Editorial: Why elected representatives should demand performance management from the Public Sector
Opinion: Bringing global economic balance to the ICT portfolio through Indian and Chinese solution partnerships

Welcome to the 30th edition of Longview. I'm sure you would agree that it is impossible to go to any kind of event or meeting today without some discussion of the economy. At a dinner the other week I was asked by Microsoft Australia's head of corporate affairs what I thought was the single biggest lesson that could be taken out of the last 12-months of uncertainty.

While access to capital has certainly been a pain point for everyone from entrepreneurs to project managers and CEOs I think it goes deeper than that. So my response was simply that you can't by-pass a good business case. Since July 1 we have seen an incredible amount of activity and customer requests for support in this area and we hope that it keeps going. Not only for ourselves but because solid business cases built on defensible data and research is the right approach to management.

Despite the busy-ness there are still enough challenges around to know that as an industry we are not out of the woods yet. And regardless of the green-shoot indicators that many in the industry can point to and say that the business environment is improving, there is still a deeply human side to the GFC. And that side is unemployment.

While we have not seen (and actually never expected to see) job losses within our public sector client base, in the wider industry there are certainly good people being laid off. Just last week a good friend of mine in a senior, regionally focused role was let go. It was a shock to our network of friends and just reinforced the reality of changes that have occurred over the last year. It begs the question of what business-as-usual will look like when an equilibrium returns to the market and good people with valueable knowledge have moved on.

We'll see you in the market or next month in Longview. Read more...