Keynote Address to Growing Australia Online

Annual Conference of Netalert 2002

Tuesday 3 December 2002

Delivered by:

Chris Pearce MP

Federal Member for Aston

Secretary, Government Policy Committee on Communications, IT and the Arts

I’d like to use this opportunity to talk about some big-picture issues.

Indeed, that is what this conference is all about-the big picture.

But big pictures are composed of smaller frames, frozen in time. And perhaps it is helpful if we start by looking at what we look like right now.

If we took a snapshot of Australian society in the final days of 2002 it would look something like this:

In handbags and jacket pockets are 12 million mobile phones-and we are a nation of only 19 million people.

More than half of us have Internet access at home and the Australian Bureau of Statistics tells us that 69 per cent of businesses were online in June 2001. Over 320,000 of us have signed up for broadband.

A quarter of us can switch on a Pay-TV channel when we get home from work. And even if we can’t, chances are there’s a DVD player sitting on top of the television set-there are a million of them in lounge-rooms across Australia.

Dramatic changes have been made in the past decade to the way we do business, run errands, and even keep in touch with our loved ones.

In a growing number of regional centres, country folk in need of medical care can consult a big-city specialist without travelling to Sydney or Melbourne, thanks to advances in telemedicine.

As I speak, waiters in metropolitan cafes are jotting down orders on electronic notepads and transmitting them to the kitchen via wireless communications.

Children at some of the most remote schools on earth are taking part in virtual archaeological digs with fellow students from around the country-and around the world.

Indigenous artists are selling their works to international patrons direct from their island homes, using the Internet.

Our IT production industry, it is nonetheless one of the fastest growing and most innovative sectors in the Australian economy. Throughout the 1990s the sector achieved an annual sustained growth of around 17 per cent bringing annual sales to $75 billion.

Few of us could have envisaged such a world, even a decade ago-except perhaps the writers of speculative fiction among us.

And yet it doesn’t feel much like science fiction to be living in the midst of this revolution. It feels like an age of limitless opportunity.

A report by the Allen Consulting Group last year found that widespread business involvement in the information economy could deliver an extra 2.6 per cent GDP growth and around one hundred and ten thousand jobs by 2004-05.

The challenge for all os us is to extract as much potential good as we can from the revolution, while firmly rejecting the less pleasant consequences.

For a country like this, where the land itself throws up so many barriers to effective modern communication, the challenge is first and foremost a physical one.

I’m talking here about the ‘digital divide’ and the danger that the citizens of the information age will be divided into the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’.

We have long known that certain groups of Australians are at particular risk of missing out on the opportunities and benefits of active participation in the information economy. Older Australians, those on low incomes or with low levels of formal education, Indigenous Australians and people living in remote areas are all at risk.

And, at least in the early years, this was primarily a physical issue-a ‘hardware’ problem. People were missing out because they did not have access to a computer linked to the Internet.

Physical access is still an issue, of course. But more recently, we have come to realise that it is only part of the picture. A second-level digital divide exists, which has to do with confidence and competence.

Put simply, some people use the Internet more effectively than others. Some Australians continue to miss out on the benefits of the information age because they have been given neither the skills nor the support to make the most of the technology.

Thus, while some commentators in Australia and elsewhere are pointing to statistics about the growth in home, business and public Internet access as proof that the digital divide has narrowed or even closed, others warn that we cannot rely on such a simplistic measure.

It would be like assuming that everyone who owns a VCR knows how to program it-and we all know what a mistaken assumption that would be!

So, where are we? On the bald measure of physical access, Australia isn’t doing too badly.

For example, we have the lowest disparity of any country when it comes to the percentages of males and females online.

In one recent survey 47 per cent of those living outside metropolitan Australia had accessed the Internet in the past month, compared with 55 per cent in metropolitan Australia-a disparity of only 8 per cent.

Since December 2000 rural and regional Internet usage has grown 21 per cent, comparing favourably with a growth rate of 15 per cent in the big cities.

But, as I said, physical access isn’t always the issue these days.

The Federal Government has shown its commitment to addressing digital inequality among disadvantaged Australians through initiatives such as the Family and Community Network Initiative, which provides grants to disadvantaged communities to improve information access and community networks. This initiative has just received a further $8.5 million over four years to extend its reach.

