State and federal ministers charged with digital transformations efforts have agree to the need for need for legislation to enshrine privacy and consumer protections and governance and oversights into law to support the expansion of digital identity.
The Data and Digital Ministers’ Meeting is a committee adjacent to the National Cabinet and is chaired by Employment minister Stuart Robert, who runs digital service delivery and coordination for the Federal government.
A meeting of ministers on Friday via videoconference continued long-standing work on national digital identity issues including on resilience and included a discussion on the need for improved security certification for data hosting.
Digital identity gets a workout in meeting of ministers
A communique said the meeting had welcomed the release of the federal government’s Digital Identity Legislation position paper in June, as part of ongoing collaborative efforts between jurisdictions to reap economic and citizen benefits of a national to digital ID.
“Ministers noted the need for legislation to enshrine into law a range of privacy and consumer protections, governance and oversight arrangements to support the expansion of Digital Identity nationally and to the private sector,” the communique said.
The ministers also acknowledged that the problem of identity crime and data breaches was growing and agreed to work toward a national approach to providing victims with recovery and remediation services.
“Ministers acknowledged governments are held to a high standard when it comes to the security and safety of Australia’s data,” the communique said.
“The public expects data held by governments to be managed with appropriate privacy, sovereignty and security controls. Ministers discussed the need for Australian data to be held in accordance with high standards of security across the board.”
No details were made available on how any of these acknowledgements would be progressed. The following ministers attended the meeting:
Industry, Science and Technology minister Christian Porter has mapped a layered set of priorities for Australia’s manufacturing-led recovery that preserves existing jobs, plugs supply-chain and capability gaps, and keeps an eye to supporting future industries.
In a first in-depth portfolio interview since taking the Industry portfolio in March, Mr Porter said providing underpinning support in manufacturing remained a key priority for the near term.
He also foreshadowed significant policy announcements in conjunction with Education minister Alan Tudge aimed at improving commercialisation outcomes for Australian institutional research, and outlined a timeline for potential changes to the R&D tax incentive as it is applied to software.
But Mr Porter poured cold water on any expectation of changes to the Industry Growth Centre program, confirming that the six existing growth centre operations would be expected to be financially self-sustaining at the end of the financial year.
Industry, Science and Technology minister Christian Porter
“The plan for the Growth Centres is the same as the plan was under the previous minister, which is the same as when they were initially created,” Mr Porter told InnovationAus. “They have to become financially self-sustaining.”
“Obviously as Minister I will look at how that plan attaches to each individual growth centre, and to assist them as best the government can with that transition,” he said.
“But they were always meant to be – and were designed to be – self-sustaining in terms of their own finances. Nothing has changed there.”
Mr Porter said “protecting and preserving” existing manufacturing jobs and identifying companies with a competitive advantage and skills on which to build local capability had been and would continue to be the key priorities in the response to the pandemic’s economic impact.
This focus was on both building sovereign capability in products and services that underpin critical industries, as well as building export-focused manufacturers in areas where Australia could boast competitive advantage.
The $800 million Modern Manufacturing Initiative – the targeted grants program aimed squarely at Australian manufacturing capability and capacity – is central to this effort.
Every country had experienced supply-chain stress during the past 18 months and Australia was no different. Supply chains had demonstrated fragilities that no-one has expected.
“That’s why we have engaged in processes to identify where there is the greatest need for government to become involved with to ensure there is greater sovereign capability,” Mr Porter said.
“For instance, there are areas where we are using grants to strengthen those sovereign capabilities in the manufacture of chemicals used in agricultural production, and also with the manufacture of pharmaceuticals,” he said.
“They are two examples of an early point where we identified [through COVID] a need to strengthen sovereign capability because supply lines that we had all assumed would always be perfect showed imperfections during this time of high global stress.”
The government’s approach to market for proposals to build a local mRNA vaccine manufacturing capability – and its negotiations with pharmaceutical giant Moderna – was a clear indicator of a willingness to invest in capability. The approach to market process closed last Friday, attracting a dozen proposals, from startups to joint ventures to established pharmaceutical players.
But similarly, the creation of the proposed Patent Box is a policy-lever aimed at attracting the development of onshore capability, particularly in the bio-pharma sector.
While manufacturing is central to government’s industry response to the pandemic, and the portfolio has moved – via the Modern Manufacturing Initiative – toward direct grants, Mr Porter flatly rejected Labor charges that grants program was open to rorting.
Shadow minister for government accountability and shadow minister for Home Affairs Kristina Keneally this week warned that the Coalition had “baked-in” the potential for rorts into the $800 million MMI grants program.
But Mr Porter dismissed the charge as “pure politicking”.
“We’re wanting one thing and one thing only, and that’s maximising impact for jobs in manufacturing into the future for the Australian economy,” he said. “They are going to be a very heavily assessed and scrutinised grants round.”
Mr Porter said his office was engaged in a significant amount of policy work in partnership with Education minister Alan Tudge to improve early-stage commercialisation of institutional research – an area he says Australia has demonstrated “significant room for improvement”.
“There is clearly this gap in early-stage commercialisation. [The work with Alan Tudge] is about how do we increase the Australian experience and performance in moving basic research through those Technology Readiness Levels 1 and 2 and into improved commercial outcomes,” he said. “And the truth is that there is significant room for improvement in Australia in this regard.”
“That’s a very large horizon of work and you can expect to see some announcements in the not-too-distant future.”
You could say the last twelve months may well have been a dress rehearsal for the next decade. We saw widespread adoption of a set of technologies that accelerated over the year, coupled with rapid digitisation impacting every sector of the economy.
We are now more connected than at any other point in history. The very fabric that connects us all – pervasive digital networks – have become denser and more extensible.
Many organisations now use a blend of fixed networks, Software-Defined Networks (SDN), cloud compute, and virtual network services to help them respond to a new and rapidly changing digital economy.
Verizon Business Group Senior Vice-President Rob Le Busque
Globally, many industries have already taken up 5G technologies – from the way ships are built, to connected stadiums to enhance the entertainment and sports experience, through to healthcare that accelerated using telehealth and AI and VR to access health services. 5G has played a large role in transforming these industries.
5G technology is being used to augment and accelerate production outputs to gain efficiencies and higher value production capability. We are also seeing 5G technologies used to support asset-tracking to ensure security of high value assets.
Manufacturers are using powerful edge compute capacity to underpin technologies such as AI and virtual reality that are being used to improve health and safety measures.
While our domestic manufacturing sector has remained a small portion of our overall economy, Australia has a great opportunity to transform high-value manufacturing capabilities by deploying technologies such as 5G to help manufacturers achieve what we do best – bringing innovation and capability to create new products and services for the global market.
These technologies will also help realise the vision of the federal government’s Modern Manufacturing Initiative to develop higher value manufacturing capability that will increase the complexity of our export basket.
Emerging tech improves customer connections
In combination with increased connectivity, we also saw a significant change in the distribution of workers. The year 2020 saw the flight to remote working as a major outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Alongside that trend, we are generating more data than ever before, as individuals use technology to check-in and collect information about their location. Four of the data check-in companies that have disclosed Australian data indicated they had checked in 28 million COVID registrations between the start of the pandemic in March and October 2020.
Now, the sheer volume of data is outstripping our capabilities to generate meaningful insights. This in turn gives power to technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) – which can assist in turning data into actionable insights.
The recent 2021 CX Maturity Report shows companies that will be winners in the future will be using AI and ML tools to help them change the way they interact and engage with customers and also predict their customers’ needs.
The most important question that organisations will need to ask themselves is “what will be possible tomorrow that wasn’t possible yesterday? And, how can this help us increase competitiveness and improve customer experience?”
For example, emerging CX concepts such as empathy metrics and anticipant shipping, will transform the understanding of how consumers interact with brands.
Further, as service becomes more conversational, brands will be able to understand how customers wish to be served, and leaders will need to provide hyper-personalised experience to set themselves apart in a highly competitive, rapidly changing environment.
AI has a role to play to make that prediction and interaction seamless and offer high value for the business.
Preparing the next 12 months to support a decade of change
The network has emerged as a critical part of an organisation’s strategy to future-proof technology investments. While it’s impossible to prepare for all contingencies for the next decade, the next 12 months will need to be about embedding flexibility and agility into the core business platform.
We have talked with many leaders who pivoted their operations during the pandemic who are already looking at Network as a Service (NaaS) solutions as a good way to strengthen their business to cope with continuous and inevitable changes that are coming.
Organisations that understand the opportunity at hand – whether that be the rapid acceleration of digitisation, strategising technology transformation or meeting changed customer and employee interactions – are busy getting their houses in order.
They are looking to simplify complexity and remove uncertainty at the network level to manage the changes that are coming.
Now with 5G technology, AI and ML adoption, they are looking to NaaS so they can springboard from the past and gain a significant competitive advantage.
Rob Le Busque is Regional Vice-President Asia Pacific at Verizon Business Group and a member of the InnovationAus Editorial Leadership Council.
It is 52 years since the first person walked on the moon. The day that Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins landed on the moon was one of the most significant milestones in human history.
It created a reference point for past and future ambition. It set the tone for the type of ambition we crave in leaders, both governments and business.
The ambition, planning and then delivery of the Apollo 11 mission was the result of successive United States administrations under the leadership of presidents John F Kennedy, Lyndon B Johnson and Richard Nixon.
What did it in effect mean? It positioned the United States as a technological and cultural world leader during the Cold War.
But it also symbolised something far greater – that no matter what we might think is impossible, human chutzpah and effort can overcome.
Sun Cable’s Georgie Skipper
It created a reference point for nation building and human endeavour, which we will still refer to in cabinet rooms and boardrooms across the world, more than half a century later.
Since then, state-led financed ambition has not manifested in the same way. This is the result of multiple factors – some key ones being the direction of national budgets across an increasingly complex array of priorities, and the lurching emergency responses to state and non-state threats, including terrorism and mounting geo-strategic challenges.
This is especially pertinent today as governments around the world direct resources and policy planning to emergency responses to COVID-19 crisis and economic recovery. National budgets will likely be in deficit for decades to come.
Budgets and the political appetite for ambitious nation building activity could significantly decrease, even though it is exactly at this time that we need to think big.
There has been an increasing trend over the past three decades toward the privatisation of these transformative, nation building moments.
The move away from a neoliberal pure focus on balance sheet management has led to a rise of a well-resourced, risk-accepting class of private sector investors. This is most clearly seen in the Silicon Valley veneration of ‘moonshots.’
It feels timely that just as we mark over half a century since NASA’s delivery of the Apollo 11 mission, that billionaires and entrepreneurs Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are in a space race of their own.
Indeed, just over a week since Richard Branson took his very own Virgin Galactic test flight to space to pave the way for private funded space tourism, Jeff Bezos has gone to space this week.
Like the space race the Apollo 11 mission was borne out of, which led to benefits to consumers, this new space race could also lead to other positives, including in areas such as climate change.
The COVID-19 vaccines delivered by Pfizer, Astra Zeneca, Johnson & Johnson and other companies, represent another example of private sector-led world leading innovation.
