SYDNEY, Australia — 15 December, 2003 — AUUG, the organisation for UNIX and Open Source professionals, today announced  the speakers and programme for the first annual Australian conference on Linux and Open Source in Government. The conference is being jointly organised by AUUG and Linux Australia as a “miniconference” of Linux.conf.au and will be held in Adelaide, South Australia, on 12 and 13 January 2004.  Titled “The Challenges”, the conference will focus on best practices, raise awareness and share experiences amongst Policy Makers and IT officials. Participants will come from Government and public departments, the academic sector, and local, national and international organizations.

Keynote presenters include:

• The Hon Ian Gilfillan MLC, Australian Democrats Member of the South Australian Legislative Council
• Tony Judge, General Manager Business Strategies, National Office for the Information Economy (NOIE)
• Senator Kate Lundy, Labor Senator for the ACT
• Roland Slee, Director, Business and Technology Solutions, Oracle Corporation Australia

Conference papers and speakers include:

• “Commonwealth Administrative Health Data Mining using Debian GNU/Linux”, Graham Williams, Principal Computer Scientist, CSIRO Data Mining
• “The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's new Internet and Intranet Web portals”, Peter Bailey, Synop
• “NOIE's Open Source Solution to Web Content Management”, Avi Miller, NOIE
• “Open source software in health”, Dr. Peter Schloeffel
• “A demonstration of technology to facilitate disabled access”, Malcolm Tredinnick
• “Using open standards to share spatial data using Mapserver, PostGIS and other open source GIS software”, Antti Roppola, Scientific Information Analyst, Bureau of Rural Sciences
• “Software access regimes in government”, Brendan Scott
• “Legal Issues For the Use of Free and Open Source Software in Government”, Professor Brian Fitzgerald, Head of the School of Law, QUT
• “Open Source and the Public Sector”, Ian Oi, Blake Dawson Waldron
• “Overcoming the Challenges Facing Open Source in Government”, Con Zymaris

Those wishing to attend need to register online at http://classic.auug.org.au/events/2004/ocgconf/register.html

Key Partners in the event: Oracle (Platinum Sponsor). IBM is Penguin sponsor of linux.conf.au 2004.

“Linux and Open Source in Government 2004 - The Challenges” will be held at The University Of Adelaide, 12 to 13 January 2004. More details will be available at http://classic.auug.org.au/events/2004/ocgconf

The conference will take place within the framework of Linux.conf.au, a major technical conference for open source developers, held in the same precinct on subsequent days, January 14-16.  Linux.conf.au is for Linux, BSD and other related tools of the open source trade.  Registrants for linux.conf.au receive complimentary entry to “Linux and Open Source in Government” and all other miniconfs being held in the same week.

About AUUG Incorporated
AUUG Inc. is the Australian UNIX and Open Systems User Group, the organisation for UNIX and Open Source professionals. Dating from 1975, AUUG is a national body with chapters that organise local activities in most capital cities.

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AUUG Inc.
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Press Contact
Gordon Hubbard
Treasurer, AUUG Inc.
<Gordon.Hubbard@auug.org.au>
Tel: 02 9659 9590

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