The $23 million ICT Skills for Older Workers program is another example of how this second-level digital divide can be combated. Under this initiative thousands of welfare-dependent older Australians will be given basic Information Technology and computing skills to enhance their employment prospects.

The Government has also given an $8.3 million boost to telecommunications services in remote Indigenous communities. Some of this will be used to fund Internet access, content development and awareness raising in communities that are among the most remote and disadvantaged in the country.

In total, the Commonwealth Government is spending about $1 billion dollars on a range of programs to improve rural and remote area communications, including the provision of reliable and affordable Internet connections.

The Internet Assistance Program, for example, brings together some $50 million of public and private funding to help users in difficult service areas achieve sufficient Internet access speeds to enable Web and email usage.

The Government is making this investment because it knows that web access and email are no longer optional extras, but basic and essential services for all Australians, wherever they live or do business.

But realising the full benefits of ICT for individuals and for their communities cannot be a job solely for government, or for business, or for the community. The task must be shared, and that means government, business and communities must work collaboratively for a common purpose.

Conferences such as this are essential to that collaborative approach. So are initiatives such as the Digital Divide Cross Sector Working Group convened by Cisco, which brings together all the players, all the ideas and all the resources.

In addition a Digital Divide Forum of senior Commonwealth, State and Territory Online Council officials and a representative from local government is ensuring that information, experiences, research and evaluation of digital divide initiatives can be shared across the tiers of government.

Other Commonwealth initiatives that are helping ensure that we make the most of the economic and social benefits ICT has to offer include the drafting of a Framework for the Future (F3) of the ICT industry, which is looking at the state of play now, and where Australia might most profitably go next.

The high-level F3 steering committee is expected to complete its work the end of the year.

In the same vein, a top-level group – the Broadband Advisory Group- has been convened to look at the future of broadband, and to help inform government policy-making in this most important area.

Clearly, there is a lot of worthy work going on. A lot of creative and passionate people are involved.

But why? Why is it so important that all Australians seize the opportunities presented by the information age?

Quite simply, if you like the idea of saving time and money, the information age has something to offer you. If you want to conduct your business more efficiently, or reach new markets and new audiences, this is the road to take.

The proof is really building up.

In 2001 the National Office for the Information Economy published the results of the study, showing how participation in the information economy would help ordinary Australians save time and money performing everyday household chores like paying bills and accessing information and services.

Seventy-three per cent of those surveyed said they saved about four hours a week and up to $30 a week by using the Internet at home to do banking, to pay bills online, to communicate through email and to ‘window-shop’ in order to compare prices.

More than 80 per cent concluded that the benefits of home Internet access outweighed or were equal to the cost of access.

For businesses, the benefits are even starker than for householders.

NOIE has recently compiled its second collection of case studies of small-to-medium businesses that have embraced e-commerce.

One such business is Berryd Opals, established in 1999 in Coober Pedy.

The company’s main online activity is selling opals direct from local miners to the world. Ninety per cent of its online sales are exports. The United States is its largest market.

The company invested $18,790 in the technology to enable it to trade online. Its net benefit in 2001 was $133,942.

The company estimates that by using e-commerce it has avoided in the region of $300,000 in costs a year.

If e-business is helping small companies like Berryd Opals do better business, it has certainly proved to be better business for the ‘big business’ of government too.

Back in 1997 the Prime Minister committed all Commonwealth agencies to having all appropriate services online by 2001.

It was an ambitious target, but the Government was determined to lead by example. It was determined to prove that the Internet was the shopfront of the future-not to mention the inquiry counter, the changing cubicle and the checkout.

The Prime Minister’s target was met. By the end of last year there were 1665 Commonwealth government services online. About 20 per cent were capable of handling financial transactions.

The breadth and depth of Commonwealth government services that can now be accessed online is truly remarkable.

The Australian JobSearch website maintained by the Department of Employment and Workplace Relations lists every job registered with every Job Network Service around the country, for example. It gets more than 800,000 Internet hits and two million touch-screen hits every day.

The Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs’ Electronic Travel Authority System lets prospective visitors to Australia apply for a visa online.

The Federal Court’s e-Filing System allows secure online lodgment of Court applications and related documents.

Centrelink’s Family Assistance Estimate Update lets Australians update their family income information online.