Indeed, in the context of vaccines delivering a pathway out of this global pandemic and accelerate our capability to recover, then they may become a new type of ‘moonshot’ altogether.
The continued diffusion of moonshot initiatives among a diverse range of stakeholders presents many challenges and opportunities, and indeed new responsibilities.
The definition of nation building is called into question as the agendas and interests of those creating and driving ambition becomes more dispersed.
There are clear benefits in aggregated government planning and budgeting whereby priorities are set at a national level for public benefit, that cannot be leveraged as easily.
Similarly, there are clear benefits to the competition-led approach of the private sector that can help to solve complex global challenges.
Both the public and private sectors need to recognise that their ability to realise these visions relies on coordination, information sharing and mutual respect. The involvement in the Moon to Mars program by the Australian Government is a great example of this.
In that context, its incumbent upon us all to promote new partnerships between the public and private sector to set the standard and coordination for nation-building opportunities across areas that will have a material impact on our country’s economic growth, prosperity and our vision.
As history has taught us, out of the ashes of great deprivation come the greatest advancements – but the time to frame what a new post-COVID world will look like is fast slipping away.
Now is the time to leverage national prioritisation together with private sector led efficiencies and market-driven innovation.
In times of uncertainty, leadership requires a social licence to aim big. It is incumbent upon us all to continue to push a little harder, stretch, and aim for the moon – and to ask those leading to do the same. In the midst of a global pandemic, and at a time when we need hope and vision, all of us can play a role in shaping the next reference point for visionary, transformative projects that take us to the ‘moon’.
Georgie Skipper is Chief of Government Affairs and member of the executive team at Sun Cable, building the world’s largest renewable energy infrastructure. She was senior adviser to the Foreign Minister of Australia from 2013-2018.
The federal government has ordered an urgent review of the effectiveness of long standing Defence program designed to identify opportunities for Australian companies to plug into the global industry supply chains of eight multinational defence suppliers.
Defence Industry minister Melissa Price said the review of the Global Supply Chain Program will begin by the end of the month, led by public service medal recipient and former secretary to the Education department Lisa Paul.
The terms of reference for the review were released by Ms Price yesterday, with its recommendations expected to be delivered to the minister by October.
The Paul Review is a key recommendation of a study commissioned in 2019 by the co-chairs of the Centre for Defence Industry Capability (CDIC) advisory board, Kate Carnell and Tony Fraser. That review was handed to government a year ago, in July 2020.
Defence innovation: A focus by Defence is driving SME participation
The Centre for Defence Industry Capability currently manages the Global Supply Chain Program on behalf of Defence.
“We need these small and medium businesses to be a part of our robust, resilient, and internationally-competitive Australian sovereign defence industrial base,” Ms Price said in a statement.
“They must be aligned to our whole-of-government plan to support the economy and achieve our strategic and capability goals.
“This review will enable Defence to provide further, more targeted support to Australian businesses wanting to work with multinational defence companies,” she said.
“It will also look at ways to better incentivise the achievement of these outcomes among participating businesses.”
Meanwhile, Ms Price last week unveiled 10 new contracts worth nearly $20 million with local defence industry businesses via the government’s Defence Innovation Hub.
Ms Price said the Defence Innovation Hub’s investment strategy had already played “a transformative role” for Australia’s small-to-medium businesses and the way in which they innovate and support Defence requirements.
“It is rewarding to have Australian businesses continue their partnership with the Hub and mature their innovations towards delivering the future capabilities that Defence needs,” Ms Price said.
Nine of the 10 new contracts will let companies continue developing promising technologies that have already benefited from previous Defence Innovation Hub funding.
The contracts were awarded to businesses in Victoria, New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia in support of Army and Navy capabilities.
“I am particularly delighted to announce a $2.7 million contract with Western Australia’s Mission Systems Australia to further develop a networked underwater acoustic sensor for Navy,” Minister Price said. This is the largest Hub contract awarded to a WA company to date.”
The extended coronavirus pandemic had forced “a massive reallocation of resources” and a rethinking of priorities in the NSW government’s digital service delivery program, with a number planned programs put on ice, according to the state’s Digital minister Victor Dominello.
But the urgency of both the health crisis and the economic fall-out had resulted in an accelerated digital transformation of public services and dramatically changed the relationship between citizens and the state government.
In this episode of the Commercial Disco, Mr Dominello talks at length about the re-ordering of digital priorities, and points to the specific programs that rapidly accelerated the uptake of the Service NSW app.
In the process, the mass take-up of the ‘Dine and Discover’ vouchers launched as an economic stimulus initiative in the NSW state budget last November – more than 5 million people have registered for the vouchers, which required a 100-point ID check – had profoundly changed the nature of digital identity, he said.
“I can say there were a whole lot of things that I would have expected to deliver through the [Customer Service] agency over the past 18 months that have definitely been put back in the hanger while we’ve taken steps to open up the economy or protect people in terms of QR systems and things like that,” Mr Dominello said.
“But one of the things I have really driven the agency to not lose sight of, is that with all of this amazing change that’s taking place, let’s drag the silver lining out of this. Because there’s a lot of change, and we need to make sure that we bed down our digital architectures into the future,” he said.
NSW Minister for Digital and Minister for Customer Service Victor Dominello
It sounds quaint, but it is the Dine and Discover program that has delivered the most dramatic change in digital in years. Dine and Discover was a budget initiative announced last November aimed at stimulating the local economy by encouraging people to dine out or visit a tourist attraction.
The program used the public acceptance of the QR code (and the QR infrastructure the state had built into its Service NSW app) and bundled it with the state’s experience in digital licencing and 100-point checks, and its digital payment infrastructure.
Dine and Discover was a $500 million program to put targeted money into the hospitality and tourism sector. It was simple and effective.
But the big pay-off for the state has been in the take-up – in building a digital relationship with verified citizens through its 100-point ID check. Its ‘tell-us-once’ infrastructure means that other services can be offered up immediately to a user base of more than 5 million.
“If I look back over my shoulder in the years to come and say ‘what was the big digital transformation piece’, [Dine and Discover] was it, because of what it has enabled us to do,” Mr Dominello said.
“After Dine and Discover, the number of people that then went on to use the digital driver’s licence went through the roof,” he said. “That means it has truly been a digital transformation en masse.”
Elsewhere in this podcast, Mr Dominello discusses changes the to frameworks announced last week that will manage the sharing of data between state and governments and speaks at length about building sovereign capability in the tech sector and protecting tech supply chains.
The Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) program has assumed even greater importance to the future of manufacturing with the likely demise of the growth centres initiative, though the CRCs too need further federal commitments in the short term to continue their good works.
The CRC’s match federal money with cash and in kind contributions form business, universities and public sector research institutions to tackle defined industry research needs, run for a defined period of time and are regularly refreshed with new CRCs formed to tackle emergent issues.
They are the single most important, perhaps the only really substantial federal program outside the Defence sector, supporting collaboration to create a long-term future for key sectors of manufacturing.
With the life of the Innovative Manufacturing CRC (IMCRC) coming to the end in 2022, a number of bidding consortia are forming round the country to continue its work in focusing public and private manufacturing R&D resources.
The CRCs are even more important given the demise of the growth centres. Credit: IMCRC
The IMCRC, led by former automotive executive David Chuter and guided by an industry astute and politically savvy board, has been highly successful.
Since its inception in 2016, IMCRC has catalysed close to $220 million in transformative manufacturing research, successfully co-funding more than 50 industry-led research and development projects.
Vying to join the CRC program in an upcoming 23rd round of funding are:
The CRC for Intelligent Manufacturing (CRCIM) focusing on Industry 4.0 issues with a vision for autonomy, interoperability and sustainability, including through significant development and application of industrial artificial intelligence
The Regional Advanced Manufacturing CRC (RAMCRC) led by Deakin University would focus on building a collaborative research network across regional and remote Australia
The Sovereign Manufacturing Automation for Composites CRC (SoMACCRC) aims to drive composite R&D which will lead to decentralised composites productions capacity and sovereign independence
And the Critical Supply Chain CRC (CSCCRC) would focus on technologies such as Internet of Things, AI, Block Chain and Supply Chain Management to improve Australia’s medial product supply chain.
Not all these CRC proposals will be funded, but some will – in June the two of the three new CRCs announced under round 22 of the program were involved in manufacturing – the Heavy Industry Low Carbon Transition (HILT) CRC, and the Marine Bioproducts CRC.
Perhaps the reason why CRCs, founded by the Hawke government in 1990, have received long-term, bi-partisan support is the involvement of universities and public sector research groups such as CSIRO and ANSTO which have huge political clout.
The doomed growth centres were industry driven and industry led, and did not prioritise collaborative research.
Information sessions will be held this week about the proposal for a CRC for Intelligent Manufacturing, details here.
Not every foreign business in China need fear the cold winds of data regulation, but multinationals that capitalise on the PRC’s vast market and R&D capacity can expect to shiver.
Big Tech and big finance have shared the shock of Didi Chuxing’s relegation to bit-player status, despite drawing investors to its IPO. The erstwhile ride-hailing giant, which had Uber bumped out of the People’s Republic of China Sumo-wrestler style, is the latest victim in a Beijing crackdown on its own tech champions.
Yet something deeper is flagged here. Didi drew the regulators’ ire not simply as a rogue tech company, but as owner of a vast trove of sensitive and strategic data.
Beijing blues: The DiDi example has sent a chill wind on data
In today’s ‘decoupling’ world’, global firms operating in China will have to set up (at least) two separate data systems: one to remain onshore for their PRC operations and one for the rest of the world.
Regulations will come sector by sector. Activity in relation to automobiles and health show others sectors what is to come.
‘Splinternet’: two data regimes
In recent years, international industrial interests, above all those that are research and development intensive, have spoken of building at least two separate supply chains and R&D bases.
Beijing’s emerging cross-border data regime provides a microcosm of its response to ‘decoupling’ from global supply chains.
Fully localise operations. This is the takeaway for multinational corporations (MNCs) – not least giants like Apple and Tesla – looking to capitalise on PRC talent and data troves.
Little will change for firms that see China as only a manufacturing base or minor market. Preferential treatment may be offered at favoured sites like Hainan, but don’t count on them for blanket exemptions.
Four years and a trade war after the Cybersecurity Law, Beijing is set on clarifying the rules.
Work on criteria to sort out types, thresholds and sensitivity of important data – mainly national security, the public interest, economic order and/or state operations – is led by the Cyberspace Administration (CAC) and Ministry of Public Security (MPS).
Normal data – including personal information – vital to business and trade can flow across borders. But as stipulated in the recent labyrinthine laws on cybersecurity and data security (as well as that proposed for personal information protection) data of strategic importance may not be transferred without state approval.
Autos and health: test cases
Defining the data regimes results from intense behind-the-scenes negotiations among stakeholders. The broad definition of terms, processes and categories leaves room for tailoring to sectorial and even local needs.
