Category: government

What would you do if the computer screen went dark?

Warrnambool’s phone problems remind businesses of the importance of continuity planning

What would you do if the computer went dark? originally appeared in Smart Company on November 29, 2012.

One of the truisms of business is the more ways customers can pay; the more likely you are to make the sale.

This is particularly true when something goes wrong – the customer hasn’t any cash, the till is jammed or the EFTPOS system is down.

Exactly this happened to thousands of businesses across south-west Victoria last week when a fire burned down the Warrnambool telephone exchange.

Unfortunately for the people and businesses of the surrounding region, much of the telephone, internet and Telstra’s mobile network runs through the burned out telephone exchange, sending the district back into the pre-telephone days.

This presented real problems as customers couldn’t use EFTPOS or get cash out of ATMs, while businesses struggled to get payrolls done or place orders with suppliers who couldn’t comprehend that it wasn’t possible to place orders over the net or by fax.

A hundred kilometres north of Warrnambool in the Grampians town of Dunkeld, a cafe worker told the ABC, “suppliers say ‘send a fax’ and you’re like ‘we can’t’ and they’re like ‘oh, we don’t want to handwrite it’.”

Those suppliers are a good example of not having the systems or staff in place to deal with ‘out of the box’ situations.

Unexpected events like the phone network being down for a week, major floods, devastating bushfires or zombie invasions will test businesses and it’s why having a real Business Continuity Plan (BCP) is important for business.

A workable BCP is one that identifies all the critical failure points for the business such as not having the internet for a week, a flooded office or, as happened to one of my clients, their entire building collapsing into the construction site next door.

The various state business agencies have guides on what to consider in a Business Continuity Plan including a good one from the South Australian government.

Regardless of how comprehensive a plan your business has, the most important part is going to be your people. If your organisation is staffed or managed by people who like to say “computer says no,” then they are going to be particularly useless when the computer is stone dead.

As the Warrnambool outage shows, unexpected business disruptions can come from anywhere, so flexible thinking and initiative is what matters in a crisis. It’s something worth thinking about with your staff and systems.

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Tracks in the ether

Smartphones, the web and tracking technologies are giving governments and businesses more power than ever.

Bureaucrats dream of tracking every person or asset under their purview and the rise of technologies like smartphones,  Global Positioning Systems (GPS) and Radio Frequency IDentity (RFID) chips are giving them more power than ever.

Two stories in the last week illustrated how these technologies are being used by authorities to monitor people; a school district in the United States is fighting a student who refuses to wear an RFID enabled identity card and Saudi immigration authorities are now sending text messages to guardians of travellers, mainly women, leaving the country.

In Saudi Arabia, the law prohibits minors and women from leaving the country without the permission of their adult male guardians. As the Riyadh Bureau website explains, to streamline the permission process Saudi authorities enabled online pre-registration for travellers so now male guardians can grant assent through a website rather than dealing with the immigration department’s paperwork every time their spouse or children wants to travel.

When the spouse or child passes through immigration, the guardian receives an SMS message saying their ward is about to leave the country. One assumes the male can withdraw that approval on receipt of the text.

The Saudi application is an interesting use of the web and smartphones to deliver government services and probably not what Western e-gov advocates are thinking of when they agitate for agencies to move more functions online.

More ominous is the story from the US where Wired Magazine reports Andrea Hernandez, a Texan student, is fighting her local school over the use of RFID enabled identity cards that track pupils’ attendance.

John Jay High School’s use of RFID tags is a classic case of bureaucrat convenience as electronic cards are far easier to manage and monitor than roll calls or sign-ins.

Incidentally John Jay High School has over 200 CCTV cameras monitoring students’ movements, as district spokesman Pascual Gonzalez says, “the kids are used to being monitored.”

The problem is that RFID raises a range of privacy and security issues which the bureaucrats either haven’t thought through or have decided don’t apply to their department.

Notable among those issues is that “has a bar code associated with a student’s Social Security number”. It never ceases to amaze just how, despite decades of evidence, US agencies and businesses keep using an identifier that has proved totally unsuited for the purposes it was developed for.

Probably the most worrying point from the Texan story is how school officials tried to suppress the story, offering Ms Hernandez’s father a compromise on the condition he “agree to stop criticizing the program and publicly support it.”

That urge to control criticism and dissent is probably the thing all of us should worry about when governments and businesses have the ability to track our movements.

In this respects, the Texas education officials are even more oppressive than Saudi anti-women laws. Something we should consider as more of our behaviour is tracked.

