Thank you and good morning everyone.
Let me say at the outset that I urge you to seize the opportunity presented by this conference today to glean as much as you possibly can about the future of what is one of the fastest growing industries worldwide.
I was very interested to see the preliminary results of a recent survey of Smaller IT and Telecommunications Firms in the Canberra Capital Region conducted by the Canberra Business Council.
Some of the interesting results revealed that Canberra firms are experiencing good business, with 20 of the 44 responses to date maintaining business size in the last year, and 18 have actually grown!
Almost one in three firms have overseas markets, with the majority operating both in Canberra and other parts of Australia.
Finally, the most common size of firms to respond to the survey were between 2 and 10 people.
The ACT as a natural home for knowledge-based industry
Most of you are quite aware of the reputation, many would say domination, of the United States of America in the global information technology and telecommunications industry.
These days many of you would also suspect that Australia as a whole has every chance of challenging the current world leader, certainly not through population size or mere luck but through imagination, innovation and simple hard yakka.
Here in Canberra, we are already uniquely placed in Australia to take advantage of the IT & T explosion due to our high levels of education and skills and our extensive, enthusiastic use of information technology.
One of the areas we really want to work hard on is the ongoing training and development of IT people in the ACT. There is here, as in many places, a shortage of IT skills and while we have a high number of IT graduates they don’t always remain in the ACT. So that will be one of my prorities - to work with business on how that training and development can best be done.
Initiatives the ACT Government is taking for business and the community
Within the Government we recognise a key challenge in the management of our IT and T investments to be the question of how to deliver more efficient and effective services and support the Government’s desire for a clever capital filled with a clever community.
To meet this challenge we have developed what we believe to be an holistic, comprehensive and sensible government strategic plan for IT modernisation and associated industry development.
This is something we have been working on solidly for some time. In fact, the recent establishment of the Office of Information Technology and Multimedia was entirely in recognition of this change in strategic direction.
We expect it to provide the catalyst for a new high-level focus on IT, communications and multimedia management across the ACT Public Service. This includes assisting the ACT and its myriad of IT businesses to become the single most important IT centre or perhaps Silicon Valley of Australia.
The Office of Information Technology and Multimedia will provide us with strategies to:
The Office of Information Technology and Multimedia’s broad role is to:
Through our partnership process and Business Development area, the ACT has successfully encouraged new IT businesses within the ACT.
We’ve recognised the need to foster growth in the private sector and introduced many initiatives to attract business to the ACT as well as supporting businesses already in the ACT.
For example, the ACT Business Incentive Scheme provides a package of assistance designed to develop business and investment in the ACT. The Scheme is able to provide a range of incentives for firms to expand in, or relocate to, the National Capital and includes:
The Business Development Fund has been established to assist Canberra-based businesses to expand. This fund is a mix of public and private sector capital, and aims to invest on a commercial basis in business ventures that have real and identifiable benefits to Canberra.
We will watch with interest and excitement ACTEW’s broadband trial in Aranda which starts later this month. Commercially it would provide an enormous attraction to business.
We propose to pilot some initiatives ourself through the trial, a virtual ACT Government Shopfront; and electronic Library Service; and homework help for students; as well as telecommuting for some of our staff.
Doing business more cleverly and efficiently through online service delivery and e-commerce
This Government is committed to providing most government transactions online by 2001.
I’d just like to briefly describe a few examples of how we are starting to do this and using technology to bring about service improvements:
The ACT Business License Information System (ACTBLIS) provides a one-stop shop telephone information service for all ACT and Commonwealth government business licence and registration requirements - this will soon be expanded to an Internet capability.
To build on the success of the ACT BLIS, an ACT Business Channel will soon be established to provide a wider range of services than just licensing and registration information for businesses people. It will be both an operator and Internet-based entry point for business wishing to deal with the ACT Government.
As part of the ACT Government’s commitment to improve customer service and access to information, innovative online land and planning information web sites have been developed within the Department of Urban Services. These developments integrate the powerful information technologies of the Internet with geographic information systems.
These unique online spatial systems, which are at the forefront of the spatial online revolution, include:
This Government is also looking into using the very latest technology to provide real benefits to our community: Telemedicine and Video Conferencing are just some examples of this.
There are bill paying facilities on our AUSTOUCH kiosks and over the coming months these kiosks will also be transferred to an Internet environment.
We have introduced a central number for all ACT Government enquiries.
We are trialing a functional directory which, when extended to the whole of the public service, will make it easy for our telephone customers to get through to the area they want - straight away.
We have provided public use of the Internet in all public libraries and free training for seniors in its use.
We’ve introduced a document imaging system in the Registrar-General’s Office which enables land title records to be scanned. This has reduced turnaround times for requests from around 6 weeks to same day service.
We have also recently launched some new websites for Business and the Arts and are currently in the process of updating a brand new you beaut Tourism website - which will be something for you to look out for.
And for my recent trip to China and Japan we developed a CDRom (in several languages) promoting business migration and investment in Canberra.
We are also investigating the use of the Internet for electronic commerce, obviously, within a secure environment. As you are all aware, and this Conference identifies as one of its main themes, the Internet already provides many avenues for purchasing a range of goods and services.
We want to identify which government transactions can be moved to electronic channels and analyse how we should change the way we do business to include greater use of the Internet.
Ultimately we have our customers in mind. With Canberra’s high usage of the Internet it stands to reason that e-commerce is the next great frontier to focus our customer service strategies.
New technologies and the future for the ACT
The ACT Government is all too aware that our future direction will be dedicated to seizing the opportunities available in this industry sector in order to stimulate and diversify our economic base and thereby create a stable and secure business environment.
This Government sees the ACT as the natural Australian centre for intelligent business and recognises that in the future most of our major employers will be from knowledge-based industries.
Only through diversification and expansion of our IT&T industries can we meet the challenges ahead of us - and reach one of this Government’s goals - making the ACT the Clever IT Capital of Australia.
Thank you.
This document was added after the conference, from a text supplied by the ACT Government, 17 November 1998. The abstract published in the November 1998 edition of the conference proceedings is available on-line at: http://www.acs.org.au/president/1998/past/io98/carnell.htm
Tom Worthington, 17 November 1998. Editor of "Electronic Commerce: Net Benefit for Australia?", Proceedings of the 1998 Information Industry Outlook Conference.
Proceedings of the 1998 Information Industry Outlook Conference