Regulatory design will not rest with the security establishment, privacy advocates or protectionist officials. Sectors or regions whose data localisation rules deter foreign investment may win more lenient terms from central agencies and/or local governments. Greater leniency is also mooted for SMEs, sensitive to high compliance costs.
Regulatory scrutiny in the pivotal auto sector flags changes likely to become system-wide. Industry regulators, in tandem with the CAC, responded to Tesla’s opaque and controversial data collection practices with data security criteria.
Rules are tailored to the sector: personal data collected by automakers, ride-hailing services, repair shops and insurance firms may not be sent overseas without CAC approval; non-personal data deemed of national importance, for example the flow of traffic in military and defence sites, or high-precision map data, must also stay in China.
Tesla, BMW and Daimler have now announced plans to store all consumer data locally. In future, one-off market entry requirements may apply to smart vehicles.
Such efforts are mirrored in the healthcare sector, where health regulators have formulated data regimes.
Population and healthcare data are subject to stricter rules than those prescribed by the new laws: most data, personal or not, must remain in-country.
Transfer of human genetic data is strictly prohibited and separately regulated. Similar to the auto sector, smart medical equipment is governed by standalone rules.
Tight regulations, loose enforcement
Restrictions on cross-border data transfer are unlikely to be rigidly enforced, given that export control rules have never been carried out with much heft. Limited capacity at the centre is one reason, not unlike General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) enforcement in Europe; fears of stifling foreign R&D investment is another.
Big firms holding personal information in bulk, or whose information technology footprints have a significant impact on the domestic economy, are the bogeymen. They will be (or, as in the cases of Apple and Tesla, already are) the first to be asked by regulators to store personal information and important data locally.
Sectors mooted for more stringent treatment are those in which all parties converge on the need to localise storage, for example healthcare and genetic resources or, even more strategically, smart vehicles and voice recognition algorithms.
International actors should review their China operations and associated data flows in the light of these trends and their likely regulatory repercussions.
Once they are embroiled in controversy, or when Beijing’s bristles at some geopolitical event, it will be too late.
A confluence of forces impacting the Australian government has created a rare opportunity for agencies to rethink their approach to delivering the IT services, according to Oracle’s Canberra-based Applications Leader for federal government Dan Gray.
Those forces are data sovereignty and security – the much tighter controls being imposed on where and in what facilities government departments and agencies can store sensitive data, and the need to significantly tighten security in the face of persistent and escalating cyber threats.
The recent ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline in the United States, which resulted in serious and widespread fuel shortages, demonstrated that security breaches can deliver impacts well beyond the organisation that is compromised.
“Government has a great chance to take a step forward here and to work with organisations that are bringing capability to market that is appropriate for the security posture government wants to adopt, but also to enable them to keep doing business,” Mr Gray said.
Oracle: Sovereign and secure software as a service
Oracle offered secure platforms designed for government needs and delivered in a way that allowed departments and agencies to comply with security and sovereignty requirements, while still progressing digital transformation agendas.
Specifically, Oracle has worked with Australian Data Centres (ADC) to deploy its Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud @Customer (DRCC) capability into the Canberra region to meet federal government data sovereignty and security requirements for critical data and systems.
Oracle DRCC provides cloud services that are functionality identical to those available from Oracle’s commercial cloud regions but deployed in a data centre that meets government sovereign hosting, management, security and regulatory requirements.
Mr Gray said: “Oracle DRCC gives governments the best of both worlds: something that’s developed for a global market at scale that you would normally consume from a public cloud, but made available in this very special, localised way.”
He added: “This is a genuinely unique offering to government. I don’t think anyone else has successfully brought this sort of capability to market and allowed government to not only consume basic IT Infrastructure-as-a-Service in secure ways, but provided something which spans the entire IaaS, PaaS & SaaS spectrum, and allow government to genuinely get the best of both worlds and solve larger, more complicated challenges without needing to stitch together multiple cloud systems.”
He said the combination of Oracle DRCC with ADC’s data centres gave Australian government departments and agencies previously unavailable options to meet their business and IT requirements securely.
“When an agency develops its own application from scratch, or uses an off-the-shelf piece of software, and deploys it on internal hardware, or on a cloud infrastructure platform, the reality is there are likely to be gaps that, potentially, make the system and data available to people with nefarious intent.”
In contrast, an Oracle application developed under a SaaS model, is an integrated system from end-to-end with tight control over every layer of the service.
“It’s secured, integrated and managed. So from an IT security perspective, there are less places to compromise. You very rarely hear about an enterprise grade software-as-a-service application being breached, because they are very tightly controlled.”
The Australian Government has recognised the inherent security of Oracle Cloud applications: a number have been assessed by an independent third-party assessor at the PROTECTED level under its Information Security Registered Assessor Program (IRAP).
These include Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning, Oracle Fusion Cloud Human Capital Management and Oracle Fusion Cloud Supply Chain Management. Numerous other Oracle SaaS applications have been assessed at SENSITIVE level.
IRAP is a security compliance framework developed by the Australia Signals Directorate (ASD) and the Australian Cyber Security Centre (ACSC) to support commonwealth government entities in maintaining their security assurance and risk management. It assesses cloud service providers and their cloud services’ security controls against Australian Government security policies and guidelines.
Mr Gray sees government departments now being ready to adopt SaaS to meet their application needs.
“The aspiration of government seems to be to move to software as a service, because there’s now recognition it’s the best way to remain current, secure, and have the scale and flexibility needed to deal with change.”
However, he cautioned against organisations taking an overly simplistic approach to cloud migration.
“Governments should not limit their thinking to just making the bottom end IT easier by moving that to the cloud,” he said.
“They need to think about how they can transform the whole citizen or business journey, and actually deliver a better outcome that’s more predictable and scalable, and probably lower cost as well. That will really help government deliver things iteratively and with a higher level of quality.”
This article was produced as a partnership between InnovationAus, Oracle and Intel. If you would like to know more about Oracle Dedicated Region Cloud@Customer click here.
Twenty-eight innovation ecosystem leaders from across Australia have been appointed as the independent judging crew for the inaugural InnovationAus 2021 Awards for Excellence, representing a cross section of skills, geography and background.
And we have introduced a new category – the InnovationAus WildCard Award – in response to a large number of inquiries from potential entrants who felt their worthy innovations did not fit into any of the existing categories.
The new WildCard category will enable entries from companies doing excellent work in areas like CreativeTech, AI and machine learning, Smart Cities, emergency services, FinTech and the public sector.
With the addition of a new category, the deadline for award entries has been extended until August 2. You can find more detail about the timeline for the program at the Awards website.
Ecosystem Leaders: The judging panel for InnovationAus 2021 Awards
The InnovationAus 2021 Awards for Excellence put a spotlight on the companies and people making a commercial or social impact through smart new products and services.
Once the judging beginis in August, we will embark on a six-month program of stories and podcasts and video of finalists – culminating in a black-tie Commercial Disco gala on November 18.
“Our goal was to put together a group of industry leaders from broad and diverse backgrounds and industries, and we are very grateful to each of these judges for coming on board,” InnovationAus.com publisher Corrie McLeod said.
“This is an extremely impressive group. They are academics, startup founders, investors, corporate leaders, researchers and public servants.
“They are all leaders in their communities, from industry backgrounds ranging from space, the health sector, deep tech, artificial intelligence and data, robotics and intellectual property.”
The people and companies that enter these awards get themselves and their products in front of this judging group. And that’s exciting. Who knows where these things can lead?
This is an independent judging panel. InnovationAus.com staff will not have input into judging decisions, or visibility over the award entries.
The InnovationAus 2021 Awards for Excellence judges are:
Ashley Brinson – Founder and CEO of Greener Technologies; Director of Brinson and Associates
Dr Audrey Lobo-Pulo – Senior Public Policy & Economic Graph Manager, Australia & New Zealand, LinkedIn
Brad Chan – CEO of Banna Property Group; Founder and Director of Haymarket HQ
Cameron Johns – GM of Innovation, Impact Innovation Group; Co-Director of C+C Creative Studios
Chris Baxter – Chairman, Baxter IP Patent and Trademark Attorneys
Dr Catherine Ball – Associate Professor, ANU; Co-Creator World of Drones and Robotics Congress
Dr Dan Grant – CEO, MTPConnect industry growth centre
Dr Leigh Dayton – Science and Innovation Advisor
Dr Ian Oppermann – Chief Data Scientist, NSW Government
Kate Lundy –Director, NRMA; and Director, Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre
Matt Tett – Managing Director, Enex TestLab; Chairman, Enex Carbon security consultancy
Murray Hurps – Director of Entrepreneurship, University of Technology Sydney; Co-Founder, Startup Muster
Petra Andrén – Life Sciences Advisor, Tattarang; Advisory Board for Anterra Capital; Director, Ena Respiratory
Rachael Falk – CEO, Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre
Karlie Noon – Indigenous astronomer, astrophysicist and science communicator
Prof Toby Walsh – Scientia Professor of AI, UNSW; Research Group Leader, CSIRO’s Data61
All the signs are bad for any small hope we may have had that the six industry growth centres would be replaced by something more like the highly successful UK Catapult centres or German Fraunhofer Institutes.
The signs coming from Canberra are that no-one is pushing for an extension of the growth centres, flawed in design though they are, and most certainly the department and minister are not considering a redesign of the scheme to bring it up to world’s best practice.
While some of the growth centres are making plans for a life beyond the ending of government funding, the government’s own review of the scheme says it is unlikely any will survive in anything like their current form.
This means that $800 million in the forward estimates is to be dispensed in the way that the Department of Industry, Science, Energy and Resources has apparently wanted for a very long time – by direct government grants.
Scott Morrison at the Osborne Naval Shipyard. Photo: AuManufacturing
Only this time the Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his office has stepped in and the PM himself will sign off on every dollar of government funding going out the door.
On recent form, the best we can hope for is that the majority of this enormous pot of money will go to support truly transformative investments.
But some, perhaps a hell of a lot, perhaps a couple of hundred million dollars, will be dispensed in exactly the same way the PM and his team have dispensed other recent grants schemes.
Think $660 million for car parks, $100 million for sports facilities, and $3 billion in Community Development Grants – schemes all blatantly rorted.
For example the Australian National Audit Office in its review of the Community Sport Infrastructure Grant Program said in conclusion number one: “The award of grant funding was not informed by an appropriate assessment process and sound advice.”
ANAO also found: “Funding decisions for each of the three rounds were not informed by clear advice and were not consistent with the program guidelines.”
And: “…the Minister’s Office had commenced its own assessment process to identify which applications should be awarded funding. The Minister’s Office drew upon considerations other than those identified in the program guidelines, such as the location of projects, and also applied considerations that were inconsistent with the published guidelines. It was this assessment process that predominantly informed the Minister’s funding decisions, rather than Sport Australia’s process.”
So now are we going to see manufacturing grants decided on recommendations from Coalition ministers and MPs, and even candidates?
Are we going to see grants going to projects that do not meet any of the advertised criteria for the schemes?
Are we even going to see grants going to companies that have not even applied for a grant at the time the press release is issued by the government?
This is one god almighty large slush fund and we can only hope that in this case the nation’s genuine interests are put first and not those of some MP in a marginal seat.