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Australia in the Asian Century – Chapter 8: Building sustainable security in the region

What are the security issues for the Asia in the 21st Century

This post is one of the series of articles on the Australia in the Asian Century report.

The eighth chapter of Australia in the Asian Century looks at the security picture of the region, this is one of the bigger chapters and like some of the others it’s as notable for what it leaves out as for what it says.

National objective 20. Australian policies will contribute to Asia’s development as a region of sustainable security in which habits of cooperation are the norm.

That’s nice, worthy and has been undoubtedly true for most previous Australian governments. Except of course when Australian Prime Ministers join the prevailing colonial power in wars like Iraq, Afghanistan, Malaya, Korea, Vietnam or kicking around the German territories in World War I.

Chapter Eight partly dives into territory already covered in Chapter Three, this time though the analysis does discuss the United States’ role in more detail and makes the observation that US military spending dwarfs that of any other Asian nation – interestingly this is one of the few times Russia gets a mention in the entire report.

Encouragingly, the paper doesn’t confine the concept of ‘security’ just to military matters and takes a broader view of issues such as guaranteeing access to resources, food and water. There is some discussion of climate change and on regional responses to natural disasters such as tsunamis and earthquakes.

One notable omission is that of refugees. Given that most of the asylum seekers arriving by boat are Asian – currently coming from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka – and almost all pass through other Asian countries, it would be expected this issue would get some exploration. Sadly it doesn’t and once again skirting over an important issue detracts from the paper’s substance.

As befits Australia’s most important relationships in Asia, there is a lot of discussion of the three way relationship between China, the United States and Australia with a detailed breakout box in section 8.4.

The discussion on Australia’s relations between China and the US makes an interesting statement;

In managing the intersections of Australia’s ties with the United States and China, we will need a clear sense of our national interests, a strong voice in both relationships and effective diplomacy.

Undoubtedly this statement is true, however successive Australian governments have conflated the interests of the United States with being the same as Australia’s. In recent times Australian leaders have followed the US lead even when it has been clear American policy conflicts with Australia’s Chinese relations.

Moving away from a reflex support of the United States is going to be one of the biggest challenges for Australian governments in the Asian Century and one hopes the process is as gradual and incident free as the white paper hopes.

National objective 21.The region will be more sustainable and human security will be strengthened with the development of resilient markets for basic needs such as energy, food and water.

National objective 21 is an interesting statement in itself – “resilient markets for basic needs such as energy, food and water” smacks of the 1980s privatisation and corporatism that has left Australia with duopoly industries and an excessive financialisation of those markets for basic needs.

It may well turn out to be the case that Asian countries choose not to follow that path, particularly those like the Philippines and Indonesia who have experienced the effects of crony capitalism in recent history.

Chapter 8 of Australia in the Asian Century finishes with a detailed look at the regional efforts aimed at building trust and co-operation on trans-national issues.  Much is made of various international groups such as the G20 and the UN.

An interesting case study is that of the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty with an examination of Japan’s and Australia’s work in that field. Sadly this is another area that’s let down by the actions of current and previous Australian governments in selling uranium to India.

The nuclear weapons stand off between India, Pakistan and China is another ‘elephant in the room’ issue that doesn’t really get the coverage it should in such a report.

Chapter 8 of Australia in the Asian Century is a very optimistic section of the report however it does hint at the path Australia could follow to being a credible, medium sized economy and influencer in the region. However one has to consider the actions of Australian leaders when asking if the nation is really interested in taking that path.

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Australia in the Asian Century – Building the agriculture industry

How can Australia improve agricultural exports to Asia?

Before going into Chapter 8, the Australia in the Asian Century report has a detailed look at the agriculture industry. Which kicks off with National Objective number 19;

National objective 19. Australia’s agriculture and food production system will be globally competitive, with productive and sustainable agriculture and food businesses.

While this objective seems to have already been achieved, the bulk of the chapter does a good job of identifying the opportunity and challenges for the industry.

The examination of trade treaties, biosecurity and food security is a good overview of the industry however it does suffer from a rose coloured view of prospects and government programs.

Issues such as protectionism, genetically modified foods and the running sore of live cattle exports don’t get a mention.

Another aspect of this section is how the aspirations don’t match the actions of governments, for instance the industry capture of regulators – the case of defining free range eggs being a good example – is a real barrier to Australia selling quality produce internationally.

While the section does discuss ‘value adding’, the tenor of the section seems to be focused on bulk exports and really doesn’t identify industries such organics and free range which are an opportunity for the agricultural industry.

