVC), one on Grounded Theory Method (SIGGTM), and one representing
the Organizational Systems Research Association (OSRA);
• That conference registration fees and AIS member dues should be raised
beginning 1st September 2007. The new membership dues will be as follows: Regular
member $125, student member $85, non-rich member dues from $25 to $4 (depending
upon the country classification), and retired member dues $62.50. The ICIS registration
fee will increase by $60. Although rising costs are partly to blame, these increases
are necessary to fund our new initiatives in technology, accreditation, marketing,
the e-library, and journals.
Finally, some further thoughts on improving governance and transparency from
Michael Myers – these are issues that AAIS may consider in 2008:
In this post Sarbanes-Oxley era, governance has become an important issue. Even
though the Sarbanes-Oxley law only applies to the corporate sector, governance
and transparency have become important issues in the voluntary, not-for-profit
sector as well. In this message I would like to report on what we have been
doing in AIS to improve the governance and transparency of your association:
Financial reporting
One of the classic problems of a relatively small association is that they cannot
afford to hire all the financial services that they need. An association needs
someone to perform the day-to-day accounting functions, but at times also needs
higher level advice that might be provided by a Chief Financial Officer (CFO).
In the past year we decided to solve this problem by outsourcing all our financial
services to a company that specializes in providing financial services for associations.
This new arrangement means that we get both the accounting and CFO-type functions
provided at about the same price that we used to pay for just the accounting
function.
Although changes such as this often result in some temporary degradation of
service, I am pleased to report that the new arrangement is now working well.
For example:
• All AIS audited financial statements from 2001 through to 30 June 2006
are on the AIS website;
• The President, Treasurer and Executive Director have now started to
receive regular financial reports;
• The AIS Executive Committee has now started to receive regular reports
on AIS membership;
• These last two reports combined mean that the leaders of your association
are now kept informed of trends in revenues, expenditures and membership retention.
I believe such reporting is essential to ensure that AIS remains financially
viable and continues on a stable footing.
Strengthening the AIS Council
Another classic problem of associations is that they have a regular turnover
of elected leaders. This means there is the constant problem of knowledge-loss
on the one hand, and on the other hand of new Council members coming onboard
often without knowing what their role involves or what they should spend their
time on. In my case, for example, it was only after I had completed my term
as AIS President-Elect that I felt I really understood what the job was all
about.
To help solve this problem, we have decided to do the following:
• Establish an orientation program, whereby all new Council members are
introduced to the principles of association leadership, the state of the association,
the strategic plan, and the opportunities and challenges of their particular
role whether it be vice-president or region representative;
• Enhance the functioning of the Nominating Committee, by creating more
tools and methods to inform the membership of the available leadership opportunities.
It is important that we try to attract the best and most qualified people to
serve in the association;
• Establish a strategic planning process, whereby we focus the leaders
of the association on the most important issues facing the association and the
IS field as a whole. These strategic issues are unlikely to change every five
minutes, and hence an agreed strategic plan should help to mitigate the problem
of knowledge-loss, while helping to orient new Council members to their new
role.
Transparency
I think it is fair to say that this third issue, of transparency, is a work-in-progress.
We have a lot more work to do to improve the transparency of the association
to members, but some of the things we are trying to do are as follows:
* Improve communications via the AIS website. This includes featuring different
SIGs, chapters, and conferences on the AIS website every month;
* Placement of all audited financial reports on the AIS website in a timely
manner;
* Communicating the strategic plan via the AIS website.
CITING CAIS?
When citing articles that have been published in CAIS, it is important to cite the journal by its full name. Instead of representing the journal as CAIS in the citation, the name of the journal should be Communications of the Association for Information Systems. Using the full name in every citation ensures consistency, which helps tremendously when organizations such as Thomson ISI do citation counts and compilations. We don't want some citations to be left out because they represented the journal as CAIS, Communications of the AIS, or some other variant.
ACS FORMS HIGHER EDUCATION WORKING GROUP
The Higher Education Working Group has been convened by the ACS. The group comprises mainly academics from around Australia and representatives from the Young IT Board and the Women in IT Board. An initial meeting, chaired by Doug Grant (Swinburne) discussed the following issues with nominations of possible working groups:
– Promotion of IT as a career; roles of IT professionals, perceptions
of the industry, marketing to Gen Y etc [David Wilson (UTS), Michael Blumenstein
(Griffith), ACS and industry representatives];
– IT in schools [YIT, WIT, Doug Grant (Swinburne), Andy Koronios (UNISA),
Chris Avram (Monash), Michael Blumenstein (Griffith), Young Choi (Tasmania)];
– Trying to get University Funding for IT on same basis as Engineering/Science
[Paul Compton (UNSW), Tharam Dillon (UTS), Steve Elliott (Sydney) and ACS];
– ACS to look at a more active role in getting Deans, Branch Heads, etc
together in each state to discuss common issues such as above;
– ACS/University compacts. ACS accreditation is an expensive process.
ACS is looking at making some changes including setting up one-on-one compacts
between ACS and individual universities [Doug Grant (Swinburne), Matt Warren
(Deakin), Jenny Edwards(UTS) and ACS].
none available as yet
http: aais.it.uts.edu.au/news.html last updated 24 Oct 2007 by Jim.Underwood@uts.edu.au