| July 16, 2010
Technology to influence election
By Anthony Wong*
With the federal election expected to be held within the next couple of months, the major parties have begun actively promoting their policy initiatives in a bid to win the hearts, minds, and votes of the Australian people.
For the first time, technology issues are shaping up as major influencers in determining the outcome of the upcoming poll.
Not only will Australia's largest infrastructure project, the NBN, leverage technology to enable the digital economy, but our business fortunes rest on our ability to conduct transactions and share information online.
Technology increasingly determines our quality of life, driving everything from business and communication through to health, education, and entertainment. The solutions to challenges like climate change, cyber security, economic growth, and privacy protection will be technology-driven.
Today's workers are either empowered or disempowered by the quality of technology available to them. As the workforce ages, technology will be the key to enabling people to keep working for longer.
While asylum seekers, the economy, climate change, and taxation continue to dominate the headlines, the most crucial question for the nation is how will our political leaders power Australia's next generation economy? Australia must look beyond resources and recognise technology's critical role both as an enabler of every other sector, and as an industry in its own right.
We need our politicians to champion the ICT industry -- as they traditionally have the resources sector -- because technology is a vital resource both for business and the wider community. Major infrastructure projects have always been difficult to justify purely on cost. When plans were first considered for the Sydney Harbour Bridge, there was tremendous debate over whether such a project was really needed.
Today, could we imagine Sydney without the Harbour Bridge? Yes, it dramatically reduces the time and resources needed to traverse the harbour, but did our pioneers envisage that the bridge would also become an iconic brand for Australian tourism? Similarly, the NBN will provide a super-bridge, connecting companies, communities, and individuals across vast expanses of oceans, continents, and nations, opening up new unimaginable possibilities. The upfront cost, while significant, pales in comparison to the potential gains, many of which are still outside the scope of our current thinking.
Technology has been the single biggest driver of productivity gains over the past 20 years. Any cuts to government ICT investments will naturally impact our ability to make further improvements.
Australia's economic future needs us to develop a strong and vibrant ICT industry that is globally competitive and capable of driving future productivity gains in all other economic sectors.
This requires clear focus and direction from the government through a framework of policies and initiatives that promote entrepreneurial activity and infrastructure development while enhancing our innovation capabilities, encouraging investment and commercialisation, and providing appropriate safeguards for the community.
*Anthony Wong is president of the ACS and chief executive of agw consulting www.acs.org.au
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