[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¬ID=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¬ID=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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