The political repudiation of the Commonwealth’s proposed changes to the National Disability Insurance Scheme by all States and Territories was far more than a routine stoush of the federation.
What exploded on Friday 9 July was an episode of the conjunction of two extremely powerful forces – algorithms and King Henry VIII powers – each of which separately obliterates transparency and accountability.
‘King Henry VIII clauses’ are so named because of the unchecked power these involve.
When combined, the impact of algorithms and King Henry VIII powers on Australian citizens is unfathomable. These two forces are eating away at our democracy.
Marie Johnson on the NDIS blow-up over independent assessments
What exploded was not a fight about ‘reform’.
You see, the disability community desperately wants reform: after all, it was from the community that the NDIS was created. But reform is needed because the NDIS has been either accidentally or intentionally steered away from its intended purpose.
And the community might just know a thing or two about exactly where that reform is needed.
Brilliant insights for reform are detailed in more than 300 submissions to the Senate inquiry on independent assessments. And in countless submissions to a great many inquiries into the NDIS across its short eight-year life. The reform pathway is hiding in plain sight.
Fixated on the fallacious doctrine that anything can be automated – including apparently people’s lives and bad processes – the ‘listening theatre’ of government is not ‘hearing’ the universal calls for co-design whilst selectively referencing experts and elements of strategic reports going back to the original 2011 Productivity Commission Report.
What I and hundreds of thousands of disabled people and their families want to know is:
Why does it take a year to change bank account details?
Why does it take two years for kids’ wheelchairs to be approved – a quarter of the time that the NDIS has been in existence?
Why are sensitive reports and documents sent to the NDIA, repeatedly lost?
Why do we receive plans containing other people’s highly confidential details?
Why do NDIS plans have allocated funds of $2.02 for two years (this is not a typo)?
And why during the Independent Assessment campaign, were people receiving multiple cold call spam-like text messages, again often containing other people’s private details?
How this happens is a daisy chain of unmonitored mailboxes; no intelligent workflow; process dead-ends; off-system manual manipulation of data and documents; metastasised off-system databases; the passing around of spreadsheets; and a grotesquely complex website that makes a mockery of any notion of accessibility and inclusion.
That this happens so systemically is evidence of defective systems and processes at the core.
And pasted on top of these defective systems, will be defective algorithms.
Algorithms based on 400 personas that have not been co-designed, scrutinised, validated nor apparently tested. This is akin to having an algorithm developed to detect cancer from scans, without the process and algorithm validated by cancer domain experts.
Algorithms that are based on a mash-up of functional capacity assessment tools, where no evidence has been provided by the NDIA to the Senate Committee of the validity and safety of these tools when used together.
Algorithms that appear to have been developed without an ethics framework, according to evidence to the Senate Estimates.
And as a warning of what could possibly go wrong, the horrific examples of algorithm-driven funding assessment models used in the United States read like a template for NDIS independent assessments.
The US algorithm-driven funding assessments “hit low income seniors and people with disabilities in Pennsylvania, Iowa, New York, Maryland, New Jersey, Arkansas and other states, after algorithms became the arbiters of how their home health care was allocated – replacing judgments that used to be primarily made by nurses and social workers.”
In Arkansas, “you had people lying in their own waste. You had people getting bed sores because there’s nobody there to turn them. You had people being shut in, you had people skipping meals. It was just incalculable human suffering.”
So serious is the risk of algorithms to human rights, especially for people with disability, that the Australian Human Rights Commissioner, Edward Santow, expressed concerns about the NDIS robo-planning push.
“I’m very conscious that in the move towards the use of independent assessments in the NDIA that there is a risk that some of the mistakes that were made with regard to robo-debt could be made again in this context.”
This follows the landmark Australian Human Rights Commission, Human Rights and Technology Report, calling for a moratorium on the use of algorithms in decision making.
But the algorithm genie is out of the bottle, especially as an accompaniment to the “God-like” King Henry VIII powers – which in the leaked draft NDIS legislation, removes the veto power of state and territory governments. The same state and territory governments that are the co-funders of the Scheme.
In an article in The Saturday Paper, Rick Moreton explained that the King Henry VIII powers give the Commonwealth minister a new ability “…to make so-called ‘rules’ at any time, which the chief executive of the National Disability Insurance Agency must follow when interpreting the legislation.”
These ‘God-like’ powers determining rules that will not require the scrutiny of the Parliament, will be executed via opaque algorithms and not scrutinised by domain experts.
Indeed, a God-like power creating an algorithm driven funding assessment model that has been shown to damage people.
So the explosive meeting of disability ministers was not just about NDIS reform.
It was about the hidden agenda of the Commonwealth creation of a new architecture of automation and control that will reach across all servicing sectors: disability, veterans, aged care, education and beyond. The NDIS has long been the stalking horse of this disturbing future.
Australian civil society and the bureaucracy are tragically ill-equipped for the era of algorithms.
And the King Henry VIII powers government wants to grant itself will remove the rights and abilities of citizens to protect themselves against this dystopian machine-led future.
There is a case quietly making its way through the Federal Court of Australia that could have profound implications for our conception of what it means to be an ‘inventor’, and whether this requires human creativity and ingenuity.
The outcome could also affect the freedom of Australian innovators to develop and commercialise new technologies.
In Stephen Thaler v Commissioner of Patents the court is being asked to resolve the question: can a patent be granted for an invention that was devised by a machine, or is a human inventor required?
Dr Stephen Thaler is the US-based developer of a computer program he calls DABUS (‘Device for the Autonomous Bootstrapping of Unified Sentience’). Dr Thaler claims that DABUS is capable of independent invention and that it has devised several new inventions.
Can the courts grant a patent for something designed by a machine?
The Artificial Inventor Project (AIP) is an initiative of Ryan Abbott, Professor of Law and Health Sciences at the University of Surrey. Professor Abbott argues that permitting machine inventors would incentivize the creation of intellectual property by encouraging the development of creative computers.
The AIP has filed patent applications in 17 countries, including the United States, the UK, Australia and New Zealand, with the aim of creating test cases to change the law. All these applications name DABUS as inventor, and Dr Thaler as owner of each application by virtue of his ownership of DABUS.
Dr Thaler’s claim that DABUS is capable of invention is not being tested in these cases. The sole question that arises is whether a patent application that names only a machine as inventor can be validly filed under the relevant patent laws.
So far, all patent offices that have considered the issue have refused to accept an application without a human inventor.
The court case, which was heard by Justice Jonathan Beach in Melbourne on 2 July 2021, seeks review of one such refusal by the Australian patent examining authority, IP Australia.
The stated object of the Australian Patents Act is to promote economic wellbeing through technological innovation and the transfer and dissemination of technology while balancing the interests of producers, owners and users of technology and the public.
At the hearing, Justice Beach appeared sympathetic to the argument that expanding the concept of ‘inventor’ to include machines would serve this objective.
I think that the economists at Australia’s Productivity Commission (PC) would disagree. More than 90 per cent of all Australian patent applications are filed by foreign entities.
In its 2016 review of the IP system, the PC concluded that, as a net importer of patented technology, Australia already overcompensates these mostly foreign patent owners. This, it argued, frustrates follow-on innovators and researchers, raising the costs of innovation and imposing costs on technology consumers and the community.
The government accepted recommendations of the review to implement reforms that would result in fewer, rather than more, patents being granted.
For most of us, the very idea of invention is intrinsically tied to human intellect and creativity. But patent law is not concerned with how an invention comes about. The objective legal test of patentability asks simply whether the invention is something that would not be obvious to a person skilled in the relevant field of technology, in view of everything that is already known and published.
A machine does not require human-like intelligence – or, indeed, any kind of intelligence – to satisfy this test. A program that randomly generates combinations of components until it stumbles across something new and useful would suffice.
We know that programmers can develop problem solving algorithms (including those employing AI technologies) that perform much better than random guessing. In their submissions to the Federal Court, Dr Thaler’s lawyers raised the example of ‘in silico’ drug discovery in the pharmaceutical industry.
Similar opportunities exist in many other fields. For the global tech giants, in particular, it may be a short step from computerised invention to machines that also generate the documentation necessary to file for patent protection.
Automated patent generators capable of monopolising large areas of technology could become a reality within the decade. Currently, the only legal barrier to this development is the requirement that an inventor be human.
It is not in Australia’s interests to become the first, and possibly only, country to permit machine-generated patents to be granted.
If the process of ‘inventing’ is to become nothing more than entering a problem into a machine, and waiting for it to spit out a solution, then it may be that the patent system as we know it is doomed to obsolescence.
But I am an optimist. I believe that human inventors, through the combination of perspiration and inspiration, will continue to produce creative insights and innovations that are beyond the capacity of mere machines to imagine.
The patent system should be reserved for these inventors. I hope that Justice Beach will agree with me.
Dr Mark Summerfield is an electrical engineer, a registered patent attorney, and a Senior Fellow lecturing in Patent Practice at the Melbourne Law School.
NSW Customer Service minister Victor Dominello has urged multinational tech companies seeking access to the state’s extraordinary $2.1 billion Digital Restart Fund to “partner up” and help build local tech and digital capability.
Although NSW had not mandated local participation rates in government procurement, Mr Dominello said there was a clear expectation that big tech multinationals find ways to build partnerships with local SMEs and startups that resulted in capability uplift.
The NSW government unveiled a $1.6 billion Digital Restart Fund last year as both an economic stimulus measure to rebuild after the lockdowns and disruptions of 2020, and also a lever of industrial policy to build and strengthen local companies.
An additional $500 million was added to the fund last month, an unprecedented pool of money being directed at tech uplift.
“That’s a lot of grunt we have in the engine now that we didn’t have before,” Mr Dominello told InnovationAus during a wide-ranging interview on the Commercial Disco podcast – to be published via this site and Podbean on Friday.
Victor Dominello: Wants the tech giants to do more in building local capability
But Mr Dominello poured cold water on widespread push among local tech suppliers for governments to mandate a level of local participation in public sector tech procurement contracts as the best means of building sovereign capability in key tech supply chains.
He also dismissed the notion of imposing a ‘Retained Economic Benefit’ criteria to tech procurement decisions, confirming to InnovationAus that the advice from the federal Trade department that such a yardstick would breach Free Trade Agreements that the Commonwealth had signed with partners, including the United States.
By including a Retained Economic Benefit measure in procurement decisions – with criteria such as where the supplier is ultimately domiciled, where its intellectual property resides, where it pays taxes, and where it employs researchers – would potentially be tipped toward Australian companies.
Mr Dominello said that the rhetoric behind the creation of a ‘Made in Australia’ office was “fine”, but in practical terms it would not work. The Australian Information Industry Association last month called for the federal government to create a Made in Australia office as a way to encourage sourcing from local tech companies.
The NSW government formally adopted adopted local procurement targets recommended by its ICT/Digital Soveriegn Procurement Taskforce: a minimum 25 per cent of contract of contracts valued at $3 million or more must be directed to locals SMEs (via subcontracting arrangements) 30 per cent of NSW government total spend on ICT must be with SMEs.