Overall though, this section at least does give a reasonably detailed snapshot of an industry and its a shame the paper doesn’t attempt to profile other sectors in the Australian economy.

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Australia in the Asian Century – Chapter Seven: Connecting to Asian Markets

How can Australia improve its business, trade and government links with Asian countries?

This post is one of the series of articles on the Australia in the Asian Century report.

The seventh chapter of Australia in the Asian Century looks at how the country’s businesses and governments can engage with markets in Asia. In some ways this is the most effective chapter of the report.

At the beginning of the chapter introduction points out that Asia offers bigger markets than Australia and says “Australian businesses need to build on their existing advantages by developing new capabilities and approaches as they become fully part of the region.”

This is true, but the Chapter never really identifies what Australia business’ existing advantages really are and again this is a weakness in the report.

National objective 17. Australia’s businesses will be recognised globally for their excellence and ability to operate successfully in Asian markets.

How this comes about is difficult to say, and what governments can actually do to help businesses be recognised globally isn’t really identified.

The CPA case study is notable for illustrating the number of Australian expats working in Asia. In many ways these people are the wasted talents that should have been cultivated by domestic businesses through the 1990s and 2000s.

Saying that businesses need to be part of the global supply chain is a statement of the obvious and Chapter 7.3 does discuss the importance of efficient ports, fast customs procedures and reduced barriers to trade. This ties into National Objective 18a.

National objective 18a.The Australian economy will be more open and integrated with Asia, through efforts to improve our domestic arrangements. The flow of goods, services, capital, ideas and people will be easier.

  • Australia’s trade links with Asia will be at least one-third of GDP by 2025, up from one-quarter in 2011.

It’s difficult to argue with this objective, although one wonders what Canberra has been doing for the last twenty years on smoothing the flow of goods, services, capital and ideas. Hopefully this is one of the relatively easy areas where a Gillard, or Abbott, government can deliver.

National objective 18b. The Australian economy will be more open and integrated with Asia, through comprehensive regional agreements, better aligned economic regulations, greater infrastructure connectivity and enhanced understanding of each country’s arrangements. The flow of goods, services, capital, ideas and people will be easier and Australian businesses and investors will have greater access to opportunities in Asia.

This objective focuses around formal trade links and really only describes the current policy – continued from the Howard government – of signing bilateral trade agreements rather than waiting for the cumbersome and possibly never ending global negotiations to actually deliver something.

Most of Chapter Seven is focused on describing the various trade initiatives the Australian government is engaged in through APEC, ASEAN and various other forums.

All of these are good initiatives and these are the brightest spot in the entire report, this is where the Australian political system has delivered bipartisan support for a long term plan and it’s a shame we can’t see more actions similar to this in areas like education, taxes and sustainability.

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Australia in the Asian Century – Chapter Six: Building capabilities

How can Australia build a productive workforce to take advantage of the Asian Century

This post is one of the series of articles on the Australia in the Asian Century report.

Of all the chapters in the Australia in Asian Century discussion paper, Chapter Six has probably attracted the most opprobrium because of the fine words which haven’t been matched by government policy and action.

Parts of this chapter have a strong “school marm” tone as it tries to mandate the composition of company boards or the locations of where students will study. Overall though, most of the objectives are either motherhood statements, impractical or at odds with the actions of both state and Federal governments.

National objective 9. To build the capabilities of Australian students, Australia’s school system will be in the top five schooling systems in the world, delivering excellent outcomes for all students of all backgrounds, and systematically improving performance over time.

  • By 2025, Australia will be ranked as a top five country in the world for the performance of our students in reading, science and mathematics literacy and for providing our children with a high?quality and high?equity education system.
  • By 2015, 90 per cent of young Australians aged 20 to 24 years will have a Year 12 or equivalent qualification, up from 86 per cent in 2010.
While these objectives are worthy, there’s little discussion of exactly how this will be achieved beyond broad statements. Again it’s notable that these aspirations are being laid out at a time when funding is being cut and staff retrenched in both state and Federal government education departments.

National objective 10. Every Australian student will have significant exposure to studies of Asia across the curriculum to increase their cultural knowledge and skills and enable them to be active in the region. All schools will engage with at least one school in Asia to support the teaching of a priority Asian language, including through increased use of the National Broadband Network.

Says who? Who exactly is going to force a school to engage with at least one school in Asia? These are the sort of broad brush statements that detract from the report.

These kind of statements are the “thought bubble” approach to policy that marks much of what passes for governance in Australia today and such poorly thought out programs end up at best wasting money. At worst, the unintended consequences of a ‘policy’ thought up on the back of beer mat end up causing more damage than good.

