ACS Foundation launches QLD chapter

The Australian Computer Society (ACS) is to launch a Queensland chapter of its ACS Foundation.

The Foundation, formed in 2001, seeks to boost funding for ICT scholarships and research, and career opportunities and skill levels in the industry.

The Queensland chapter will focus specifically on addressing industry skills shortages an increasing the uptake of ICT careers.

ACS Foundation executive director, John Ridge, said Queensland was crucial to the success and prosperity of Australia’s ICT industry.

Citing figures from the ACS’s annual Australian ICT Trade Update 2006, he said Queensland now produced 7 percent of the nation’s locally produced ICT equipment exports.

Communications services exports from the state were worth $129 million in 2004-05 and $115 million worth of locally produced ICT equipment was exported in 2005 – up from $40 million in 1995.

According to the ACS’s Ridge, the launch of the Queensland chapter is a necessary and an exciting development for the ‘Smart State’.

“As acknowledged by the Queensland government, through its Smart State positioning, technology is crucial to maintaining the strength of the nation’s ICT industry and a sustainable economic future for Queensland,” he said in a statement.

ACS Foundation Queensland Chapter chairman, Dr Prins Ralston, said the central purpose at the chapter was to leverage the talent leaving Queensland universities and match it with the opportunities the state offered.

“This will help encourage our young professionals to remain within the Smart State and ICT industry over the long-term – and will ultimately contribute to the economic success of Queensland,” he said.

Ralston served as ACS President from 1998 to 2000, is a partner in law firm Clayton Utz, and managing director of Business Management Consulting.