The Australian Computer Society (ACS) has called for the Government to make ICT a national priority, in the light of the findings of two reports released this week by the Australian Bureau of Statistics.

The reports highlight the significance of the ICT sector’s contribution to the nation’s economy, showing that it is now a greater contributor than traditional sectors.
 

According to the ABS report, in 2002-03:

·         ICT made a greater contribution to the economy than agriculture, forestry and fishing, defence and education

·         ICT accounted for 4.6% of GDP. 

·         In 2002-03, ICT accounted for 13.8% of total investment in Australia.

ACS CEO, Dennis Furini, applauded the Government for commissioning the research, purportedly the first of its kind worldwide.  He also said the ABS data might understate the true total employment in the ICT Sector, because the figure of 236,000 did not include telecommunications, broadcasting and receiving equipment manufacturing, computer wholesaling, telecommunications services, data processing services, information storage and retrieval, computer maintenance and computer consultancy services. ACS data indicates that including these areas would take the total number of people employed in the ICT sector to over 400,000 and would have significant impact on the “value add” estimates.

“For the Australian economy to strengthen, we need to know what industries have the potential to drive growth,” said Mr Furini.  “Research of this nature is essential to ensure the right industries are getting the necessary support.

“The ABS reports provide evidence of something we have long maintained - that ICT is a vital part of the economy - and it requires equitable levels of support to its industry counterparts,” he said. “I’m now calling for ICT groups to work with state and federal governments to develop a 10 year plan for the continued growth and development of the industry.”

Mr Furini suggested that, as part of this plan, resources be directed towards developing Australia’s onshoring potential, focusing on the next wave of “knowledge based” services.

“This report shows that ICT provides Australian companies with significant returns on their investment. It is time the ICT sector and the State and Federal Governments work together to promote Australia as regional hub for global technology investments,” he said.

The ACS Onshoring Policy, released in September last year, states that global outsourcing of high end analytics work could be worth up to A$16 billion.  Australia’s highly skilled and productive, but medium cost, workforce makes it an ideal destination to attract foreign investments of this kind.

The policy identifies four analytic areas suitable for onshoring to Australia over the next three to five years: financial services; strategic business intelligence and research; risk and quality management; as well as research and development.