An ICT project has become pivotal to the government's success
Beyond the politics, it is worth taking a moment to reflect that ICT has certainly come a long way from its earlier backroom geeky image. These days, the Australian community is quite comfortable about having a grown-up discussion about broadband speeds and coverage, and no political party can afford to be caught unprepared on key technology issues.
In the post-election carve-up, both sides of politics have assigned experienced ministers to lead the charge on communications policy, and both have nominated broadband as one of the key battlegrounds for winning or retaining government.
The task is not without significant challenges. Big infrastructure projects are notoriously difficult to manage and the business case is typically hard to justify.
The real challenge for the Labor Party is to dodge the claims of waste or mismanagement as broadband facilities roll out across Australia. Labor does have some history when it comes to project-management problems, and these memories are still very clear in the minds of voters. Opposition leader Tony Abbott has already said he will not be cutting any slack if there are signs of project delays or cost overruns.
In a practical sense, detailed financial debate about the business case is unlikely to make any practical difference in the long run. Calls for a wider cost/benefit analysis are also unlikely to make headway, simply because it is not possible to apply traditional cost/benefit techniques to such a far-reaching long-term project. Nor is the telecommunications industry likely to complain. Indeed, the business sector frequently looks to government to provide all kinds of industry support through grants, subsidies, and concessions when free market forces are unable to do the heavy lifting.
The time has come to show NBN can deliver real value
Budgets and timeframes are just one way of measuring success. Assuming there are no major execution failures, these issues are likely to fade into the background if Labor can quickly demonstrate how it is delivering real value through the NBN. Nobody will thank the government for just rolling out miles of cable, even if it is delivered on time and on budget. Beyond the slogans and the hype, the real success of the NBN rests on the government's ability to present tangible evidence of real benefit to the community.
The government has got the message. In announcing her new ministerial line-up, Prime Minister Gillard clearly stated that communications minister Conroy will not only be directly responsible for delivering the NBN, but also he will assist the PM in making sure every government agency is focused on deriving maximum value from the NBN. This means all agencies will feel the blowtorch to add just a little more encouragement to find innovative ways to capitalize on the NBN's capabilities.
There are also some big opportunities for government suppliers, particularly in the context of what might otherwise be a tight government market. The government's service delivery agencies already have a good reputation for delivering innovative online services, but in the past these services have been constrained by a lowest common denominator of bandwidth in some parts of Australia. The new challenge is to look at what sort of service could be provided if bandwidth restrictions were relaxed.
Existing cloud computing providers already offer a variety of services that could easily be taken up by town councils and small business in regional Australia. With local cloud providers now entering the market, and the availability of higher broadband speeds, the door will be open for new IT services without necessarily incurring high capital start-up costs.
Given Australia's geographic spread, e-health would appear to be a natural fit for high-speed broadband services.
It is now time to think long and hard about the opportunities offered by a national broadband network
