Communications and Digital Economy Minister Stephen Conroy will tonight release the government's roadmap for Australia's participation in the digital economy. But what does the nation's industry think of the effort?
Digital Economy Minister Stephen Conroy will be releasing the government's roadmap for Australia's participation in the digital economy today, but what does the industry expect from it?
The goal of the paper was to outline the key areas of focus for
Government, industry and the community, according to the Minister.
"Australia needs a digitally aware and enabling government, a
digitally confident, innovative and skilled industry and a
digitally literate and empowered community. The paper explores the
actions we need to advance to enhance these key factors for
success," Conroy has previously said of the effort. "It is time now for
government, industry and the community to work together to foster
and harness the benefits on offer in the digital economy."
The big gun
Microsoft Australia chief technology Greg Stone said that although he welcomed the
paper, he didn't believe it was about laying out strategies for the
future, but more about creating a picture of what current
conditions were and what was being done so the industry could
reflect.
"This is part of the government laying the building blocks for
enablement," he said. "If these things are referred to in that
paper, then that paper becomes a useful point for the reflections
of society." He didn't believe the paper was supposed to be prescriptive, but
more a milestone to mark the government's progress — an opportunity
for the industry to pause and think about the future.
"In many ways what people are looking to in this whole thing is
not the paper," he said. "We see the paper as a signal. We see it
as part of the process ... I'm certainly not looking to it for where we should be placing
our bets."
The government had recently removed an enormous stumbling block
in promising to create widespread broadband connectivity, Stone said. The executive believed it was now up to the industry to use its own levers to make
the best of that.
The start-ups
Martin Hosking, chairman of Aussie start-ups RedBubble and Aconex and Looksmart co-founder, said that
he hoped the final version went past the grab bag of issues which was the draft paper.
"The draft paper has 500 different things. That's all well and good, but you
have to focus on a number of small things so you can win," he said.
Australia has poor performance in the digital economy sphere, according to Hosking.
"There's not a single Australian company in the top 500 internet companies in
the world," he said, noting Australia needed to focus on why that has happened.
Three main issues Hosking picked out were a lack of recognition of Australia's distance
from the global markets, the very low numbers of engineers and computer science graduates coming
from universities and the difficulty of getting capital for internet ventures. "If you
need $25 to start the next Google in Australia, you can't," he said.
If you need $25 to start the next Google in Australia, you can't
Start-up veteran Martin Hosking
Austrade was often helpful on the first issue, he believed, but he thought there
could be more done to ameliorate the concern. On the graduates, Hosking suggested making
certain degrees free for bright students. The capital issue was a hard one to resolve, he said,
needing a long-term commitment from the government.
Bart Jellema, the director of all things cool and wonderful at coupon
discovery start-up Tjoos and active organiser of community start-up
initiatives such as Startup Camp and BootUpCamp said that first he thought
the government needed to do something about the price of international bandwidth
to make its National Broadband Network investment worthwhile.
He also said it took too much effort to wade through the red tape
to get government grants: "When you're doing a start-up, there's so many
other things you have to learn. There's so many programs out there. Sometimes
it's more trouble than it's worth."
Jellema thought that there should be a general tax cut for all starting
businesses to make it simple and help companies right from the start, when it could be just two people in a garage.
Mick Liubinskas, web strategist, co-founder of start-up consultant Pollenizer and start-up veteran also
called for more funding to be invested in digital technologies. He said that funding
prototypes had been made necessary because of the sinking economy, which had meant that
money from the usual sources — family, friends and fools — had dried up.
The internet provider
iiNet regulatory officer Steve Dalby said he hoped to see
government support for the development of new applications to
drive take up of the National Broadband Network. "100Mbps might be cool to brag about, but an export industry
based in Australia that exploits that bandwidth, with productivity
and lifestyle-enhancing applications, is much more exciting," he
said.
Investment in Australian software and hardware development that could be traded to the rest of the world was needed. It would be
great if there was an iPhone apps store-like model for the National
Broadband Network, Dalby said.
The support could come in increased funding for the private
sector, as well as universities, TAFEs, CSIRO — anyone who wanted
to get creative. "The NBN should put Australia at the cutting edge in this world.
Generalities about 'e-Health' and 'smart grids' just doesn't cut it
anymore, it needs to be driven by incentives aimed at developing
real applications," he said.
The opposition Conroy's opposite Nick Minchin was not impressed by the report,
because he saw it as a summary of where Australia was at, as opposed to
providing any clarity on how the government intended to deal with
the issues the industry faced.
He singled out convergence as one issue he believed required
more clarity — those areas where boundaries were blurred between
broadcasters, content providers and telcos.
He agreed with the paper's points on the dangers of badly
constructed regulation, but pointed out the hypocrisy of saying
that the digital economy was market-led while supporting
an enormous government owned investment in it — the National
Broadband Network.
"The reality is there is currently a great deal of uncertainty
in the sector and most of that has been caused by the government's
mishandling of broadband policy since coming to office," Minchin
said.