[LINK] Education, Offshoring and Free Trade to remove ICT Trade Deficit

Tom Worthington Tom.Worthington at tomw.net.au
Wed Apr 25 10:05:04 AEST 2007


The Australian Computer Society released the "2007 Australian ICT 
Trade Update" on 19 April 2007 
<http://acs.org.au/index.cfm?action=notice&temID=noticedetails&notID=746>. 
This was at the National YIT Conference held in Melbourne. I talked 
at the conference on "Making money from XML publishing" 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/technology/it/xml_publishing/>, but that 
might not be enough to offset the $21 billion ICT trade deficit.  ;-)

According to the report for 2006, Australia exported $5.7 billion of 
ICT and imported $26.6 billion. The ACS suggests to fix the problem:

---
* Education and skills - Potential opportunities for Australian 
participation as a major venue for on-shoring' (i.e. being a major 
services exporter) will depend on local education and skills.
* Conducive environment for global activities - For Australia to 
continue to be a successful exporter of ICT services, the nation 
requires reliable infrastructure such as high speed broadband, the 
ability of local suppliers to link into global production systems and 
a supportive regulatory environment.
* Regionally focused ICT export missions and programmes - While North 
America and Europe are traditional export target destinations, 
opportunities for significant ICT export growth can be found in 
India, China and Southeast Asia. The Government should support 
continued regionally-focused ICT export missions and programmes, in 
consultation with the Australian ICT industry, to maximise such opportunities.
* Offshoring capabilities - Australia has the infrastructure, 
capability and cost advantage to become an offshoring destination of 
choice for the US, Japan, UK and Europe for ICT-based activities and 
analysis in the areas of financial services, strategic business 
intelligence, risk and quality management, and research and development.
* Free Trade Agreements - The ACS considers that FTAs can provide 
useful support for strategies aimed at developing Australian ICT 
exports, but are not of prime importance to such strategies. ..."
---
From: " ACS Releases 2007 ICT Trade Update - ICT Services Exports 
Improve by $.5 Billion, Offsetting a Rising ICT Trade Deficit", Media 
Release, 19 April 2007
  <http://acs.org.au/index.cfm?action=notice&temID=noticedetails&notID=746>.

A 23 page summary of the trade report as a 1.7Mb PDF file is 
available 
<http://www.acs.org.au/attachments/ICTTradeUpdate2007ExecutiveSummary.pdf>. 
The full report is prepared and published by Victoria University as a 
PDF document <http://www.cfses.com/publish/icttrade.htm>.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                http://www.tomw.net.au/
Visiting Fellow, ANU      Blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/atom.xml  




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