The Naked Chief Blog

When it comes to ICT, national competition does not even stop at the company level. In many cases state-based parochialism hinders Australia's national interests. The cases in point are numerous from train guages to the Murray Darling river system, and more recenlty the squabbling over which piece of the NBN will go to which state jurisdiction. 

Let's consider this in the context of national licencing. Queensland will be the first state to implement a smartcard-based driver's licence. Yet as certain as the other states are to follow, it is highly unlikely that other states will implement the same solution. They will be subtley different but fundamentally the same. Therefore, a national licencing bureau would seem like an intelligent national ICT undertaking. But rather than implement a single version, each state will be allowed to pursue thier own solution so long as they remain "interoperable". It is the modern version of the rail guage problem that took over a century to rectify.

Today's policy asks whether a constitutional change to recognise and define multi-jurisdictional projects that represent the national ICT interest is achievable. So let me start this conversation by saying that the fear of God does not exist in modern commerce and for that reason the ICT industry is often treated with a mix of both awe and contempt. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is the classic case study in ethical dilema that drives a lot of what goes on in our industry today.

First a few facts. 80% of Australian SMEs do not have an ICT strategy and most buy their technology from the retail channel on an ad-hoc basis.

Taking 1-man operations out of the equation, Australia has about 700,000 small business operators.In fact, the vast majority of  Australian companies are SMEs.  As such, much work is done in Australia by governments in support of the small business operator. On the flip-side however, 81% of the ICT market by spend is accounted for by the top 13,000 companies. It seems that the strategic thinking stops there as well. This policy initiative asks what kind of a powerful return would strategic ICT planning support at the SME level provide to the Australian economy? 

For a relatively small, but highly successful country on the global stage our national leaders take an overly complex and often ambivalent view towards the role and potential of information and communications technology. They do so because in many ways the government perceives that it is immune from any action the ICT industry takes. But we strongly believe that this is not the case and that debate on ICT policy should not be confined to the few weeks our policy makers spend on the hustings.

Beginning on 1st June the Naked Chief will be writing 30 blogs in 30 days addressing the topic of ICT policy and we'd like you to join the debate by adding your comments, queries and criticisms to the ideas we will throw-up throughout the month.