Articles - QESP

Democracy and the 15 Hour Week

By Ted Smillie - Monday, September 25th, 2017

British economist John Maynard Keynes predicted in an essay, Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren (1930), that by 2030 our grandchildren would be working a 15 hour week, due to the power of compound interest  and to technological advances.  Keynsian economics gradually gained acceptance during the 1930s, then revolutionized global government economic policy in the aftermath […]

Security cameras vulnerable to attacks using infrared light

By American Associates, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev - Tuesday, September 19th, 2017

Researchers have demonstrated that security cameras infected with malware can receive covert signals and leak sensitive information from the very same surveillance devices used to protect facilities.

Australian government password rules are insecure nonsense

By John Quiggin - Thursday, September 7th, 2017

The agencies dedicated to “protecting our secrets” are insisting on a password security method that even the Daily Mail knows is nonsense, writes John Quiggin.

I recently had to log in to the website of an Australian government agency with which I deal from to time. To my surprise, I was presented with a message saying that my password had expired and that, under a new security policy, password expire every 90 days, and they must contain a mixture of alphanumeric and special characters (this is called a composition rule)

Another day, another scandal: CBA blames customers for identity theft

By Michael West, Adjunct Associate Professor, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney - Monday, September 4th, 2017

Barry Lakeman has had a gutful. “I’ve got bone cancer,” says the 59-year-old farmer from outback Western Australia. “The chances of pulling through are about 60/40.” Worse, he says, his son is disabled. He has epilepsy and a brain tumour and requires special medical treatment.

On top of all this, Lakeman is a victim of identity theft. Last month, local police called to ask him if he’d lost his gun licence. They had found it, they told him. It displayed his photo but the licence number didn’t match. “It was a forgery … the number at the top of the card was different from the number on my card.”

Award Winning Innovation or High Tech Fantasy?

By Ted Smillie - Sunday, August 27th, 2017

“Government service delivery agencies that can’t “answer the friggin’ phones” should not be spending time and money exploring exciting new areas like big data analytics, artificial intelligence and gamification, argues the Commonwealth’s former chief digital officer Paul Shetler.”

AI, automation & 21st century skills needs: what do they mean for education?

By NSW Department of Education - Thursday, August 17th, 2017

The profound changes ahead demand an education approach that will provide young people with enduring capabilities and skills to harness the opportunities of technological change.

The passport that today’s kindergarten students will need for life and work in 2040 includes the strong foundations provided by a great school education. This starts with literacy and numeracy but goes well beyond that to the higher order skills provided by quality post-school education and training.

Changes to high-risk medical devices often supported by low-quality research

By University of California - San Francisco - Tuesday, August 15th, 2017

Clinical trials that test changes in the design or use of high-risk medical devices are often poorly designed, and can rely on inadequate or potentially biased data, according to a new study.

Artificial intelligence uses internet searches to help create mind association magic trick

By Queen Mary University of London - Wednesday, August 9th, 2017

Scientists have created an artificial intelligence (AI) that uses internet searches to help co-design a word association magic trick.

CrossTalk Online: Model Based Testing

By CrossTalk - Sunday, July 30th, 2017

Modeling is a necessary and beneficial part of every software effort. Regardless of the tools or documentation in front of them, every programmer works to convert an internal mental model of a process into working code. From the informality of this internal model to the structured formality of a tool like the Unified Modeling Language (UML), every working piece of software is built upon layers of abstraction and modeling. Settling on the right models and abstractions to solve a particular problem are the meat and potatoes of software engineering.

Single sites like gov.au are old hat, says NSW CIDO Damon Rees

By Stephen Easton - Wednesday, July 26th, 2017

Having a single website for all things government is not a good idea, in the view of the New South Wales government’s chief information and digital officer Damon Rees.

Rees called the idea “yesterday’s paradigm” at a recent IT conference in Sydney and, according to ITNews, it’s not on the cards for Australia’s most populous state.

It’s a fair point that navigating the internet these days generally involves punching one’s demands into a search engine, having notifications, newsletters and the like pushed to us, or just hanging out with crowds of other people on social media.