Is IT a high enough priority in the upcoming election?

Australia has abandoned all but the most high tech of manufacturing, meaning that manufacturing is now a minor component of our GDP. We’ve also seen agriculture take a back seat in the economy. Due to this, our services industries are emerging as major players in the future of our nation’s GDP figures. And this means that IT and telecommunications are a very important part of the business infrastructure of the future.

America has just suffered a serious downturn in employment and the financial reports are showing that the nation has learned to be more productive and more efficient as a result. Australia has not yet had this brute force applied, and is still complacent about productivity tools and building scalability and efficiency.

If the new government does not ensure the National Broadband Network goes ahead, our country could find itself years behind other developed nations. Right now technologies are emerging that will ensure businesses are released from many of the constraints that today’s IT systems are forcing upon them. These solutions will require higher bandwidth than we can currently achieve, and will use large centralised computers to deliver solutions efficiently.

The sooner Australia’s infrastructure is capable of supporting the data load, the sooner we will derive benefits from it. Delaying this department for an entire term of government would see us playing catch up for many years to come.

As yet, it is hard to imagine the volume of data that might flow over the NBN, but there are already tools that could have every public street lamp reporting its status to a central repository so that replacements could be ordered and deployed the day after a lamp fails, and mail boxes could have detectors in them so that only those mail boxes containing letters are attended to in each round of collections. Smart meters and sensors could also be used to measure gas, electricity and water usage – reducing fees for meter reading. The mind boggles at all of the other ways in which data could be continuously uploaded to increase productivity…

We are rapidly heading for videophone calls and video on-demand, as well as rich online gaming experiences and virtual worlds. These might not be immediately essential, but they would reduce business travel and green house emissions – even more crucial when the cost of carbon is truly accounted for.

And there are many more reasons for improving our communication systems to ensure we remain a modern nation.

Labor has made it clear that they plan to deliver NBN to 93% of Australia’s population. The Liberals are yet to make their position clear after comments by Shadow Treasurer, Joe Hockey, declared that the Coalition would dump the NBN if it formed a government.

Today there will be a forum at the National Press Club in Canberra, during which Labor, Liberal and Greens politicians will present their ICT policies to the nation.

The Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) has called on the next Federal Government to deliver the following outcomes: 

1. Recognise and support the significant productivity improvement and economic growth roles that ICT plays by creating a new portfolio of Minister for Productivity in the next parliamentary cabinet. This Minister would be focused on achieving national productivity improvement through widespread deployment of ICT across key sectors such as health, education, energy, infrastructure and government service delivery

2. Continue the rapid rollout of ubiquitous high-speed broadband infrastructure for all Australian premises as a nation-building priority of the next Federal Government. AIIA supports the current government’s National Broadband Network approach and is concerned by the lack of any viable alternative policy from the Opposition. AIIA would need an understanding of the Opposition’s broadband enablement plan to be supportive

3. Accelerate the digital economy understanding by investment at two levels; firstly in a broad community and business awareness campaign promoting the value of digital economy applications and services and secondly, by providing a significant projects investment pool similar to the current Infrastructure Australia model, for the development of new digital economy applications that are created in partnership with non-ICT industry partners

4. Take steps to further build confidence in the digital economy and ensure that the public understand the role that all Australians can play in it. AIIA calls on all parties to address key online confidence issues of privacy, security, sophisticated payments and protection from cybercrime and cyber bullying and to promote solutions and strategies for the community to address these issues

5. Recognise the economic and social benefits of revolutionary health reform by rapidly accelerating the uptake of electronic health practices, including addressing and funding related workforce skills requirements

6. Put in place new policy, incentive and investment levers to drive much higher levels of innovation through the adoption of technology by all businesses, large and small

7. Change significant policy positions in order to make Australia a more attractive destination for entrepreneurs, R&D development and ICT-related business investment. This must include changes to current positions on employee share ownership plans, Capital Gains, Intellectual Property treatment, R&D tax policy and foreign investment support

8. Make the issue of a highly capable technology-aware workforce a key priority by implementing a skills mapping review to achieve the full productivity potential of the digital economy

9. Show leadership and innovation in its own use of ICT to deliver progressive citizen services. This must include early engagement with industry to highlight key opportunities for improvement

10. Recognise and promote the substantial potential for widespread reduction of carbon footprints through comprehensive use of ICT across industry, business and the community

11. Provide continued support for the rollout of a national scheme for electronic waste and recycling

12. Commit to support for consistent tracking of Australia’s performance against global metrics for competitiveness, productivity, innovation and more specifically for ICT usage, return on investment and productivity impact – including the impact of the digital economy, productivity improvement through ICT and the environmental benefits of ICT deployment

I hope we do not see our technical capability thrown around like a political football, and today will indeed be interesting for all Australians who look to the service industry, education sector or high tech industries for employment.

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David Markus is the founder of Combo – the IT services company that ensures IT is never an impediment to growth.