These are not mandated targets, but remained the best way to build SME participation, Mr Dominello said. And there was a clear expectation that the multinational tech giants get on board.
The reality is that the state government – and other governments around Australia – needed to work with these highly innovative tech companies from the US and elsewhere, Mr Dominello said.
“But when they come here and they want to play in our patch, my message to them is that they need to partner-up,” he told InnovationAus. “You can come here and just be an island [without local partners], but that’s of no value to us.”
“That means you must buddy-up with SMEs in NSW in order to access part of that $2.1 billion [digital restart fund]. That’s the most important lever that we have.”
Mr Dominello said in the context of geopolitical strategic tensions and COVID tech supply chains issues, that big tech multinationals should see building local capability as being in their own self-interest – even invoking the key strength of the so-called Five Eyes intelligence sharing network if the US, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the UK.
“You do not want Australia to be a passenger. As part of the Five Eyes, you want Australia to be a strong participant,” he said.
“It is absolutely great that the tech giants from the US in particular are doing so well and innovating and forging ahead. But truly, you need to make sure that you’re partnering up with us to make sure that we can build our capacity as well.’
“Because a strong Australia becomes a part of a strong network – and if we’re just a passenger, that puts a lot of weight on [them],” Mr Dominello said.
“They understand that, and that’s probably the biggest lever we’ve got; to make sure the big tech’s are helping us cultivate our local environment as well.”
InnovationAus.com has appointed the highly-regarded journalist, editor and broadcaster Ben Grubb as its new Editor, charged with running day-to-day news operation of the site, building readership across the innovation ecosystem and to assist in the development of new commercial products.
Grubb, who will join the InnovationAus team in August, has worked most recently as a home page and breaking news editor at Nine’s Sydney Morning Herald (smh.com.au). He is also a regular technology commentator on TV and radio.
Denham Sadler has also been promoted to National Affairs Editor with primary responsibility for the site’s coverage of federal government policy as it relates to technology and innovation.
Having recently gained Federal Parliament Press Gallery accreditation, Denham will be spending parliamentary sitting weeks in Canberra as part of his new role.
Ben Grubb: Taking up the editor role at InnovationAus in August
InnovationAus publisher Corrie McLeod said Grubb’s appointment is a watershed moment for the publication and a doubling-down of a long-standing commitment to quality reporting and valuable insights.
“Ben is known as an outstanding reporter and editor and is hugely respected in the technology sector. We could not be more pleased that he agreed to come on board and will play a huge role in building the InnovationAus platform,” Ms McLeod said.
“In addition to his old-school journalism pedigree, Ben brings an array of digital skills and online publishing experience to the position to build our audience and create value for our readers.
“In a changing media landscape, we have always tried to maintain a clear view of what quality looks like in our sector. Ben’s appointment should send a clear signal that we are strengthening our investment in that core value.”
Grubb has a rich background in local technology media and has held roles at various times with smh.com.au, news.com.au, iTnews, ZDNet, Crikey and Telecom Times.
“Significant changes to our way of life are occurring through the use of technology during the pandemic but few titles are covering this better than InnovationAus.com,” said Grubb.
“As government, industry and society race to stay on top of where technology will take us next, our aim will be to keep readers informed of the successes and failures through factual, sensible and balanced coverage.
“In addition to editing the site, I will write and touch on topics that include cyber security, national security, encryption and privacy; telecommunications and the National Broadband Network; space and earth observation; startups; and drones.”
On a personal note, I would just say I am absolutely delighted that Ben has agreed to come on board at InnovationAus. While I will remain as InnovationAus editorial director, my role will inevitably change as Ben takes the reins – but I will continue to write features and columns about Australian innovation policy.
With National Affairs Editor Denham Sadler’s superb reporting over at long period at InnovationAus, and the addition of senior report Joseph Brookes earlier this year, Ben is joining a great team and I am looking forward the next phase of growth.
Ben Grubb commences the role in early August and can be contacted, along with other members of the reporting team, at editor@innovationaus.com.
Lumi.Media co-founder and chief executive Karen Dewey spent decades working in or managing big teams in television, from news and current affairs to morning TV and the big, fast-moving and quick turnaround productions of reality TV.
It’s not a bad vantage point to come to grips with all the moving parts of production while tending to the nuance of storytelling and the integrity of the narrative.
Lumi is a software platform for the television production industry. It is a software-as-a-service conceived and built in Australia but targeting an global market. It is the single platform that draws together all of the silos of workers that make up big production TV, film and other creative industries.
The company was founded in 2015 by Ms Dewey and her software architect brother Neil Dewey –who is now Lumi’s chief operating officer – and co-founder Stuart Campbell, the company’s chief technology officer.
It is a pioneer among the nation’s fast-growing CreativeTech companies, a burgeoning industry that both supports and springs from Australia’s sophisticated film, television and video games sectors.
In this episode of the Commercial Disco podcast, Karen Dewey talks about the giant leap from a “pretty comfy job” to startup leadership, building a company and in the process creating a new product category.
Lumi software is disrupting creative industries in the classic startup manner. It is a new class of product that enables better productions to be made faster and cheaper. That’s the better, faster, cheaper startup mantra.
The arrival of cloud tech, ubiquitous storage, cheap processing, mobility, wireless, bandwidth all arrived to enable a platform to be applied in big file multimedia production challenges.
It enables visibility over all of the moving pieces in a production – from scheduling (making sure the right people are in the right place at the right time) to the moving around of versions and edits, linking field teams with post-production in a way that provides context.
“I just thought, ‘wow wouldn’t it be great if we could move things through the one system from the moment they were started [in a production]’,” Ms Dewey said.
She began sketching out the idea with her brother Neil. “He came back to me and said you’re on to something.”
“There is nothing out there that does what you’re suggesting and what you’re suggesting is a really good idea and could be applied in all sorts of ways across the board. That’s really where we started.
“I was in a pretty comfy job. But we saw an opportunity to really change the way things are done – to make things better, to make things faster, and to make things cheaper. That’s really where Lumi was born.”
It’s been a wild ride. Lumi has taken money from industry vendors and private investors. The company is chaired by Nuix founder and high-profile startup investor/mentor Eddie Sheehy, which in itself is an indicator.
The company was able to help fund the product build during its pre-revenue phase through a Screen Australia grant, the first and only time that the organisation had funded software. Screen Australia’s remit is not to build startups.
Lumi.Media chief executive Karen Dewey
But a platform that could make an industry-wide difference in making Australian productions more globally competitive was enough.
“That was enormous for us in terms of credibility in that they had searched the world and seen that this was innovative and could really streamline our industry,” Ms Dewey said.
As the product was refined, the company brought on six “pioneer partners” also during the pre-revenue phase – these were big production partners like ‘Australia’s Got Talent’ – during which time Lumi was able to attract two separate Accelerating Commercialisation grants.
The company is now well on its way, with commercial customers in Australia and overseas, and clear ambitions for its future.
“We would say our ambition is to become the ubiquitous solution worldwide,” Mr Dewey said.
“We started here in Australia and would be reasonably well known among Australian production houses. Our Australian partners are now helping us to reach out to [customers] in the US, UK and Asia. We have UK customers coming on board now.”
“Global expansion is absolutely where we intend to go from here.”
This is a call-out to Australia’s entrepreneurs and innovators, to our researchers and commercialisation heroes: The deadline for entries to the inaugural InnovationAus 2021 Awards for Excellence looms large.
The awards are a six-month program of discovery, where InnovationAus will put a spotlight on our best and brightest companies through editorial profiles, podcasts and videos.
Our focus is on the Australian heroes who are driving the wealth-creating innovation and long-term economic and social value for the nation.
The deadline to enter this awards event and to participate in the profile-building editorial program that accompanies it is July 21.
The InnovationAus 2021 Awards for Excellence is a celebration of our best and brightest. We’re putting a spotlight on the smart people and the innovative companies that are creating new business and new industries for the nation.
“Our focus is on the people and the companies creating valuable intellectual property, the key players in building the industries that will help secure Australia’s future,” InnovationAus publisher Corrie McLeod said.
“Our goal is to lift the profile of those people and companies driving research translation, who have taken ideas and built products and services, delivering commercial success or social impact, and national wealth,” she said.
These are people and companies worth celebrating. The awards culminate in a black tie gala in Sydney, a night of commercial discovery that we are calling the Commercial Disco. We will dance the night away.
“If we want to shift the focus of our economic outputs from an over-reliance on our commodity resources sectors and to participate more fully in the growing industries reliant on our intellectual muscle, we understand our strengths,” Ms McLeod said.
“And that means building the public profiles our innovation leaders and to celebrate their success. We want Australians to see these Australian heroes for who they are, and to get behind them.”
The 2021 InnovationAus Awards for Excellence has been made possible with the support of our foundation sponsors – Verizon Business Group, Sitecore, Squiz, Microsoft Australia, CSIRO, Innovative Manufacturing Cooperative Research Centre (IMCRC), Mimecast, Digital Health Cooperative Research Centre (DHCRC), Agile Digital, and Wrays.
The 2021 InnovationAus Awards for Excellence cover a set of 11 categories that reflects broad nature of our innovation ecosystems. We have sought to build our categories to align with national strategic priorities.
The categories are:
1. ADVANCED MANUFACTURING
This broad category will include entries across the spectrum of other industries – from Australian designed and built satellites, to mineral processing, food products and everything in between. We hope this category also attracts successful pivots of IP during COVID-19 to meet supply chain shortages.
2. CYBERSECURITY
Since the launch of the first Australian Government Cybersecurity Strategy in 2016, the local cyber ecosystem has built steadily. From a handful of companies five years ago, there are now hundreds of Australian cyber companies – many based on deep-tech research in everything from cryptography to Artificial Intelligence.
3. FOOD AND AGRITECH
Value-added food production and AgriTech have been a focus of innovation investment in this country. This is in both food processing as well as production and range from high-tech sensor devices and farm-based robotics and automation to the at-scale production of plant-based meat and other protein products.
4. MEDTECH AND BIOTECHNOLOGY
The pandemic has put a huge spotlight on biotechs through the detailed mainstream discussion about vaccines and vaccine manufacturing. Australians are good at this stuff. Our research community is exceptional, and the commercialisation of that research is strong.
5. MINING EQUIPMENT, TECHNOLOGY AND SERVICES (METS)
The technology that supports the mining sector in Australia is highly advanced; whether it’s remote operation of highly-automated operations – including autonomous robotics – or the software systems that drive those operations. Australia has an incredible technology track record that we want to highlight.
6. ENERGY AND RENEWABLES
This category seeks to reward ambition and innovation in the renewable energy sector. Commercial research in this area is fast growing and holds tremendous promise for the nation. From hydrogen extraction technologies and solar cell improvements to the management software systems.
7. SPACE AND REMOTE AUTOMATION
The space sector was a lonely place to be in up until recently – now it is a hotbed of activity. From launch companies to companies with ambitions for global satellite constellations, the Award goes to our most ambitious entrepreneurs. We include remote automation in this category because there is so much cross-over.