Such a program could work well if properly thought out and integrated properly into the long term curriculum of the students but it would take proper leadership from state and Federal education ministers.

National objective 12. All students will have access to at least one priority Asian language; these will be Chinese (Mandarin), Hindi, Indonesian and Japanese.

This is good and fair, but is something that was supposed to have been put in place thirty years ago. Instead the proportions of students studying Asian languages has steadily dropped.

As newspapers have reported there are barely a dozen Hindi language teachers in New South Wales, so the priority needs to be training teachers to deliver the courses.

Such inconvenient logistical problems are an excellent example of those well meaning but poorly thought through “thought bubbles.”

National objective 12. Australia will remain among the world’s best for research and teaching in universities, delivering excellent outcomes for a larger number of Australian students, attracting the best academics and students from around the world and strengthening links between Australia and the region.

  • By 2020, 20 per cent of undergraduate higher education enrolments will be people from low socioeconomic backgrounds, up from 17 per cent in 2011.
  • By 2025, 40 per cent of all 25 to 34?year?olds will hold a qualification at bachelor level or above, up from 35 per cent in 2011.
  • By 2025, 10 of Australia’s universities will be in the world’s top 100.
  • A larger number of Australian university students will be studying overseas and a greater proportion will be undertaking part of their degree in Asia.
This objective really smacks of poorly thought out ideas on the run and illustrates starkly the differences between the well meaning objectives and the behaviour of governments.
It’s almost impossible for ten of Australia’s universities to make it into the more reputable measure of top 100 universities when for the last three decades research and post graduate programs have been slowly strangled by falling government funding.
Even if a Gillard government were to change that trend, it’s unlikely Australian universities could make up the lost ground in 13 years.
Mandating that “a larger number of Australian university students will be studying overseas and a greater proportion will be undertaking part of their degree in Asia” is nice but who is going to force students to study overseas and specifically in Asia?
More to the point, what are notoriously conservative Australian employers going to do with all these graduates of Asian universities?

National objective 13. Australia will have vocational education and training systems that are among the world’s best, building capability in the region and supporting a highly skilled Australian workforce able to continuously develop its capabilities.

  • By 2020, more than three?quarters of working?age Australians will have an entry?level qualification (at Certificate III level or higher), up from just under half in 2009.
  • Australia’s vocational education and training institutions will have substantially expanded services in more nations in the region, building the productive capacity of the workforce of these nations and supporting Australian businesses and workers to have a greater presence in Asian markets.
Given the week before the Gillard government cut apprenticeship funding and the NSW government announced it was further emasculating its state TAFE system a few days after the report was released, this objective can be treated purely empty words.

Business capacity

One of the reasons why Australia engaged so little with Asia over the last twenty five years is because the business community became focused inwards rather looking for opportunities in foreign markets. So the idea of getting more Asian experience into boardrooms is laudable but the solutions proposed impractical.

National objective 14. Decision makers in Australian businesses, parliaments, national institutions (including the Australian Public Service and national cultural institutions) and advisory forums across the community will have deeper knowledge and expertise of countries in our region and have a greater capacity to integrate domestic and international issues.

  • One?third of board members of Australia’s top 200 publicly listed companies and Commonwealth bodies (including companies, authorities, agencies and commissions) will have deep experience in and knowledge of Asia.
  • One?third of the senior leadership of the Australian Public Service (APS 200) will have deep experience in and knowledge of Asia.
This objective has drawn a lot of scorn from the business community and for good reason – how is a Federal government going to mandate that a third of the ASX200 will have “deep experience and knowledge of Asia”?
While the aim of having a third of the senior public service possessing Asian experience is worthy, this is almost impossible given the deadline for this is thirteen years away, any bureaucrat hoping to have “deep experience and knowledge of Asia” would have had to have been working on it for the last five or ten years. If this program isn’t in place now, it isn’t going to happen.

Society

Probably the biggest strength of Australia as a nation is in its diverse and relatively tolerant society so this section of the report is notable for what it misses in opportunities.

National objective 15. Australian communities and regions will benefit from structural changes in the economy and seize the new opportunities emerging in the Asian century.

Another worthy aim and its notable that the region cited in the case study is Darwin, a city whose economy is being wildly distorted by the LNG boom which is driving up prices and labour costs. If anything Darwin is an example of Australia turning its back on opportunities and focusing on a quick, resources driven buck.

