Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: digital economy

  • You can’t wait for government to lead digital change

    You can’t wait for government to lead digital change

    Last week’s events in Canberra shows business can’t wait for the government to lead industry change. If you want to keep up with technology, you’re going to have to do it yourself.

    In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis many of my business clients were in trouble as banks tightened their lines of credit and consumers slammed their wallets shut. After a decade of running businesses, it was time to get a job.

    The job I found was with the small business division of the New South Wales Government’s then Department of State and Regional Development where I quickly discovered how many companies and ‘entrepreneurs’ came looking to the government for money and leadership.

    While there were some state government support programs available for exporting, high-tech and biotech businesses almost all of those approaching the Department were hopelessly unqualified for the assistance that was at best only involved marginal amounts of money.

    The toughest part of my job was gently turning those people away without upsetting them too much. Often I failed and part of the reason for that was that many of those believed the government would take leadership in a changing digital world and fund ideas that would help the state’s and nation’s competitiveness.

    I was reminded of my brief period as a public servant and the futile attempt for  with last week’s disasters for the Australian tech sector; the Prime Minister’s claim that social media is little more than digital graffiti and the still born announcement of a Chief Transformation Officer.

    Last week’s announcement of Chief Transformation Officer who happens to have no budget – the UK office the local initiative is based upon received more than a hundred million dollars in the Brits’ last budget –  is probably the best indication of how far behind the ball Australian governments, particularly the Federal level, are in dealing with a changing economy.

    A Chief Transformation, or Digital, Officer can be an important catalyst for change but to achieve that they have to have the support of the organisation’s leadership; if the CEO or minister isn’t on board then the CTO or CDO is doomed to irrelevance.

    The Prime Minister’s blithe dismissal of social media as being digital graffiti over the weekend shows just how little support an office charged with managing the Australian government’s transition to digital services will get from the executive. The sad thing is none of the likely alternatives – on either side of politics – to the current Prime Minister seem to be any more across the changes facing governments in a connected century.

    One good example of the profound changes we’re seeing is in agriculture; this feature on farming robots shows just how technology and automation is changing life on the land. These applications of robotics are going to affect every industry, including government.

    As we’ve discussed before, if you want digital leadership then you’re going to have to provide it yourself . If you’re going to wait for the government, then times are going to overtake you. How are you facing the changes to your business and marketplace?

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  • Where will the digital leaders come from?

    Where will the digital leaders come from?

    Last Thursday in Sydney a group of industry groups, telcos and local councils launched their 2030 Communications Visions initiative; a project “to shape a digital vision and set of goals for Australia to achieve global digital age leadership”.

    The project is a worthy one, particularly given the failure of Australia’s National Broadband Network, which I’m writing about early next week in Technology Spectator however one thing that bugs me is what exactly is ‘digital age leadership’.

    If we look at the rollout of technologies like the motor car, electricity or telephone through the Twentieth Century it was a mix of private companies, community groups and governments that championed the development of roads, mains power and phone systems. People either demanded their towns became connected or raised the capital to do it themselves.

    So on one level, the champions need to be us. We have to lead our communities and industries by using the technologies and showing what can be done, that also makes our businesses more likely to succeed in the future.

    On another level, we need to consider the genuine leaders of the ‘electrical age’ or ‘motor car age’; people like Thomas Edison and Henry Ford built businesses that led the world and still exist today.

    For countries, it’s no coincidence that the United States is the richest nation on the planet after having most of the leading business in their industries over the last hundred years.

    That latter point is really what the Digital Visions project is about; do Australians want to remain a wealthy nation in the Twenty First Century?

    Governments have a role in this, as the UK is showing, and political leaders need to be encouraged to take the digital economy however governments can only do so much and successes like Silicon Valley are more a fortunate by product of spending rather than the consequence of strategic policy.

    Ultimately, leadership starts with us — we can’t afford to wait for governments, big business or someone else to take the reigns.

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  • David Cameron and the Internet of Things

    David Cameron and the Internet of Things

    Last year I interviewed the CEO of London and Partners, Gordon Innes, on how Britain’s capital is making a bid to become Europe’s Silicon Valley.

    At the opening of CeBIT last night, UK Prime Minister David Cameron increased the country’s bid with a plan on building Britain’s capability in the digital industries.

    Cameron portrayed the moves as being a partnership with Germany. This may be partly because he was being gracious towards his host and also because the Brits might not see Germany as being a competitor in these fields.

    The fields that Cameron highlighted are deploying 5G networks, more efficient use of spectrum and increasing research into the Internet of Things.

    A research boost is a notable as it may give the Brits a foothold in an area that’s evolving rapidly as the Internet of Things raises a whole range of security, privacy and governance issues.

    While there’s still a sniff of Harold Wilson’s 1963 White Heat of Technology speech in the Cameron government’s policies, at least the British government is articulating policies for the 21st Century.

    It may well be that Cameron’s digital revolution will be no more successful than Wilson’s technological revolution fifty years ago, but at least it will be a brave attempt.

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  • The Digital Fallacy

    The Digital Fallacy

    Earlier this week Telstra held their 2013 Digital Summit in Melbourne, a curious event featuring  a bunch of US based experts to tell the locals what they should have already known about the changing business landscape.

    The reversion of Australian business to a 1950s colonial cringe is worth a blog post in itself, however more interesting was the assertion that every organisation should appoint a Chief Digital Officer.

    A Chief Digital Officer is an idea based on the flawed fallacy that digital technologies are unique and separate from other business functions.

    The Chief Electricity Officer

    Digital is simply the way business is done these days and has been since the electronic calculator appeared in the 1970s – having a Chief Digital Officer is akin to appointing a Chief Electricity Officer.

    The role of a Chief Digital Officer is an idea usually pushed by social media experts and other fringe digerati that perversely undermines the very roles they are trying to promote.

