Sigaccess fy’18 Annual Report

SIGCAS FY’18 Annual Report
July 2017 ― June 2018
Submitted by: Karla Carter, SIGCAS Chair

1. Mission Statement

SIGCAS mission has been to provide a forum to discuss, debate and research all issues pertaining to the social implications of computing, including ethical and philosophical concerns, for the computing profession.

2. General Report

FY 2018 was a good year for SIGCAS. The highlights include:

- Newsletter: Randy Connelly took over as Newsletter Editor in Chief in early 2018 (former EIC, Dee Weikle, had to step back) and has migrated the newsletter to the new WordPress site. We have a member, Evelyn Lulis, who is interested in serving as Deputy Editor, but it is not finalized yet.

- SIGCAS’s social media presence on Twitter continues to inspire contacts and conversation. We have recruited at least a handful of new members through Twitter interactions.

- Annual Pre-Symposium Event: Each spring, as a pre-(SIGCSE) Symposium event, SIGCAS holds a SIGCAS-themed workshop. This year’s theme was Strategies for Integrating the Updated ACM Code of Ethics in to the Computing Curriculum.

- Conferences: As was mentioned last year SIGCAS grew from a zero-conference SIG to one that is now sponsoring two annual conferences:

- LIMITS (Computing Within Limits): SIGCAS was in-cooperation with LIMITS for their 2018 conference.

- COMPASS (Computing and Sustainable Societies), which is the evolution of DEV, had its first conference, with 40 papers, 10 notes, and 10 posters. It raised substantial funding for its operations from local entities.

The leadership of both LIMITS and COMPASS were able to assist a group within SIGPLAN regarding their climate change initiative.

COMPASS and LIMITS are considering whether co-location for 2019 is in their mutual best interests.

- Computing for Social Good (CSG): SIGCAS continues to be the primary SIG sponsor behind the Computing for Social Good in Education (CSG-Ed) movement. This effort seeks to show educators how to evolve their current curriculum (programming projects, in-class examples, etc) to highlight the importance of computing in solving the pressing problems of the day. All too often our projects and examples highlight games or billionaire-producing killer apps instead of how computing can assist in understanding and solving important social, environmental, or health-related problems (to name a few). A sister-track for CSG was held at SIGCSE in 2018 and a mini-workshop was offered.

- Key Areas for Work:

- Awards (see below).

- Website maintenance: Randy Connelly was kind enough to port the previous website to the new WordPress CMS but it is now up to SIGCAS to maintain it. We are actively looking for website volunteers. We are also pondering hiring students.

- Conference management: We were able to rely on Mikey Goldweber’s experience with conferences to assist LIMITS and DEV, but need to have a more formal structure in place going forward.

- 50^th Anniversary Celebration events: We have put out a call for a historian and are still looking.

- Volunteers: SIGCAS continues to need more helping hands when it comes to operations. Additionally, we need to explore a graceful exit strategy for volunteers who have overcommitted and need to step back. See also, “Succession Planning”

- Member engagement: while our Twitter feed has attracted new members, and some SIGCAS members interact, the SIGCAS membership at large seems reticent to participate in conversations. Posts to the SIGCAS-Talk list are often met with unsubscribe requests. Discovering how the membership wishes to interact is a goal for the coming year.

- Succession planning: It was noted in last year’s report regarding elections that the EC was composed of nearly all new officers. In order to keep ideas and perspective fresh it is important to engage in succession planning. Some conversations have begun around this but need to be developed.

3. Awards

We have selected a recipient for the 2016/2017 Outstanding Service Award who will be informed within the next month. The 2017/2018 award has not been decided. The EC has been unable to determine a winner for the Making a Difference Award for 2017/2018, nor was there an award for 2016/2017. This award has been identified by the EC as a continued area for remediation.

4. Significant papers on new areas that were published in proceedings

The new format for the newsletter and website is recently live and we hope to encourage papers in the coming year.

5. Significant programs that provided a springboard for further technical efforts

SIGCAS has assisted COPE with the updated version of the ACM Code of Ethics. SIGCAS will continue to support COPE’s outreach efforts as well as contributing content for the Integrity Project.

6. Innovative programs which provide service to some part of your technical community

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  SIGCAS continues to promote the idea of computing professionals having a socially relevant influence. SIGCAS, in addition to continue working with SIGCSE in planning pre-Symposium events, is also exploring cooperative ventures with other SIGs. Currently that is in the talking stage but we have offered support.
  
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  SIGCAS continues to participate in a joint IEEE/ACM Ethics project.
  
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  SIGCAS continues to work with other conferences world-wide through an “in cooperation” status.
  
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  SIGCAS sponsors two conferences in its primary area of focus.
  

7. Brief summary of key issues that the SIG membership will have to deal with in the next 2-3 years

The negative effects of technology on society continue to be an area of concern. SIGCAS has been somewhat of a Cassandra until recently. There is more awareness of ethical issues, but the amount of those issues threatens to overwhelm and potentially numb concerns. There is almost a firehose of news daily and it’s difficult to know where to focus conversations for the greatest effect.

Due to the apparently reticent nature of SIGCAS membership, we fear SIGCAS is at risk of its voice being minimized, both in ACM itself – particularly since other SIGs have developed their own ethics wings – and in the public sphere. It is important for SIGCAS members to present themselves as public intellectuals. SIGCAS has been referred to in the past as the conscience of the ACM. Other SIGs have ethics subcommittees, but ethics is in the very DNA of SIGCAS. It is up to SIGCAS members to start and grow conversations about the effects of computing technology on society. It does the world no good if we limit our discussions to academic venues and academic verbiage. We are not only a SIG of academics or researchers. A healthy percentage of our membership includes some form of real-world practitioners. We therefore need our members to go forth and converse in daily life, with technical and non-technical people, about how computing technology is affecting society.