Greg Tannahill

The digital economy represents an opportunity unparallelled in history for individuals and small businesses to become quickly established on a global scale.

The key challenges for government are therefore:

- Increase Information and IT Literacy Australians of all ages, from schoolchildren to established business owners, require training on how to access detailed information on the internet, assess the reliability of that information, create and manage content on the internet, and promote that content in a responsible way so that customers can find it. This is the new basic literacy, and it should be placed on a par with existing literacy and numeracy programs. Knowing how to use the internet is more important than knowing how to use our postal system. This should be the focus of a massive, co-ordinated government program, and if done correctly it can put Australia in a world-leading position for many decades to come, comparable to Japan's achievements in electronics in the middle of this century.

- Upgrade Internet Infrastructure Australia needs to be able to serve a very high volume of data to the world in a reliable and accessible manner, and this requires input from government to improve broadband cabling both within Australia and in our connections with our neighbours.

- Lowered Red Tape For Small Businesses With more individuals and small businesses doing business online, many of whom have no prior business experience, it is essential for the government to reduce the bureaucratic requirements on these businesses, particularly with regard to taxation declarations. Our taxation laws for small businesses need to be simpler and easily explainable.

- Government Support For Third Party Public Content Hubs The government needs to provide support, possibly through funding or infrastructure, for Australian non-profit organisations who are creating or maintaining significant public information content hubs. Large examples include the AustLII legal database; smaller ones include social service groups who provide online service information to disadvantaged groups. These organisations provide valuable information to all Australians, increase Australian participation in public life, and attract international traffic to Australian content.

- Promote Australia As An IT Nation We need to promote Australia as a forward-thinker on IT, and this means promoting our educational institutions internationally, opening our digital borders rather than closing them, bringing our software classification laws up to a modern standard by implementing an R18+ classification for videogames, and making sure government departments are able to engage with digital culture on its home turf (this blog is a great start).

Thank you for this opportunity to engage with the government on this important policy issue.