The title for this seminar could be put in a longer form as "Information Systems of an appropriate nature, and at an appropriate level of complexity and functionality, as to provide appropriate information to indigenous users, where they are and how they are". Specifically, this seminar is an early report of a Case Study Action Research project involved in the provision of Decision Support Tools to Pacific Islander communities. The project involves recording the daily production statistics of virgin coconut oil extraction, and analysing the data so as to identify "best practice" in the pursuit of overall quality improvement.

Recently retired ANU academic, Dr Dan Etherington has spent the past five years developing a small-scale coconut press that allows villagers to turn their coconuts into high quality oil. Dr Etherington will provide details of the motivation, background and influencing parameters of the project.

Mr Don Munro, Senior Lecturer in the School of Computer Science at University College, ADFA, will discuss the creation of the first version of a "handraulic" data collection and processing system that is currently being trialed at selected sites.

Mr Philip Clark, Master of Information Science student in the School of Computer Science at University College, ADFA, will outline the research scope of his M.Inf.Sc. project which proposes to investigate the technical factors surrounding the introduction of electronic platforms to support and enhance Indigenous Information Systems.

Seminar attendees will be led through a short handraulic tutorial so as to experience "first-hand" the challenges that such systems face; so bring along a sharp HB pencil and eraser!