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August 28, 2009
The third Public sphere: Government 2.0 event is on Australian ICT and Creative Industries Development. It is taking place at the Wollongong Innovation Campus today with nodal points in Melbourne (Trinity College) and Brisbane University of Queensland).
Government 2.0 is a rising topic of debate across the world, due to trends in technology, media and public opinion having made it both more possible and more necessary for governments to reconsider what and how information is made freely available to the public. An earlier public event Public Sphere 2: Government 2.0 was concerned with creating an more participatory form of government in Australia. It was premised on citizens having a right to the information they need to inform themselves about public and political affairs, and to participate in the democratic processes in an informed way.
The aim of this third event is for the government to engage with the ICT and creative industries, as well as the broader community to identify areas where government policy can be developed or enhanced to better facilitate the growth and development of these industries in Australia. The event can be watched live at live wall.
The background to the event is the Lifeguard discussion paper from the Silicon Beach group. The goal is to encourage discussion around the subjects of technology innovation and investment - to foster the growth of Australian technology companies. Hence the network of ICT entrepreneurs, which sadly, does not include Adelaide -----it's Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney. The high tech Defence state does not have much time for Australian ICT entrepreneurs? They are not interested in building a world-class technology industry in Australia?
The Lifeguard paper says that building:
a world-class technology industry is not easily achieved. Governments around the world have spent billions of dollars in attempts to replicate the success of Silicon Valley, the world's most famous and effective technology centre....The secret of Silicon Valley cannot be replicated with money. It was developed and cultivated over decades.
That implies a generation of work to make the goal, especially when the explicit goal is for Australia to be recognized as an undisputed global centre for technology innovation.
So how do you finance a thriving innovation industry, given the shortage of venture capital? The Rudd Govt's investment in infrastructure is the National Broadband Network. However, its industry policy is about green wash cars, not entrepreneurial ICT and creative industries. The car industry policy was about big government, big business, big unions.
Is there an entrepreneurial culture in Australia? If so, is the ICT industry an example of this culture? Does Google Wave count? We know that ICT is mostly a high value adding domestic industry (ahead of mining-rocks-- and agriculture--wool) that is not supported by government procurement. The Government shutters go up because the industry is small business and the communication goes down. That is why many ICT entrepreneurs go overseas after the incubation phrase. Or it is multinationals like Google that foster local talent---eg.,Google acquired a Melbourne startup that became Google Maps; and the same founders of that startup in their capacity as senior management, are what drove Google Wave.
Since government support for the innovative ICT industry is not based on the infant industry argument, the bootstrap is the main option. This makes the background government support for the industry crucial, given the infrastructure investment in the national broadband network. Maybe the open sphere event in Wollongong is a sign of things to come?
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Innovation comes with creativity, and creativity does not respond well to management or productivity reports, which government would require if they were going to do anything to support it.
There are also regulations like the Refused Classification business to prevent innovation in areas like games.
Why would foreign investment support the industry in a country that's planning ISP filtering?
Copyright protection in Australia has been eroded so we can't compete on the international market.
I would think the best thing government could do to foster innovation would be get the hell out of the way.