National objective 16. By preserving and building on our social foundations, Australia will be a higher skill, higher wage economy with a fair, multicultural and cohesive society and a growing population, and all Australians will be able to benefit from, and participate in, Australia’s growing prosperity and engagement in Asia.

Cant and motherhood statements as one would hope all government seek to build a fair and cohesive society on our social foundations. It’s interesting that much of the poorly thought out, short term tactics by publicity hungry politicians probably does more to damage Australia’s institutions than other factors.

Overall this chapter deserves to have drawn the most criticism with its motherhood statements and wholly unachievable aims.

Most disappointingly, it skates over Australia’s diverse workforce and provides no ideas on how to harness the talents of the country’s ethnic groups in building ties and improving the nation’s skills.

Image of the Harbin Snow and Ice Festival from EmmaJG on Flickr

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Double guessing the boss

What do the BBC, the Chinese government and Australian banks have in common?

Two interesting articles, one from English media writer Nick Cohen and the other from American journalist Eveline Chao, show how effective fear is for driving self censorship.

Eveline’s story, Me and My Censor, tells of her relationship with the Chinese Government censor appointed to monitor the publication she worked for in Beijing.

As well as having to avoid the 3Ts – Taiwan, Tibet, and Tiananmen – there were also a range of other delicate issues an active writer could find themselves being censored for as she relates in this conversation with her censor Snow;

We couldn’t use the cover image I had picked out for a feature on the rise of chain restaurants, because it was of an empty bowl, and, Snow told me, it would make people think of being hungry and remind them of the Great Famine (a period from 1958 to 1961 when tens of millions of Chinese starved to death, discussion of which is still suppressed). Even our Chinese designers began to roll their eyes when I related this change to them, and set them to work looking for images of bowls overflowing with meat.

Snow had learned the hard way about the power of imagery to upset the party functionaries. Snow explained why when she urged Eveline didn’t illustrate a story with a graphic showing stars;

I once published, in a newspaper, a picture of a book put out by the German embassy, introducing China and Germany’s investment cooperation. The book’s cover had a big stream on it, half of it the colors of the German flag, half of it red with yellow stars. I decided since it wasn’t a flag it was okay, and sent it to print. Our newspaper office was slapped with a fine of 180,000 yuan [today, around $28,000] and I had to write a self-criticism and take a big salary cut.

Self criticism and big salary cut – the things that middle managers fears regardless of whether they work in the Chinese Communist Party, the BBC or a bank.

The same fear of upsetting those in power is discussed in Nick Cohen’s article on the BBC’s disastrous and scandalous decision to pull a documentary exposing Jimmy Savile as a child abuser. Cohen quotes an interview where George Entwhistle, the executive responsible for pulling the program, was interviewed on the matter.

When Entwistle implied that the editor of Newsnight had no need to worry about his bosses circling over him like glassy-eyed crows, Evan Davis did what any sensible person would have done and burst out laughing.

Nick Cohen’s point was emphasised to me during the week when a former bank worker mentioned an executive had been disciplined for letting slip the bank was running several instances of a cloud computing service. Apparently the press and regulators could have been in the room where he discussed this.

Another example is a big organisation I’ve been regularly writing on where staff members regularly say “this is not a place where you question management.” An acquaintance that recently started there had to agree that they wouldn’t mention anything about the organisation, ever.

The problem with this self-censorship is that it quickly becomes destructive. In the United Airlines dead dog case, staff  subject to arbitrary whims and discipline of management  avoid taking decisions which often escalates situations where common sense would quickly find a simple solution.

It also means people jump to conclusions. Eviline relates the story of the tourist story;

One month, we ran a short news brief with figures on the number of mainland Chinese tourists that had visited the United States in 2007, and Snow flagged the number for deletion. We wondered what dirt we had unwittingly stumbled upon. Which government bureau oversaw tourism figures? What were they hiding? Finally, I called Snow, and learned that the numbers we had cited were for the number of Chinese tourists worldwide, not just in the United States.

So much for the would-be plot. Chagrined, I had to announce to my colleagues that we’d made a mistake.

A culture of secrecy also creates an atmosphere of distrust with every decision being analysed by staff, customers and outsiders for what nefarious motives lie behind even the most innocuous management decision.

Eventually those organisations become insular and inward looking with only those perceived as being ‘safe’ allowed to move into responsible positions which further entrenches the culture of secrecy and blame.

This is not healthy, but it’s where many of our government departments, political parties, sporting organisations and business are today including the BBC, Chinese media organisations and Australian banks.

For the disrupters, this is another competitive advantage.

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