8. DEFENCE INDUSTRY
The defence sector has been a stand-out in collaborations of partners – of researchers, private SMEs and multinational corporations, covering the full, vast array of technologies consumed by the defence community. This award seeks to highlight the best, most valuable collaborations between research and industry.
9. RESEARCH TRANSLATION
Recognising an innovative product or service that has found institution-based IP, created a team around it, and successfully taken it to commercial realm. There are boundless examples here, from plant-based meat production to mineral processing, and space initiatives
10. PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD
Our judges select a final panel of the most ambitious and most outstanding entries to the InnovationAus Awards for Excellence – and allow our readers to vote on their choice for the most outstanding Australian innovation of the year.
11. AUSTRALIAN HERO AWARD
This award recognises the individual (or leaders of a company) whose ambition and drive has resulted in a game-changing innovation, and a fabulous commercial success. These are the heroes that we must celebrate in this Australian life we are creating.
The 2021 InnovationAus Awards for Excellence has been made possible with the support of our foundation sponsors – Verizon Business Group, Sitecore, Squiz, Microsoft Australia, CSIRO, Innovative Manufacturing Cooperative Research Centre (IMCRC), Mimecast, Digital Health Cooperative Research Centre (DHCRC), Agile Digital, and Wrays.
Stealth Technologies will work with the Defence Science Technology Group (DSTG) and the University of WA to design and deliver an autonomous drone that automates detection of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear agents.
Stealth, a subsidiary of investment company Strategic Elements will then conduct a live demonstration for the army of what it is calling an Autonomous CBRN Vehicle.
In May Stealth reported its autonomous security vehicle (ASV, pictured) successfully passed site acceptance testing by its intended customer at the Eastern Goldfields Regional Prison in Western Australia.
The autonomous vehicle planned for Defence will carry sensors into a target area allowing people to remain at a safe distance.
Stealth Technologies autonomous drone vehicle
Strategic Elements managing director Charles Murphy told investors the company would investigate advanced manufacturing capabilities and facilities for producing the vehicle in Western Australia.
It would also be well placed to leverage its autonomous capabilities for other Defence uses such as resupply, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.
Mr Murphy said: “The AxV Autonomous platform is gaining significant credibility and trust amongst some very serious players looking for autonomous solutions.
“We see significant commercial opportunities to build its value across multiple sectors such as security, defence, mining and logistics.”
The changes to critical national infrastructure regulation in relation to cyber security will need a coordinated, Australia-wide communications campaign that embraces small and medium sized companies in order to carry maximum impact.
Email security and cyber resilience specialists Mimecast’s country manager Nick Lennon says changes to critical national infrastructure legislation in Australia is a positive step forward. The regulation of cyber risks is a good thing and will ultimately lift cyber standards across the economy. In order effect change, there needs to be a complete commitment across all levels of government and private sectors, as without the necessary changes, there is the potential risk for considerable socioeconomic impact.
The new regulations are ultimately a way of introducing standards to manage cyber risks in Australia, just as financial reporting requirements and audits through regulations have been a way to manage financial risks across the economy.
Changes to the critical national infrastructure regulations will result in the introduction of minimum standards. The key to its roll-out in the early stages will be in a mass communications campaign that reaches the small and medium-sized companies that will be ‘captured’ by the new legislation.
Mimecast country manager Nick Lennon
“The critical national infrastructure changes effectively introduce ‘table stakes’ – or minimum standards – for companies, to enable them to participate in the new economy and the new environment,” Mr Lennon said. “That’s a positive thing and it really should be promoted.”
“This is regulation catching up in cyber, and supporting modern businesses to operate effectively in the current environment.”
“Longer term, it is easy to see a world where cyber security is regulated in the same way that the accounting and financial services industry is stood up today.
“So, we are obliged to check and report our [financial] books every 12 months, and we have multiple government agencies that analyse the quality of that information, to make sure that there’s transparency and due diligence around these organisations so they are able to trade appropriately,” he said.
In the same way government financial regulation is an effective measure to ensure the financial services sector meets and exceeds global standards, Australia’s new cyber regulations needs to be in lockstep with other countries to meet our obligations as global citizens in terms of cyber security standards. These new cyber regulations are about creating clear standards that enable trust across the systems of the economy, allowing customers and businesses to invest in one another. This is the same scenario that underscored the introduction of standard financial reporting, Mr Lennon said.
The key in cyber would be to make these new standards “more visible, more accessible and more in your face.”
“It is easy to envisage a world where organisations are reporting on their cybersecurity standards in a similar manner to how they are considering their financial auditing in today’s terms,” Mr Lennon said.
“So the question becomes, how does a small to medium-sized organisation consider what that means to them? And how do they meet or exceed those standards that are being asked of them around positive security objectives and the processes associated with reporting cybersecurity event. Of note the private sector has asked what will it cost businesses to meet the new cybersecurity standards, and where will that cost burden lie?”
It is a complex communications challenge, but not dissimilar to issues that governments have helped solve effectively in the past with national and coordinated campaigns. Think Slip, Slop Slap or the ongoing anti-smoking campaigns or any number of health campaigns. These aim at registering a broad community and individual benefit for action.
This can work with cyber.
Mr Lennon points to Mimecast’s own authoritative State of Email Security 2021 report for the numbers that illustrate the massive scale of cybersecurity problems across the economy.
In Australia, the report found that an incredible 64 per cent of companies had experienced some form of business disruption through ransomware in the past year, a massive increase from the 48 per cent reported in the previous year.
Of those companies, 54 per cent paid the ransom. And of the companies that paid a ransom, 76 per cent recovered their data, but 24 per cent paid and never recovered their data – a true nightmare scenario for any business. In terms of downtime, there is a big impact, with the report revealing that business disruption caused an average of 4 days of downtime, and for 26 per cent of businesses it was one week or more. This downtime can greatly impact our supply chains and the economy, and underscores the immediacy of protecting our critical national infrastructure.
“If you do the maths on that, you find that the scale of the ransomware ‘industry’ is massive. And that fact is not as well publicised as it should be in terms of communicating why regulation through changes to the critical national infrastructure legislation is so important,” Mr Lennon said.
This article was produced in partnership with Mimecast as a member of the InnovationAus Leadership Council.
Metal additive manufacturing company Amaero International will invest $8 million to build what it calls the world’s most advanced titanium alloy powder manufacturing plant in Victoria.
Using proprietary technology the alloy gas atomisation plant will produce aerospace grade titanium powders used in advanced additive manufacturing, and provide an alternative in global markets dominated by China and Russia.
The company has signed a memorandum of understanding with a global metal powder supply company and plans for sales of $30 million a year.
It has received letters of support from two of the world’s five largest defence contractors indicating strong potential demand for Ti64 powder for specific commercial and defence applications.
Titanium powders set to be manufactured in Victoria. Photo: Wikipedia Creative Commons
The project also adds value to Australian resources and makes Amaero, as a producer of 3D printing machines and 3D printed titanium parts, as the world’s only fully vertically-integrated titanium metal 3D printing company.
Amaero chief executive Barrie Finnin said the ‘ground-breaking’ project would enable the company to take a global leading role in titanium alloy production.
He said the company envisaged production costs would be half the level of global competitors.
Mr Finnin said: “Producing…in Australia will provide a stable, secure and cost-effective supply, allowing defence and other sectors to advance their 3D manufacturing capabilities.”
The project is being led by a team including Amaero technology fellow Dr James W Sears who has had roles in GE Research, Carpenter Technology Corporation and Lockheed Martin.
Mr Finnin said full vertical integration would be unique globally.
“Our facilities enable us to manufacture and supply powders along with 3D printing machines and ancillary equipment, as well as manufacture parts for small and large-scale production contracts.”
An Australian healthcare joint-venture between artificial intelligence startup Harrison.ai and local radiology company I–MED Radiology Network has launched a chest X-ray diagnostic tool on the same day a peer-reviewed diagnostic accuracy study of the product was published by The Lancet Digital Health.
The joint-venture – Annalise.ai – unveiled its chest X-ray AI solution Annalise CXR, which detects 124 clinical findings and is a decision support tool for radiologists and clinicians. The next most comprehensive CXR AI product detects just 75 clinical findings, with most CXR AI products limited to fewer than 15 findings.
The study published in The Lancet Digital Health found that when used as an assist device, Annalise CXR significantly improved the ability for radiologists to perceive 102 chest X-ray (CXR) findings in a non-clinical environment, was statistically non-inferior for 19 findings, and no findings showed a decrease in accuracy.
Co-founder Aengus Tran: AI diagnostics for radiologists
The study also assessed the standalone performance of the model in a non-clinical environment against radiologists in identifying chest x-ray pathology, as well as investigating the effect of model output on radiologist performance when used as an assist device.
Annalise CXR’s AI model classification alone was significantly more accurate than unassisted radiologists for 117 (94 per cent) of 124 clinical findings predicted by the model and was non-inferior to unassisted radiologists for all other clinical findings.
The performance evaluation points to a breakthrough product. “The ability of the AI model to identify findings on chest x-rays is very encouraging,” says Dr Catherine Jones, a thoracic radiologist and Chest Lead at annalise.ai.
“Radiologists and non-radiology clinicians incorporate clinical factors into decision making, but ultimately rely on perception of findings to underpin our clinical interpretation,” she said.
“Developing and validating a comprehensive AI model for chest x-rays required a careful, detailed approach based on robust methodology and focus on quality labelling, training, software development and thorough evaluation prior to clinical deployment.”
The Annalise CXR AI model was trained on 821,681 chest X-ray images from 520,014 studies across 284,649 patients. The study assessed the performance of the radiologists alone and the same radiologists when using the AI model as an assist device when identifying pathology in a chosen dataset.
Twenty radiologists each reviewed 2,568 CXR studies both with and without the assistance of the Annalise CXR model, allowing adequate time between both arms of the study to minimise bias. Gold-standard ground truth labels were obtained from the consensus of three sub-specialty thoracic radiologists with access to reports and clinical history.
Annalise.ai co-founder and chief executive Dimitry Tran said Annalise CXR would provide significant benefits to patients and to healthcare professionals.
“A major challenge facing global health systems is that the number of scans requiring clinical interpretation is growing at a much greater pace than increases in the number of radiologists to interpret them,” Mr Tran said.
“Annalise CXR seamlessly integrates with regular workflows, highlighting findings on chest X-rays for review by the radiologist.
“We hope that the solution will increase radiology capacity, thereby reducing turnaround time [and] improving interpretation quality by providing clinicians with another set of eyes, and reducing the risk of backlogs,” he said.
Annalise.ai is located in Australia, Singapore and the UK.
Regional businesses are significant contributors to Australia’s economy but must contend with many challenges from which their metropolitan area counterparts are largely spared: fire, drought, flood and, most recently, a mouse plague.
They are also technological disadvantaged. Their metro-area counterparts are enjoying the benefits of cloud computing services delivered from data centres operated in capital cities by hyper-scale cloud service providers like IBM, but connectivity issues limit regional businesses’ ability to take advantage of these.
