From Benefits to Bans: The Role and Influence of Technology Impact Assessment

From Benefits to Bans: The Role and influence of Technology Impact Assessments

A roundtable with Roger Clarke, Katina Michael and Bharath Reddy 

Sydney 3pm | Delhi 9.30am

This virtual roundtable will focus on how technology impact assessments are increasingly shaping the adoption of emerging critical technologies, including advanced ICT (Information and Communication Technologies). The effects of these assessments can be far-reaching in terms of social, economic, and business outcomes.

In this roundtable, we will explore several key questions: What exactly are these assessments? Who is responsible for conducting them? How can we ensure a balance between the interests of all stakeholders? How can this process be more consultative? How is the landscape of technology regulation evolving? 

The roundtable will feature internationally recognised researchers Professor Roger Clarke, Professor Katina Michael and Bharath Reddy.

The discussion will run for one hour from 3pm Sydney time/9.30am Delhi time on Friday 7 February.   If you would like to participate in this discussion, please sign up below. We will send you the details for participation.

The roundtable is part of the new project on Australia India Joint Technology Assessment for Peace and Stability funded by the Australia India Cyber and Critical Technologies Partnership. You can read the Project Scope briefing note here and see the video of our project launch at this link.

Roger Clarke is Principal of Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, Canberra.  His early career was in information systems, as a business analyst and project manager.  For the last few decades, he has worked through his independent consultancy company on strategic and policy aspects of transformative and disruptive information technologies.  This has involved many assessments of impacts, implications and risks of many technologies, from many different perspectives.  He is a Visiting Professorial Fellow associated with UNSW Law & Justice, and a Visiting Professor in Computing in the ANU College of Systems & Society.  He has also been active on the boards of Electronic Frontiers Australia, the Internet Society of Australia, the Australian Privacy Foundation and the Australian Computer Society.

Katina Michael (Senior Member, IEEE) received the B.S. degree in information technology from the University of Technology Sydney in 1996, the Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Wollongong Australia in 2003, and the Master of Transnational Crime Prevention degree from the University of Wollongong in 2009. She researches the social, legal, and ethical implications of emerging technologies. She has a joint professorial appointment with the School for the Future of Innovation in Society and the School of Computing and Augmented Intelligence, Arizona State University, where she is the Director of the Society Policy Engineering Collective. She has been funded by national research councils in Australia, USA, and Canada. She is also an Honorary Professor with the School of Business, University of Wollongong, where she was previously the Associate Dean International of the Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences. She is the Founding Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Technology and Society, and formerly EIC of the IEEE Technology and Society Magazine, editor at Computers & Security, and senior editor at IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine.

Bharath Reddy is an Associate Fellow with the High-Tech Geopolitics Programme at the Takshashila Institution. His research interests are at the intersections of technology, geopolitics, and India's national interests, focusing on AI governance, open-source technologies, and telecommunications. He also manages the Graduate Certificate in Public Policy (Technology and Policy). Before joining Takshashila, he worked in telecommunications, developing software for 4G base stations. He is the co-author of newly released discussion paper,  ‘A Framework for Governing Emerging Technologies’ (2025), co-authored with Dr Naik Shambavi.