Digital Debate – Move on!

The Federal Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy will on Tuesday (14 July) launch a Future Directions paper on Australia’s Digital Economy. The paper is the result of a process of consultation conducted by his Department that began in August 2008. Industry workshops were followed by a high level Forum, the establishment of a controversial Digital Economy Blog and the release of a draft consultation paper.

The Department’s website suggests the Future Directions paper will “include information on the role of stakeholders in maximising economic and social benefits from the Government’s digital economy”.  I certainly hope the paper does not do this.

The digital economy doesn’t belong to any entity – government, corporate or even citizen. The digital economy is what will happen organically when the infrastructure for on-line economic transactions and social interaction are an obvious, efficient and effective component of what we expect as human beings.

I don’t expect a Government consultation paper to set a roadmap. I don’t expect it to establish an agreed ‘vision’. I don’t even expect it to set out how and what a digital economy will look like; I have quite a propensity to discount the predictions of government. 

Rather this paper should be the first stage of a process of contract between the Government and citizen in which the Government sets out what it will aim to provide in terms of digital infrastructure. It should then identify the connection points to that infrastructure that will be open to every individual and organisation (commercial and non-commercial) that will seek to maximise the opportunities high speed broadband will provide.

The Government has decided to invest in high speed broadband for Australia – it must now see that investment through. The Opposition are concerned about the economics of the investment. Their concerns are logically valid but it is when market based economics identifies market failure (in this case the absence of perfect information and foresight) that the case for collective government intervention is strongest. Australians need political bi-partisanship on this issue – otherwise we run the significant risk that the broadband super highway will be a Pacific Highway – an intrinsically underdeveloped political football.

Everyone’s challenge with high speed broadband will be to innovate and not to limit thinking to current products and services or even to geographies. Australia’s ‘old’ economy has delivered us the economic capacity to invest in this ‘new’ digital economy. The two will co-exist for decades to come and will surely blend together over time. What we make of the new economy will start with how we innovate the old but this infrastructure will also open up for Australia – and particular Australia’s young entrepreneurs - opportunities to date not conceived and therefore unmentioned and uncalculated.

I am looking forward to seeing what this future will bring a whole lot more than what tomorrow’s paper might tell me.

Simon Edwards, Head of Government Affairs