IBM ANZ Cloud Hybrid business leader Wes Allen says IBM is able to provide its cloud services wherever customers want to locate them, not only from a capital city data centre.
“IBM is different from other hyper-scale cloud providers by taking a hybrid cloud first approach. What that means is giving our customers the ability to run their workloads wherever those workloads run best, and this is particularly significant development for regional organisations” Mr Allen said.
IBM is offering cloud services to regional customers in partnership with Leading Edge Data Centres
He said IBM has a range of valued added services that give customers choice. “We provide services and tools to allow customers to put workloads where they run best; the ability to secure environments that might have a combination of private cloud, co-location and public cloud, and the ability to manage those environments consistently, the ability to create an architecture that works well in a regional context.”
Central to this capability is IBM’s Cloud Satellite technology.
“We’ve developed Cloud Satellite to offer consistent management and the ability to deploy applications to an edge location or in ruggedised broom closet that might exist in a regional location,” Mr Allen said.
“It allows organisations to have the management capability and the consistency in operations that cloud provides but have the workload running wherever it runs best.”
This approach is well-suited to meeting the needs of regional businesses, and to better serve these customers, IBM has formed a partnership with Leading Edge Data Centres.
Mr Allen said the partnership with Leading Edge is a go-to-market relationship. “We’re looking for clients that we would provide joint service to. They will consume our services according to what they want.
“They may choose to have Leading Edge as the integrator or IBM as an integrator for all the services, or they may choose to contract separate. The partnership exists so we can create a combined front and offer the benefits to organisations in a consistent way,” he said.
Leading Edge Data Centres (LDC) plans to build 26 data centres in regional Australia and according to chief executive and founder Chris Thorpe, connectivity is a major barrier to the use of capital city data centres and cloud services.
“You don’t find many people in Dubbo using cloud-based services, because the connectivity can be up and down on a daily basis, depending on whether the carrier’s having a good day or not,” he said.
Also, for many businesses the cost of connectivity and the latency associated with using a capital city data centre can make use of public cloud services unviable.
“The further away you are from Sydney, the cost of connectivity tends to increase quite significantly. So, realistically, regional businesses are operating with their hands tied behind their back,” Mr Thorpe said.
Leading Edge’s first data centre is operational in Newcastle, and it has approval for others in Coffs Harbour, Tamworth, Dubbo, Walgett, Albury and Bathurst in NSW and has plans for data centres in Victoria and Queensland. Mr Thorpe said all were planned as unmanned facilities, rated tier three and with 75 racks and 375 kilowatts of power.
One of its customers for its Newcastle data centre, Cordel, typifies the issues facing regional businesses. It uses train-mounted LIDAR and sensors and artificial intelligence to automate monitoring of rail infrastructure. Its operations are compute and data intensive. Cordel chief technology officer Aaron Hoye said: “Cordel’s clients include critical infrastructure operators with strict requirements for data sovereignty.
“We are placing a significant portion of our AI compute in the data centre for the proximity to our headquarters and data, as well as to have a level of cost and control over the hardware that is not possible with public cloud,” Mr Hoye said.
This article was produced in partnership with IBM as a member of the InnovationAus Editorial Leadership Council.
“I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by,” said Douglas Adams, the iconic author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. But for executives and project teams at many of Australia’s banks, the July 1 deadline for complying with the Consumer Data Right (CDR) is likely to be invoking much less joy.
While some have obtained limited time exemptions from the date, many are still grappling with technology issues. At risk is the threat of ACCC penalties, or the FOMO factor of being non-compliant when their customers attempt to share data with a CDR accredited data recipient.
It’s debatable which of these two risks is more embarrassing. No risk and compliance officers I’ve talked to welcome adverse attention from the ACCC. And while the take-up of the CDR by consumers is embryonic right now, it’s only a matter of time before a fintech, a Neobank, or a more established bank, creates a buzz-worthy app that entices consumers to link their bank accounts using the CDR’s standardised APIs and security flows.
Mark Perry: Compliance to the CDR regime should be a competitive advantage
To give you an example of what this means, one major bugbear that could be streamlined by a CDR-accredited organisation is loan origination.
Consent-enabled, time-bound data sharing could see the end of downloading and scanning paper statements and emailing that sensitive information, where it sits in the consumer’s Sent folder forever, hopefully never to be accessed by a cyber-criminal.
The competitive advantages of CDR compliance are clear and the ACCC has said it’s not granting any new exemptions to the banks. But unsurprisingly, many have found that the road to CDR compliance is not an easy one.
Wrestling with CDR uncertainty
In many cases, the banks are not to blame for their tardiness. For sure, I’ve heard the usual tech stories of project overruns and developer hubris over the last two years once the race to CDR compliance began in earnest.
But banks and others looking to become accredited have had to battle with a constantly changing specification that has diverged from international open standards in some areas.
They’ve also faced a scenario where there’s been no reference implementation for them to test against.
Nor is the ACCC’s test regime comprehensive enough to prove full interoperability before going into production. So let’s be fair: it’s been a tough ask.
Many vendors have stepped up with CDR solutions of varying completeness, but they have also had to wrestle with the uncertainty of the CDR process. In their cases, there have been a mishmash of successes and stumbles to date.
I’ve heard a number of horror stories from customers.
There was the CDR solution provider who asked their customers to inform them when the CDR specification changes, rather than track any changes themselves.
Another failed all of the information security tests but was still promising their customers a working solution “in a couple of weeks”.
And a third vendor hadn’t implemented data exfiltration controls in their hosting environment while acknowledging that the CDR APIs were publicly available on the internet.
To buy or to build
It’s instructive that, as of June 30, more than 75 per cent of the active CDR Data Holders have implemented CDR solutions rather than developed their own.
The CDR specification is extensive and, in the case of InfoSec, requires detailed knowledge, beyond the open standards it’s designed around.
Most organisations that have made it to production before the deadline have engaged CDR experts to help them meet compliance.
As the specification changes and new capabilities, like payment and action initiation, are introduced, it will be interesting to see which vendors have designed for the future or have merely implemented their CDR solution to meet the current coarse-grained data sharing requirements.
The risk for Data Holders is a major upgrade with a potential impact on their production service.
Once they’ve crossed the first finish line, the burning questions for most banks and non-ADIs are: How do I deliver business value beyond compliance with my shiny new CDR platform?
Will it be a springboard for the business to deliver new, innovative customer services? Or will it become a silo, to be upgraded occasionally, but shaded by more established digital architecture?
Those who can create a compelling strategy as both a Data Holder and a Data Recipient and use the impost of CDR compliance as a catalyst for transformation will be the ones to watch in the coming years.
Mark Perry is the chief customer officer at Biza.io and has more than 30 years’ experience in the Information Technology industry. He was a member of the Australian Government advisory committee for Consumer Data Right, Australia’s Open Banking standards body, from 2018–2020, and continues to be involved in the ongoing definition of those data sharing standards.
Smaller suppliers of technology goods and services are increasingly finding themselves between a rock and a hard place when contractual agreements turn sour.
In any commercial agreement there is always the possibility of conflict or litigation, most often when the recipient alleges that the product or service they have contracted for does not meet the contract terms. The risk of conflict is greater when those agreements relate to technology goods or service, with all their complexity.
These risks were explored in a recent Australian Society for Computers and Law (AUSCL) webinar, AI – to Zero Day, which focused on “the changing risk profile of technology products and services, across the supply chain.”
No place to hide: Supply chains getting trickier for SMEs
Delta Insurance New Zealand group claims manager Petra Lucioli explained how these changing risks were impacting smaller suppliers.
“One of the biggest things I see is an increasing mismatch in the contractual terms down the supply chain,” Ms Lucioli said. “And it’s getting worse as the bigger players at the top of the chain impose stricter terms and restrict liability on their own part.
“Then the technology provider in the middle can only put terms to their clients that those clients are prepared to accept. They end up taking on a lot of liability that actually rests with potential errors and omissions at the top end.”
Brisbane-based barrister and specialist in commercial litigation Nick Ferrett QC laid a fair portion of blame for technology contracts going bad at the door of the customer.
“Customers often lack the capacity to precisely state what they want from a technology service contract. Maybe the person negotiating on behalf of the customer is just not sufficiently technically adept to be able to talk to the contractor and tell them what they want,” Mr Ferrett said.
“Or it might be that they don’t have the skills, or the support to understand the problem they’re trying to solve,” he said.
“Those are things that I’ve seen in litigation in this area. And it might be that the customer just hasn’t done the work to understand its own needs before it enters into negotiations with the technology provider.”
He suggested many disputes could be avoided if people in the IT industry were able to explain their projects and explain their concepts in a way the uninitiated could understand.
“I think it probably matters at the front end in contract negotiation. It certainly matters at the back end when you’re having fights about it.”
Many organisations take out insurance to cover contractual liabilities, but Ms Lucioli said technology contracts were suffering from “accelerating complexity”, the sometimes subtle but important distinction between technology products and technology services.
This distinction, she said, caused considerable difficulty in the case of insurance.
“A technology product might be a piece of hardware but could equally be software. And technology services, which typically would be advice, could equally be software. This makes the distinction between the two quite difficult.
“A company developing software is providing services while it’s carrying out that development, but once it’s delivered that software, it becomes a product. So there’s quite a quite a lot of overlap between the between the two concepts.”
She said the inability of most professional indemnity policies to cope with this situation and led to the creation of a bespoke technology liability insurance products.
Gilchrist Connell special counsel Nitesh Patel – who specialising in cyber and technology – said the situation was being further complicated by companies not traditionally seen as providers of technology products or services joining the ranks.
“You’ve got your traditional software developer or hardware company, and telecom and media companies. But then you’ve got organisations like ediscovery providers and business support services companies,” Mr Patel said.
“So the concept of technology provider is now getting fairly broad. I think it’s going to keep getting broader, because the reality is that, for many businesses, even if their core business isn’t technology, some parts of their business could be seen as making them a technology provider.”
Holding Redlich partner Angela Flannery, who specialises in technology, media and telecommunications, gave a telling example.
“When an enterprise hires a marketing agency for an advertising campaign, typically they wouldn’t see that marketing agency as providing a technology service, but most advertising now is done digitally,” Ms Flannery said.
“A technology service involves the use and exploitation of data. And that’s what ad tech services do: they use data to more accurately target advertising.”
InnovationAus is a media partner of the Australian Society for Computers and Law.
The Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) has called on government to establish a ‘Made in Australia’ Office to assess domestic capability gaps in the information technology supply chain.
But the AIIA wants the office to be rendered toothless, incapable of addressing in any meaningful way the sovereign capability shortfalls in areas of key strategic importance to running the government and delivering critical citizen services.
The Made in Australia Office proposal put forward by the AIIA resembles Joe Biden’s Made In America executive order in name only. It is
Joe Biden signed the Made In America executive order within days of being sworn in last January in one of his first acts as President. The Made in America executive order effectively legislated a “buy American” policy “to support American workers and manufacturers”.