The Australian Taxation Office’s e-tax facility lets taxpayers lodge their returns online.

The Government’s Business Entry Point gives Australian businesses seamless access to a range of services, right across the Commonwealth, State and Local Governments.

About 35 per cent of all ABN/GST applications are now made online through the Business Entry Point and about a million searches are conducted on the Australian Business Register each month.

More than 90 per cent of the traffic coming to the Business Entry Point relates to online transactions and more than 40 per cent of it takes place outside normal working hours. As a teenager would say, e-government is “24/7”.

There is no doubt that Australia is already among the top e-government nations in 2002.

The UN’s Benchmarking E-government: A Global Perspective, published in June this year, puts Australia ahead of all others in the Asia-Pacific region in the transition to e-government and second only to the United States world-wide.

So what? you might ask. What has e-government meant for the people it is really intended to help-ordinary Australians? Has the investment paid dividends?

The National Office for the Information Economy recently conducted a study to identify and quantify the benefits of e-government-including the return to government agencies on their investment.

The early results of this research are just becoming available now-and they are extremely encouraging.

Fifity-four per cent of small businesses employing fewer than four people have accessed government services online. The percentage rises to 86 per cent for businesses with more than 100 employees.

Future demand for government services online is expected to grow by about 30 per cent by 2004.

Eighty-six per cent of government online users felt that the overall benefit of government online was significant or moderate.

More than 80 per cent found information easier to find. Seventy-five per cent noticed an improvement in service quality.

And more than 80 per cent of businesses and nearly 90 per cent of government employees noticed significant improvements in the quality of their decision-making.

Good results. But this is not the time for complacency.

Just as having a VCR is not the same as being able to program it, so having e-government is not the same as being able to fully take advantage of its potential.

The first phase of e-government is complete. Now for the next-and more challenging-phase: getting more transactions online. Only when we have achieved that will the true extent of the savings and benefits of the information age become apparent.

The big issues to be faced during this next phase are to do with security, authentication, privacy, open systems and standardisation.

Security is shaping up to be one of the biggest issues confronting Australia as it embarks on the next stage of the ICT revolution.

While Australian Internet penetration is high by world standards, there is still some resistance to confiding the most secret details of one’s finances to a computer screen.

When it comes to handing over credit-card numbers and banking details, it seems many people are still more comfortable with the idea of making transactions over the counter or over the phone.

In November 2000, almost half of all Australians were comfortably paying bills and transferring funds over the phone. Only 13 per cent were doing the same online.

Some of the resistance may well be due to unfamiliarity and lack of information, rather than well-founded fear. That is why the Government, through the National Office for the Information Economy, has been extremely active in encouraging businesses and individuals to become better informed. NOIE has published a number of guides to help dispel the myths and alert Australians to the genuine dangers of e-commerce.

Trusting the Internet, for example, helps small and medium businesses understand the security implications of browsing websites, sending emails, conducting e-commerce transactions, and dealing with government agencies online,

Another NOIE guide-Online Authentication-provides advice and guidance to incorporating authentication safeguards into an e-business strategy.

To accelerate uptake of e-trading, small businesses are being assisted to participate in e-procurement trials with government agencies as part of the Government’s September 2001 small business assistance package.

Again, the Government sees that one of the best ways to encourage Australians to fully embrace the Internet age is to lead by example. If the Government can prove that it is safe to do business with government agencies, confidence will spill over into the wider marketplace.

The Commonwealth Government’s Gatekeeper strategy provides a sound framework for both Government and the private sector to pursue and promote electronic commerce in a secure manner using Public Key Infrastructure (PKI).

At this point, PKI is internationally recognised as the only comprehensive approach to online authentication, integrity and confidentiality.

The Gatekeeper accreditation process ensures that service providers comply with government policies in the areas of privacy, security and operational practices.

An integral part of the Gatekeeper strategy is the Australian Business Number- Digital Signature Certificate (ABN-DSC). The ABN-DSC is designed to enable Australian businesses to have a single online identity when transacting with trading partners or governments.

The issue of authentication underpins confidence in online transactions.

E-commerce will never have a future unless transactions can be accepted as valid and binding. And the failure to properly authenticate a party to a transaction could result in the illegal transfer of funds, the unauthorised ordering of goods or the mischievous alteration of data.

