Realising Our Broadband Future - Closing Remarks

NSW University, Sydney
Friday, 11 December 2009

Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen…..

This has been a great event.

Thank you to you all, here and out there in the online community, for your participation.

The quality of the ideas and discussion has truly been of the highest order – an inspiration to us all and a great vision for Australia’s future.

On behalf of the Australian Government I thank you all for giving your time and energy to this important undertaking.

Everyone participating in this forum is passionate about the future of the digital economy and it’s potential.

Our passion is also shared by the broad Australian community, and across the business, education, health and social sectors.

This passion is based on the understanding of how connected digital technologies are radically changing the world that we live in.

As has been put forward repeatedly over the past two days, we are standing on the cusp of a great transformation.

We stand at a time of great opportunity:

• to improve education,
• to better our health and aged care systems,
• to create new business opportunities,
• to make more efficient infrastructure, and
• to strengthen our communities.

The Rudd Government stands clear on its commitment to enable our digital economy by deploying, on a mass-scale, high-speed broadband for all Australians.

This forum has focussed on how to maximise the economic and social value of that investment.

Our purpose was to engage key stakeholders – the people here in the room and of course those engaged online, using some of the very technologies we are talking about.

Over the past two days, we have discussed what is possible and the next steps to enable the applications, services and business models of the future.

You have identified the immediate and tangible benefits of ubiquitous broadband for smart infrastructure, health, education, business and the community.

We have involved as many people as possible – visionaries, decision-makers and community leaders.

As I said, we have also engaged online with the Australian community at large.

Indeed, this is the first time some of these techniques have been used for a Government event of this nature.

The success of the online participation for this forum follows and builds on the great momentum created the Public Sphere policy consultations led by Senator Kate Lundy throughout the year.

I feel confident that this is a growing trend for Government in Australia and that we will see much more of this type of engagement in the future.

To give you a sense of the success of the broader community participation in Realising Our Broadband Future, I have a few stats as we bring the forum to a close:

• 190 contributions to the Open to Your Ideas forum,
• more than 1,000 contributions and hundreds of comments to the discussion stream wikis,
• more than 60,000 people connected to the wikis,
• over 3,300 Tweets over the course of the two day event,
• in fact, Broadband Future has been the most popular Australian Twitter hashtag over the past two days,
• over 25,000 hits to the video live stream and we served almost 400 gigabytes of data, and
• over 65,000 individual page views to the Broadband Future web site.

As you may be aware, we also had some 110 people taking part through four remote node consultations around the country.

These remote node consultations were held in Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide, Canberra and across town in Parramatta.

Participants from government, academia, business and non-profits contributed over 10,000 words to our discussion wikis.

This includes ideas for the national agenda as well as local reflections on what high speed bandwidth will mean for these communities.

The remote node contributions form a valuable part of the forum and, as the first official government event of this kind, they offer another method for Government to engage publicly in the future.

Here at the forum, and online, discussions on e-health have focused on empowering and supporting individuals to drive their own healthcare.

They have looked at the need to enable the health system across the country to care for all Australians using the National Broadband Network.

They recognised the potential for the NBN to enable innovative healthcare and service delivery, to help us all attain the goal of equity, improved access and ensuring safety and quality.

Above all, e-health can empower the consumer and provide enhanced clinical care in a long-term sustainable way.

Our Digital Education stream identified the need to address existing legal and regulatory blockages which prevent sharing of educational resources.

It identified some required next steps, including new learning models to accompany new and emerging technology, increasing the personalisation of the student experience and developing education portals to link schools and homes.

Big messages from the e-business stream were:

• That many of the opportunities identified relate to unlocking the existing creativity of Australia’s small and medium enterprises and, helping them punch above their weight both in Australia, and as exporters, acting as agents and adding value to other industries and supply chains.
• Also, that fast ubiquitous broadband will allow us to reorganise businesses and business models reduce the importance of location.

Ultimately, we will redistribute businesses, to redefine the nature of workplace collaboration, to create flexible supply chains that cross borders and industries.

For Australia, and especially for regional areas, this has the potential to spur a redesign of our cities, and to rethink the future distribution of Australia’s population.

Our Smart Infrastructure stream came up with an endless list of possibilities.

The stream had some great ideas around road transport, water management, and energy.

But as the Prime Minister said, we are only beginning to think about the full scope of new ideas.

To ensure we get the best from smart infrastructure:

• we need to focus on developing the NBN as a platform for open innovation,
• we need to engage and empower users, both individuals and businesses,
• we need to make sure data is shared and is available as widely as possible, and
• we need to ensure that enough of the right spectrum is available to support wireless and mobile connectivity.

Finally, in the e-Communities stream we had some passionate voices from Indigenous Australia, seniors, youth, remote and regional communities.

Discussions recognised that the internet is already making a difference in many such communities.

The challenge is to empower existing and emerging communities and community organisations and advocates with more information, skills and resources.

These are the organisations and people that will make broadband real to every-day Australians.

Ideas raised included: 1-800 number of BB, an Ombudsman and the virtual sausage sizzle.

I’m sure you will all agree there have been some extremely, insightful, thoughtful and creative discussions.

Congratulations to all involved.

Next steps

As was our goal, Realising Our Broadband Future has identified the opportunities to take advantage of the NBN as well as issues that must be addressed by government, business and the community.

These have been captured in a wiki that is a permanent record of your ideas.

The opportunities and issues identified in the wiki will require an ongoing commitment right across the public and private sector.

Government agencies with a policy or program responsibility for an industry or community sector must now work together and others to assess each challenge and every opportunity.

I will then coordinate a report to Government that draws together this work.

We will consult further with industry and community bodies to ensure this report is both comprehensive and practical.

The report will be considered by Government within the next six months.

From this we will identify priority areas for action by business, government and the community.

This will ensure Government agencies incorporate planning for Australia’s digital economy future as part of their core business.

Implementing the ideas generated at this Forum requires a strategy that seeks active engagement between industry, the community and government.

The ability for multiple government agencies at the Commonwealth, State and Territory levels to work together will be central to our strategy.

This is particularly so in areas such as e-Health and Digital Education.

From a Commonwealth and State and Territory perspective the existing Framework for the collaborative development and use of broadband in Australia will be central to responding to the forum outcomes.

All tiers of government have made a commitment to this framework.

We will harness existing collaborative relationships between government, business and the community.

Other industry departments will identify partners working across various sectors to realise the opportunities identified at this forum.

The Government will also reach out to peak business and community sector bodies to seek their contribution to this reform process.

These bodies must also reform their thinking to make the digital economy front and centre of their work.

Important opportunities for Australia’s digital economy future will be missed if this is left entirely to Government agencies.

Industry must harness the interest and enthusiasm demonstrated at this forum to implement the ideas you have generated.

We will need genuine engagement across the economy – with practical outcomes.

Conclusion

In closing this Forum, I would like to thank our Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, for his support and participation to open the forum.

The PM should also be acknowledged for vision and leadership to ensure Australia’s success in the emerging global digital economy.

I would also like to thank my co-chairs, Senator Kate Lundy and Paul Twomey, our keynote speakers, lead editors, facilitators and panel members and exhibitors for their valuable contribution to proceedings.

Thanks also to the my department staff, the event organiser Event Planet, the University of New South Wales and my office staff – particularly Belinda Dennett, my digital economy advisor – without whom none of this would have been possible.

Thank you all for coming, for engaging so passionately and creatively here at the forum and online.

This event has given us all, and Australia, a great vision of what we can achieve in the high-speed broadband enabled digital economy.

Thank you and have a great weekend.