Imagine coming to work tomorrow in a world without technology? Back in November Sam asked that very question in a Longview article  entitled, What the ICT industry needs is a great campaign. The article was widely distributed and read within Queensland’s key ICT industry groups. And in an Australian first, today’s Courier Mail ran a single page advertisement drawing a line in the sand for Australia’s political parties to meet them head-on under the attention grabbing headline "We already employee 70,000 Queenslanders and with your help we could create another 30,000 new jobs".

In an election campaign that has safely ignored the technology vote to-date, key industry groups including Software Queensland, AIIA, ITCRA, ASIBA, ACS, WIT, IT Gold Coast, and under-signed by the ICT Industry Working Group Executive Officer Dr Paul Campbell, are now demanding the attention of the incumbent Premier and Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg. 

Late last week Lawrence Springborg made his statement about a 3% saving across government to funnel more into front-line services. Unfortunately the cuts he indicated will potentially include technology amounting to a $40 million annual reduction for the local, national, and international industry suppliers that service Queensland Government. Somewhere along the line someone forgot that “front-line” services today are almost entirely underpinned by technology.

For too long Australia’s public policy answer to ICT has been to cut costs and save our way to productivity gains, invest in “research and development”, encourage innovation and many other mantras. Those approaches have not moved us forward as a technology nation and it is time for a change.

To draw home the point that the industry is more than simply boxes and wires managed through latent procurement cycles the full-page advertisement is seeking policy positions from both parties prior to the election across the following 10 key initiatives (see www.qldict.org.au for details):

1. A Technology Transformation Fund
2. A Community Services Dividend Strategy
3. An Industry Productivity Strategy
4. An Innovation Queensland Precinct
5. Project Pathways
6. A Technology Skills Development Fund
7. An ICT Industry Apprenticeship Scheme
8. An SME Participation Scheme
9. An ICT Government Steering Committee
10. A Growth for Jobs Fund 

On Friday, Anna Bligh and Lawrence Springborg will come together for the Queensland political great debate and the ICT industry will be there in force having already purchased 10 tables and campaign t-shirts under the generic banner of a united industry. With their presence they will be demanding serious policy-based initiatives from both parties in the coming two weeks.

The organised campaign represents one of the first unified public advertisements for the industry and may lead to Queensland’s own political shit-storm  if the infrastructure- and economic-heavy focuses of both parties fails to grasp the significance and contribution of the industry this time around. In spite of wider polls giving the LNP a marginal early campaign buffer, there is already rumblings across the ICT industry that Labor represents the best way forward for its industry, but the best indicator will certainly be Friday’s litmus test.