Of course, the security implications extend much further than mere mischievousness. In recent times the world has come to seem a more threatening place and the tools of terror far more numerous than we might have imagined.

In June this year the Government announced funding of $24.9 million in the Federal Budget to support its “E-Security: National Agenda”. As part of that agenda, the National Office for the Information Economy and the Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) presented an ‘E-security in Government’ seminar in September, looking at some of the information security dangers faced by Commonwealth agencies.

The Government has in place a range of measures to protect the key infrastructure required for the functioning of our open society. It has established an E-Security Co-ordination Group and a Government Infrastructure Protection Group to specifically deal with issues relating to the security of information systems, particularly as they apply to key national assets.

And in the wake of the September 2001 World Trade Centre attack the Prime Minister announced the formation of the Business-Government Task Force on Critical Infrastructure. Its aim is to promote a partnership between business and government to protect the integrity of the nation’s critical infrastructure-telecommunications, transport, banking and so on.

Of course danger can take many forms. Not all danger is physical. The social fabric too can be damaged and the Government is mindful of legitimate community concerns about the accessibility of illegal and highly offensive Internet content – particularly by children.

As you know, in 1999 the Government moved to allay these community concerns by introducing a co-regulatory framework based on the principle that what is illegal offline should also be illegal online.

It had to be national and uniform, to avoid regulatory fragmentation if the States and Territories decided to enact differing laws.

And it had to put the Internet on a par with conventional media-the rise of the Internet should not be an opportunity for pushing the envelope on content regulation.

The Government was also clear that the liability of various players under any regulatory framework should recognise the degree of responsibility they personally had for the content in question.

And it was mindful of the need to address the legitimate concerns of the community while ensuring that industry development was not stifled by over-zealous laws, or inconsistent or unpredictable regimes.

Finally, the Government was reluctant to rely on regulation alone. Education was always intended to play a big role.

As you know, under the scheme, any person can complain to the Australian Broadcasting Authority (ABA) about prohibited or potentially prohibited online content.

During the development of the scheme there were hyperbolic claims that the scheme would result in political censorship and restrictions on freedom of speech. These have been proved to be manifestly wrong.

In the case of Australian-hosted material that the ABA finds to be prohibited, the ABA issues a take-down notice to the relevant Internet content host, directing it not to host the prohibited content. Since the introduction of the scheme, the ABA has issued notices for 284 items of Australian-hosted content.

In the case of overseas-hosted prohibited material, the ABA notifies the suppliers of filter software, to enable them to block access to the content. Since the introduction of the scheme, the ABA has referred more than 1 000 items to the filter makers.

If the ABA considers the content to be of a ‘sufficiently serious’ nature to warrant referral to a law enforcement agency – for example, child pornography – it does so. It has so far referred over 500 items to the police in Australia or abroad.

Supporting the statutory complaints mechanism, the Internet industry itself undertakes important activities for the online content scheme. Many of these activities are set out in the industry codes of practice developed by the Internet Industry Association (IIA) and registered by the ABA.

While the ABA may set out mandatory requirements if industry codes are deficient, the scheme emphasises a cooperative approach. And it seems to work. It is under the codes of practice, for example, that ISPs provide subscribers with content filters that are updated to reflect ABA notifications of prohibited overseas hosted content. When used in conjunction with adult supervision, these filters help Australians manage their access to the Internet.

It is also under the IIA codes of practice that ISPs and hosts are also required to provide information on such matters as supervising and controlling children’s access to Internet content, methods of reducing unsolicited emails.

Industry statistics show that all major ISPs comply with the registered codes and that most smaller ISPs also comply. This is co-regulation in practice – industry self-regulation within a legislative framework. And it works.

As I said earlier, regulation alone is not enough. Educating the public about ways to manage Internet usage must be a critical part of any effective regulatory framework.

And that, of course, is where NetAlert comes in.

The Government has been greatly appreciative of NetAlert’s work during the past three years.

NetAlert initiatives like the national, toll-free Help Line and email advisory service, information kits, and seminars for industry players and members of the public in metropolitan and regional centres have contributed greatly to a growing public awareness of ‘safe surfing’.

Growing Australia Online is all about balance and watchfulness.

As I said earlier, it is about extracting maximum value from the opportunities presented by the information age, while ensuring that we do not lose something valuable in the process.

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