Published on the 11/03/2014 | Written by Newsdesk

The Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) has produced a set of policy priorities for 2014 designed to boost the country’s ICT industry and its contribution to the economy…

AIIA CEO Suzanne Campbell said that for Australia to remain competitive in the new knowledge-based, digital economy, Australia had to foster a high quality and high value ICT sector able to deliver innovation across all industries.

“It is time for us to move beyond focusing on building broadband infrastructure, to how we use it to drive global competitive advantage and, at a local level, create and retain capability here in Australia,” she said.

The policy: ‘SmartICT 2014: A vision for sustained national prosperity’ sets out three strategic priorities:

• building a sustainable, innovative and globally competitive Australian ICT Industry;
• leveraging next-generation broadband and enabling mobility; and
• creating world class digital economy products and services.

Campbell told iStart that AIIA was calling on the government to take  number of specific initiatives in support of these priorities: to come to a final decision in relation to employee share schemes, R&D tax incentives and crowdsourced equity funding, and to measure ICT’s contribution to the economy.

A change in the tax regime in 2009 made it difficult for the founders of start-up companies to offer shares to employees, a mechanism that overseas is widely used to attract and retain quality talent without having to pay high salaries that start-ups can ill afford.

Campbell said measurement of ICT’s contribution was crucial. “This is really limited at present and consequently we have little understanding of the quantitative contribution that ICT makes at the firm level and to national productivity. We keep seeing reports from one organisation or another, all with estimates but we have to get to a place where we have an agreed set of definitions and measurement instruments that can be applied in a routine and rigorous way.”

She added: “If you’re not measuring something you can’t manage it. […] We need granular and timely reporting on ICT’s impact on business.”

She said any such measurement should be undertaken by the Australian Bureau of Statistics, but no commitment had yet been received from the Government. “They’re looking at it, reviewing and considering it, but there is no commitment to proceed at this time.”

The policy also commits the AIIA to a substantial set of actions in support of the policy, and Campbell said it would draw heavily on its members to fulfil these commitments. “We won’t have to rely only on the resources of the AIIA secretariat because we have a broad network of membership volunteers who give their time in relation to a lot of matters. So we have the opportunity to leverage their capabilities and their resources.”