[LINK] Australian IT Flood Relief Program

[Tom Worthington]

A group of people from the IT industry have set up "Queensland IT Flood 
Relief Program" to provide free second hand computers to organisations 
which lost equipment in the January 2011 Queensland floods. They are 
asking for donations of PCs, printers, servers, from across Australia. 
They will service and distribute them: <http://qlditrelief.org/>.

This appears similar to the work of the Australian Computer Society 
(ACS) PC Recycling Scheme 
<http://www.informationeconomy.sa.gov.au/digital_engagement/computer_recycling/australian_computer_society> 
and the Anne Mac Rae Technology Scheme (AMTRS) by the Deaf Society and 
TAD NSW <http://www.deafsocietynsw.org.au/contact/anne_macrae_info.html>.

Running such schemes is now simple. Disks must be cleaned of old data 
and licensing of software installed checked. Both the deaf society and 
ACS schemes charge a small fee for the computers (partly so that the 
people who get them appreciate what they are getting). The Queensland 
scheme is addressing organisations, including for-profit ones, whereas 
such schemes are usually for individuals and not-for-profit organisations.

One point which business need to consider before re-equipping is how to 
re-equip and where. It might be prudent to place servers in a less flood 
prone location. One option is to use a "cloud" service. The business may 
decide to have no data stored locally and just have some computers with 
network for accessing the remote service, allowing for the risks for cloud computing: <http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/01/recordkeeping-risks-associated-with.html>.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/
Visiting Scientist, CSIRO ICT Centre: http://bit.ly/csiro_ict_canberra


-- 
  Tom Worthington FACS HLM
  PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia
  http://www.tomw.net.au