    By putting “digital” into its own organisational silo, the proponents of a Chief Digital Officer are actually advocating marginalising their own fields. It’s also counterproductive for a business that follows this advice.

    The real challenge for those pushing digital technologies is putting the business case for their particular field and in most cases, such as social media or cloud computing, the argument for adopting them is usually compelling in some part of every organisation, but it shouldn’t be overplayed.

    More than just marketing

    An aspect heavily overplayed in the commentary around the Telstra Digital Summit was the role of social media with most people focusing on branding and marketing.

    If you believe this is the extant of ‘digital business’, then you’re in for a nasty shock as supply chains become increasingly automated, Big Data makes companies smarter and the internet of machines accelerates the business cycle even more. Social media is only a small part of the ‘digital business’ story.

    Over-stating the role of individual technologies is something that’s common when people have books or seminars to spruik – which, funny enough, is exactly what Telstra’s international speakers were doing.

    It’s understandable that an author or speaker will overstate the benefits of their project, but it doesn’t mean that you should fall for the fallacies in their arguments.

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  • Why Australia is losing the digital race

    Why Australia is losing the digital race

    This story originally appeared in Business Spectator on 17 June 2013
    At the beginning of this century, Melbourne hosted a meeting of the World Economic Forum. Among the visiting luminaries was Microsoft founder Bill Gates who laid out his vision for governments in the digital economy.

    “The Government itself needs to become a model user of information technology,” Gates said at the time.

    “Literally seeing government work with its citizens, with its businesses will change how we do our taxes, licences, registrations, all these things, on a basis where you don’t have to know the organisation of government and its various departments, you don’t have to stand in line, you don’t have to work with paperwork.”

    Last month in Brisbane, the Federal government re-released their Digital Economy Strategy with the ambitious goal to make Australia a “leading digital economy by 2020”. A key part of the strategy is for the government to allow citizens to “fully complete priority services online”.

    Thirteen years after Bill Gates articulated the need for governments to move services online – and he was by no means the first person to do so – the Federal government has posted a target to partly achieve this by the end of the decade.

    It’s hard to see how achieving such a belated objective will put Australia in a position of leadership in a rapidly changing world, although this is a direct consequence of deliberate decisions made by the nation’s leaders, and society, over the last thirty years.

    Thirty years ago the debate on Australia’s position in the global economy resulted in the Hawke government’s Clever Country policies. In many ways, today’s Digital Economy Strategy is an echo of the Labor’s halcyon days under Paul Keating.

    Keeping things in perspective

    In Sydney on the day before re-releasing the strategy, Minister Conroy channelled Paul Keating in talking about the J-Curve of technology adoption at a lunchtime panel with the Australia Israeli Chamber of Commerce.

    Preceding Senator Conroy’s panel was Anna-Maria Arabia, general manager of the Questacon National Science and Technology Centre in Canberra, who described her trip to Israel to look at how the nation that derives 40 per cent of its export incomes from high tech industries is nurturing its technology sector.

    Arabia was accompanying Federal minister Bill Shorten and she described a meeting with the chief scientist of the Israeli Ministry of the Economy, Avi Hasson, where Shorten asked him about the success rate of Israeli government research and development projects.

    Hasson’s reply was very different to the risk averse response often heard from Australian bureaucrats, ministers and business leaders.

    “Had I been told that we enjoyed an 80 per cent success rate I would have concluded the government was investing in the wrong projects,” Hasson is quoted as saying. “Such a success rate would have meant we were investing in low risk projects and, quite frankly, the private sector could have taken care of that.”

    The risk-reward equation

    In Australia, there is no such vision or appetite for risk. At best the Federal government has announced another review of tax rules and industry support programs while the opposition is vague on its plans to support innovation and R&D should it occupy the Treasury benches later in the year.

    While it’s easy – and fair – to criticise both sides of politics, the business sector is equally negligent with its reluctance to invest in research and development while claiming R&D tax credits for projects that are closer to capital improvements rather than real innovation.

    Two weeks ago the ABC Business Insiders program had featured an interview between Business Spectator’s Alan Kohler, Dow Chemical CEO Andrew Liveris and Australian Business Council chief Tony Shepherd where they discussed Australia’s role in the modern global economy.

    Australian born Liveris, who is also chairman of the US Business Council and sits on the Obama’s board of innovation, said Australia needs a vision building on the country’s strengths.

    At present he warns the country is in a state of rigor mortis having “lost the will to innovate.”

    Thinking beyond mining

    When Gates visited Australia in 2000, he warned that the nation needed to think beyond mining and agriculture and secure a place in the high tech economy.

    That warning was disregarded and Australia as a nation made the decision to focus on domestic consumption driven by rising property prices and mining exports.

    Reserve Bank of Australia governor Glenn Stevens summed up that national decision in a speech made to the Australian Industry Group in 2010 where he dismissed Bill Gates’ warning about ignoring high tech industries at the beginning at the decade.

    “Ten years on, though, it does not seem to have been to Australia’s disadvantage not to have built a massive IT production sector,” Stevens sneered. “On the contrary, the terms of trade are at a 60-year high, the currency just about equals its American counterpart in value and we face an investment build-up in the resources sector that is already larger than that seen in the late 1960s and that will very likely get larger yet.”

    Stevens’ speech illustrates the Australia we have today – high-tech industries along with the research, development and innovation are something other countries do.

    The vision for Australia being a global leader in the digital economy by 2020 is a laudable and equal to any of the noble objectives proposed in the Gonski education review or the Asian Century report.

    Unfortunately to achieve those aims, and to overcome the deliberate national decisions we’ve made over the last thirty years, it’s going to take more than the modest and belated objectives of last week’s re-released Digital Economy Strategy.

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