The AAIS has developed the concept of an Australasian IS Ecosystem, see Figure below, in order to understand its mission, to guide its actions, and to engage and interact with other entities within the broader Australasian IS Community and with other representative groups and professional associations. This concept is based on synthetic systems thinking (Ackoff) and is a Community Governance perspective of the institutions operating within our community.
The AAIS occupies a singular and unique niche, as it:
- Connects our regional community to the global IS community,
- has provided- and continues to provide- a coordinating and support role for entities in this ecosystem,
- for the major Australian IS Community activities and services, the AAIS develops and maintains the Charters and Development Roadmaps for all community assets,
- operates and supports all Australasian IS Community infrastructure, governance, and the vast majority of its services, and
- the nature of the AAIS Jurisdiction obligates it to develop new ways of supporting its membership, for example the AAIS Virtual Communities and AAIS Preprints.
There are a number of different entities working within the Australasian IS Ecosystem. They perform different roles and represent different groups:
- IS professoriate representation groups: the Australian Council of Professors and Heads of Information Systems (ACPHIS) and the Professors and Heads of Information Systems, New Zealand (PHISNZ) do important work at a national level with IS Professoriate and Heads of Discipline,
- IS professional associations: these represent the IS, Informatics and Computer engineering professionals- usually within a country, for example, the Australian Computing Society (ACS), Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA), and Institute of IT Professionals, New Zealand (IITP)
Like all systems, this ecosystem is the product of the interactions of its entities. It helps to shape how the AAIS directs its activities and develops its services. It also can be used to explain how this network of stakeholders evolves over time. The existence of the Australasian IS Ecosystem has helped in understanding the persistence and stability of the governance arrangements in this part of the world despite some episodes of historic disruption. This is evidence for the fact that the Australasian IS Ecosystem is hyperstable, that internal damage to one entity can be mitigated by the interconnections between other entities.
Australasian IS Ecosystem