Published on the 23/07/2014 | Written by Newsdesk

Just days before the release of a new national innovation review, Australian businesses have this week already been handed a series of poor report cards…

Early next week Telstra chair Catherine Livingstone is expected to present her review of Australia’s ability to innovate to the Federal Government. But already the goat’s entrails are showing signs of a deep malaise, at least as far as information technology innovation is concerned with businesses’ ability to digitise, innovate, and even hire the right skills coming in for question.

A survey commissioned by Software AG has found that over a third of Australian businesses still don’t consider themselves “digital enterprises”. While banks and retailers believe they have made the switch, progress has been patchier in other areas such as resources and the public sector.

The main barrier to digitisation was cost according to the survey. However there are other hurdles – for one access to skills.

For example when IT recruiter Greythorn surveyed almost 3000 IT professionals in May it found that only 6 percent were under 30. When a similar survey was carried out in 2011, 18 percent of respondents were aged under 30.

According to Greythorn managing director Richard Fischer; “IT must be promoted more at grass roots level to ensure there is the talent pool available in coming years. With an ageing population and fewer young candidates entering the IT industry, Australia could face a crippling skills shortage by 2020.”

The Australian Computer Society has also identified the skills issue as a brake on innovation.

Speaking at a summit in Canberra last week, ACS CEO Alan Patterson noted that: “Many businesses are calling themselves innovative, but don’t have CIOs or are simply having the role because they feel they need to. Businesses need to realise the value of technology and how the innovative use of it can be driven by skilled people.”

Access to those skilled people remains a key problem however.

The Global Innovation Index which was released in Sydney last week measures a series of leading indicators – everything from the number of patents issued through the ease of setting up a business to the number of science graduates a nation produces – to try to rank nations’ innovative-ness.

While Australia climbed from 19th to 17th slot this year, the skills issue was again identified as a major inhibitor to innovation. Australia ranked 73rd in the world in terms of its ability to churn out science and engineering graduates.

Yet the report cited the human factor as being the fundamental driving force behind any innovation efforts.