The Naked Chief wishes to thank Sam Higgins for this policy contribution. 

At some point or another everyone has been asked to provide a reference. Whether it is for a close personal friend, professional colleague or supplier there is value in the support of one person's reputation or organisation's brand for another.

As a kid it was bug-catchers, Mechanno, and as I got older the 200-in-1 electronic kits from Tandy, and Dick Smith that helped me understand how things worked. Dad tended to draw the line at power tools (though shotguns and rifles were fine?!).  Our television was the oldest in the neighbourhood and servicing it was a regular occurance on weekends before  the serious Saturday and Sunday night movie marathons began. Sometimes he would allow me to change a valve but mostly my sisters and I had to sit back in a wide arc and just be ready to wack him with a piece of wood. Unfortunately that never happened either. Anyway, on top of those things came sport, music, language, and reading. I learned a great deal as a kid through some wonderful experiences but such a busy schedule is pretty standard fare for a kid growing up today, and in most cases we take it all in our stride.

From a childhood learning perspective, yesterday we talked about incorporating open source software development languages into secondary education curriculums. That makes sense because of the proximity to graduation and the "real-world" application that senior students will require as they approach the end of their journey through the system. But what about early childhood learning and discovery? While teaching kids a computer programming language at a very young age may have sounded like a strange thing to do even a generation ago, from a K/P-7 curriculum perspective, it is really no different from the music and language lessons which kids undertake today. Many pre-prep or kinder centres even start children on basic French and Italian before they get to school.

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.

The arguments for producing national licences in one place, like passports and consistent rail gauges, is that it derives millions of dollars in savings.  This is something that cannot be ignored in the current economic climate. At a federal level, the states already convene through Austroads who have successfully defined the necessary interoperability standards as evidenced by establishment of the Smartcard Licence Interoperability Protocal (SLIP) workgroup. The trigger required to move beyond interoperability for national licencing can be largely attributed to the technical requirements for identity based smartcards being internationally standardised (i.e. ISO). And as it happens this has also been achieved through the work here in Queensland. Why then do we continue to allow states to "go it alone", tossing aside the economic benefits afforded all states and territories to leverage existing platforms and bureaus for lower cost entry into the more robust national solution?

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.

Speaking at an AIIA lunch last week was John Higgins, Director General of Intellect, the UK's equivalent of AIIA. He was recounting certain conversations with Sir Peter Gershon and in particular Sir Peter's comments about the differences between the ICT industry and the Engineering industry. Gershon commented that if he went to the Engineering industry with a desire and concept to build a bridge across the Thames he might possibly be told that it could not be built, and the reasons why; regardless of which engineering firm he called upon.

Mortgage brokers changed the banking industry and its accompanying service ecosystem. Mobile mortgage brokers took that to an even greater level. The public sector has for many years offered service capability extensions for transactional type activities through outlets including Australia Post for everything from rates to passport processing, and car dealers for vehicle registration. Wider attempts to institutionalise complex multi-authorisation processes have been either project based, transitional (such as the ATOs original GST help teams), or unsuccessful.

It is not that the model doesn't exist. Cite badge-carrying ATO or Customs agents or clip-board wielding inspection agents, or the entire Police force. But rather than the negative association of an IRS agent showing up at your door, the Canadian government found that their shared service initiative proved that a positive government service experience can actually increase votes. Yet a positive experience engendered via the partnership of personalisation and automation remains a policy white elephant.

The argument for mobile service representatives is that they recognise the way in which businesses wish to conduct business. To separate these interactions from a transaction, while complex activities may start on the internet, they cannot be completed there. The internet is the start of the inquiry or referral process that begins the "Please come and see me about a business license" process which hypothetically ends through increased employment, revenue (taxes), and economic contribution. For individuals we need look no further than our aging population. Grey nomads aside, the aged are loyal and don't like to travel very far as the community banking sector has discovered. Mobile reps would represent the face of government when so often it has none.
 
Aside from votes (the political equivalent of increasing revenue), and constituent satisfaction (customer satisfaction), the other reason that mobilising and personalising government is process optimisation (the bureaucratic equivalent of operational savings). The business of government essentially boils down to two types of services: transactional, or what people financially give or receive, and informational, or what people want to or need to know. It is the interface of these two types of services that can be utilized to highlight the current inefficiencies within any jurisdiction. For businesses, mobilising government services would highlight which beaurucratic processes were really important.