Dr Genevieve Bell, Aki Ohashi and The Hon. Angus Taylor to headline AIIA’s Navigating Digital Government Summit

Canberra, Australia – 21 March 2017 -- The Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA), the nation’s peak member body for the ICT industry, today announced that it has attracted some of the world’s luminaries on advanced technology to speak at its annual Navigating Digital Government Summit on Wednesday 5 April at Hotel Realm, Canberra.

The Summit will focus on how technology is transforming the customer experience and will explore emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, cognitive intelligence, robotics, and quantum computing, and how they will influence the future design of government service delivery.

The headline speakers include:

•  Dr Genevieve Bell, who works across Intel, the Australian National University and CSIRO’s Data61 will deliver the morning keynote. This will be her first public address in Australia since returning from the USA in February 2017. Dr Bell will discuss whether the future we have been worrying about is already here, whether the current digital transformation represents a fundamental restructuring of technology, markets and cultural forces, what we can learn from history, and how we might apply those lessons to the present day.
  
  Prior to taking up a research role split between ANU and Data61 in February, Dr Bell served as a vice president at Intel. She became the first woman in Intel’s history to be appointed an Intel Senior Fellow, a role she will maintain alongside her new appointments. Dr Bell has pioneered futurist research looking at how different cultures use technology and helped guide Intel’s product development by developing the company’s social science research capability. She completed her PhD in cultural anthropology at Stanford University in 1998.
   
•  Aki Ohashi from the Palo Alto Research Centre (PARC) will deliver the afternoon keynote. Mr Ohashi will discuss Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI), a new field that goes beyond AI and aims to describe why a certain recommendation was made. He will discuss why it may be needed, the current research in this nascent field, and the potential impacts and implications on government and industry.
  
  Mr Ohashi is PARC’s director of business development in the Japanese market and works with PARC’s corporate clients in Japan including Fujitsu, Dai Nippon Printing Co and NEC Corporation, as well as its Japanese university partners and government organisations.
   
•  The Hon. Angus Taylor, Assistant Minister for Cities and Digital Transformation will address the Summit dinner, to be held at ANZAC Hall. The Minister will be speaking on his vision of the future of technology and the Australian Government.

Other speakers will include:

• The Hon Ed Husic MP, Shadow Minister for Employment Services, Workforce Participation and Future of Work and Shadow Minister for the Digital Economy;
• Nerida O’Loughlin, interim CEO of the Digital Transformation Agency;
• Gary Sterrenberg, chief information officer, Department of Human Services
• Peter Alexander, first assistant secretary projects, procurement and assurance, Digital Transformation Agency;
• Louise Glanville, deputy CEO for governance and stakeholder relations, National Disability Insurance Agency;
•  Maryanne Diamond, general manager of community linkages and engagement, National Disability Insurance Agency;
• Dan Bognar, senior vice president, APAC solutions engineering, cloud sales, industries and innovation at Salesforce;
• Adi Kavaler, global vice president, products & strategy application delivery management for Hewlett Packard Enterprise;
• Andrew Underwood, high performance computer leader, Dell EMC;
• Leif Hanlen, business development and presales technical, Data61;
• Tania Churchill, senior data scientists, AUSTRAC;
• Rajesh Govindan, head of finance Australia and NZ, AMP Capital;
• Joana Valente, Partner, EY;
• Rohan Baxter, senior director of data science, Australian Taxation Office; and,
• Roger Kermode, chair AIIA data analytics special interest group.

Last week, AIIA released the results of a survey that showed almost all Australians believe they would benefit from government using the latest technology for service delivery.

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About AIIA
The Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) is Australia’s peak representative body and advocacy group for those in the digital ecosystem. Since 1978 AIIA has pursued activities to stimulate and grow the digital ecosystem, to create a favorable business environment for members and to contribute to Australia’s economic prosperity. We do this by delivering outstanding member value by providing a strong voice of influence; building a sense of community through events and education; enabling a network for collaboration and inspiration; and developing compelling content and relevant and interesting information.
Media Contacts
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Jeffrey Coote
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Joanna Stevens Kramer
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