No-one singing the sovereign capability blues
It was unapologetic its aim, to ensure that the US government massive procurement spend was director to American companies – to build capacity, capability and to drive economic recovery.
It is a requirement of the Made In America executive order that the head of a US department or agency seeking to buy a product or service from a non-US company made first seek a waiver from the head of the newly-established Made in America office.
The head of that department or agency would be forced to publicly justify the decision to buy a non-US product.
Through this arrangement, Joe Biden had in effect formalised into an executive order the protectionist rhetoric of the Trump years.
The US government had made its procurement budget an instrument of industrial policy, something that has been taboo in Australia outside of the Defence industry.
Well, if it’s good enough for our American cousins, why not us? I asked this question an InnovationAus column last March (and answered it with the headline Let’s formalise a ‘Made in Australia’ Office.)
To be clear, the AIIA is not proposing anything remotely like the capability-building procurement structures put in place by the Biden administration.
Rather, it proposes an office that specifically has no power to mandate local procurement as industrial policy. It proposes lots of identifying gaps and coordinating governments through yet another policy office inside Prime Minister & Cabinet, but no actual leverage to do anything about it.
And it discards altogether the notion of building sovereign capability, rather mischievously interchanging “domestic capability” with “sovereign capability”. Ownership does not matter to the AIIA,
It’s not sinister in so much as the AIIA is a known quantity. Its loyalties run it tiers: First to the multinational suppliers to government that makes up 80 per cent of its funding, second to the local SME partners to those multinationals, and thirdly to Australian tech companies.
There is nothing wrong with multinational companies. They have a huge role to play in helping to build domestic capability. But let’s get real, we want our procurement dollars where it makes sense to go toward building Australia tech companies, with all the benefits that accrue from that – including building sovereign capability and sovereign capacity.
Surely this government cannot be comfortable with the current choke-hold reliance on software systems that are controlled offshore to run critical government services?
The COVID-19 pandemic taught us some short-term lessons in supply chain resilience. But what about technology supply chains? How is this government preparing for the next black swan event? Because we are still in the middle of a pandemic and the needle has not shifted.
Creating another procurement policy body inside PM&C only makes sense if the government blows-up the Digital Transformation Agency and replaces it entirely. The DTA manages whole of government ICT procurement policy, after all.
The DTA has never shown the slightest interest in building sovereign tech capability in this country, giving preferential treatment to large foreign technology providers at every turn.
The DTA chief executive Randall Brugeaud leaves the organisation this week. His departure will be cheered by the Australian companies he consistently snubbed, an utterly unlamented farewell.
The AIIA has also suggested that the Commonwealth look at introducing a Retained Economic Benefit criteria to its procurement policies, along the lines of the REB discussions that were conducted inside the NSW ICT/Digital Sovereign Procurement Taskforce (which, incidentally, were not adopted by the NSW government.)
Of course, it is no surprise that the AIIA leadership has smudged the thinking behind the concept of a Retained Economic Benefit to water down its power to build sovereign tech companies.
On Thursday of this week Australia’s open banking community will celebrate the first birthday of the ground-breaking Consumer Data Right (CDR), which has started in banking sector before moving out to energy and telecommunications.
This anniversary is also the next major deadline in the phased CDR regime. All the banks are now required to be registered as Data Holders, making API endpoints available to Accredited Data Recipients, so that consumers can easily and safely share their banking data to get a better deal in the market.
At the time of writing, the list of exemptions granted by the ACCC to the banks was longer than the list of approvals.
Australia’s consumers will have to wait a bit longer for the CDR to deliver Scott Farrell’s promises of choice, convenience and confidence. This is disappointing given that it is, after all, the consumer’s data right.
Brenton Charnley: It’s happy birthday to the Consumer Data Right
What policies do we need to make the CDR easy for consumers? The key to open banking’s success is consumer engagement.
There are three critical areas the government should focus on right now: banks must make their APIs available on time; more FinTechs must offer additional products; and consumers must have confidence to overcome hesitancy about data sharing.
To the first point, the banks must speed up compliance so that the consumer’s banking data can be shared via APIs with FinTechs in a robust fashion that is also operationally useful.
Banks may also choose to become accredited to receive data and establish their own competitive use cases.
To the second point, FinTechs need a roadmap and timeframe from the government in response to Scott Farrell’s ‘Future Directions for the Consumer Data Right’ report from October 2020. His most critical recommendations concern an action initiation framework, including open banking payments. The Government has said it will respond later in the year.
FinTechs urgently need the Treasury to clarify the rules around several current unknowns: joint accounts; tiered accreditation; and a sponsor/agent model.
Without this, it’s challenging for FinTechs to plan for growth and to establish a business case that justifies the dollars and time required to be invested to achieve full accreditation, which is currently the only option.
Reducing regulatory uncertainty will provide confidence, unleash new use cases and establish a strong foundation for the CDR before it rolls out to energy and telco.
Finally, to the third point, consumer awareness should largely take care of itself as market participants advertise their offerings, although there is naturally a role for the Government to play in establishing the overall legitimacy of the CDR framework.
What can we expect from 1 July?
Now the rollout will accelerate. From 1 July, bank customers will be able to ask for data to be shared from term deposits, transaction and savings accounts, and debit and credit cards.
From November 1, home and personal loans are added to the list. Finally on 1 February 2022, a range of new banking products will be included, such as overdrafts and lines of credit, foreign currency accounts and business finance.
It took the UK 24 months to get 1 million customers to engage with open banking from when it was launched, according to Open Banking UK. It took eight months for the next million and just over six months to hit 3 million.
The acceleration was due to network effects: as more people got used to open banking, more competitive opportunities were created, and consumers had more choice and convenience.
It’s a virtuous circle.
Time to bring out the cake
This last year, the Big 4 banks and the FinTech community – especially Frollo and Regional Australia Bank – have done a lot of heavy lifting to achieve some 10 million API calls enabling live consumer data sharing.
Other organisations that will be celebrating the CDR’s birthday include FinTech Australia, Finder, Adatree, Biza.IO and TrueLayer. The foundation is laid.
With the first birthday of Australia’s CDR upon us, the opportunity is here to launch the next stage of powerful open banking use cases.
In time, we can open up the whole of finance with smarter and more consumer-centric financial services that will benefit every industry.
Brenton Charnley is Head of Australia at TrueLayer
As chief executive of the Cyber Security Cooperative Research Centre, Canberra-based Rachael Falk has been one of the most clear-eyed and articulate advocates for building cyber capability across the Australian economy.
Ms Falk arrived in the cybersecurity sector via an early career in the law and then telecommunications. She spent 15 years at Telstra in roles that included National Security Advisor and general manager of cyber influence.
The Cyber Security CRC is somewhat of a newcomer to the federal government’s Cooperative Research Centre program, with Ms Falk joining as founding CEO three years ago.
The cybersecurity “landscape” has changed quite radically during those three years. Certainly issues of sovereign capability and supply chains have taken on new meaning since COVID-19, as well as cloud services and data sovereignty, the government’s treatment of encryption services and even definitions and obligations under critical infrastructure protection laws.
In this episode of the Commercial Disco podcast, Rachael Falk talks about the challenges of building domestic cyber capability and the role of the CRC in creating the top-end skills that can underpin a healthy and growing Australian cyber industry.
The CRCs bring together like-minded partners from industry, academia and government to work together to solve problems and in doing so to create research translation and commercialisation outcomes.
As a horizontal industry that touches on literally all parts of the modern economy, the global market for cyber products and services is clearly massive with a growth rate that outstrips others.
The CRC is geared toward commercialisation, and has processes in place to ensure that the “commercialisable” parts of a project are identified early, and that the various parties involved in the project can recognise and agree on the pathways to commercialisation.
Building Australian cyber products and services based on research partnerships is key to lifting national capability, Ms Falk said. It is not enough to simply buy product from overseas. Creating and building solutions to problems through top end research provides an unmatched capability uplift that results in both a more secure Australian economy but creates access to valuable global chains.
While recognising that Australian companies can’t do everything, and that local firms have not been able to build at the scale of multinational suppliers in some areas there is a recognition that local companies have been able to fill niches and participate in global supply chains that are valuable to the economy and to the nations security.
“There has been this recognition that it’s a broad church and that we need all the players [domestic and multinational]. That to me has been one of the biggest shifts of the past three years,” Ms Falk said.
Building capability: Cybersecurity CRC chief executive Rachael Falk
“When you’re designing and making widgets here and you’re investing in people here, you’re [also] building capability here,” she said.
This is a great interview for anyone looking for a 20 minute snapshot of the local cybersecurity sector.
The Cyber Security CRC is funded through to 2024 and it will be up to its member participants and discussions with the government on what the future holds beyond that. There is no suggestion that the organisation will not continue beyond that date.
It is a measure of how serious the sector is taken that the Cyber Security CRC – which is effectively a modest-sized not-for-profit – boasts a board of directors that looks more like an ASX 200 company.
The board includes former ASIO and ASIS director general David Irvine, Business Council of Australia CEO Jennifer Westacott, the Australian Signals Directorate’s ACSC chief Abigail Bradshaw, Nuix founder Eddie Sheehy, Cisco Systems global chief of nation cyber security officers Greg Thomas, Deakin University deputy vice-chancellor Prof Julie Owens, QBE director John Green, and Commonwealth Bank director Anne Templeman-Jones.
The Cyber Security CRC is chaired by former ACT senator Kate Lundy. Ms Falk is also on the board.
Australia has a well-earned reputation for innovation in agricultural technology. What comes next might be a surprising link of innovation and migration policy.
Agricultural machinery has moved a long way since the days of a farmer perched on a tractor on those funny little triangular seats. These days precision agriculture means GPS guided machines that can plant this year’s crop between the lines of last year’s crop. Laser levelled fields make maximum use of irrigation water.
But like all sectors, innovation needs to be ongoing.
As previously reported here in 2016 AgriTech had the potential to double the agriculture sector by 2030. But the AgriTech sector earlier this year expressed concern Australia was being left behind.
AgriTech opportunity: The link between migration and investment in technology
Be it called AgriTech, AgTech or Agriculture 4.0 there is plenty of reasons to think about the opportunities.
There are parts of the Federal and NSW budgets that should be linked here, together with a pressing problem revealed by the pandemic.
First to the budgets.
Back in the 1970s at my secondary school, we had a lunch time talk promoted as ‘AI: A cow of a business, no bull.’ When I was in the workforce in the early 1980s, AI had already moved on from Artificial Insemination to Artificial Intelligence with the commercial development of expert systems.
But over the next forty years the description of AI was just as apt. AI remains an area where future promise continues to outweigh current delivery.
A centrepiece of the Morrison Government’s ‘back to the future’ Digital Economy strategy incorporated in the 2021 budget was an Artificial Intelligence action plan.
As the AFR’s Chanticleer noted one of the frustrating parts of this strategy is that the AI expertise that had been developed by the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Research Centre of Excellence (better known as NICTA) before it was gutted and merged with the CSIRO to form Data61.
Chanticleer made two other observations, the first was the value in recruiting great leaders into University research roles where they can also teach, and of partnering with leading global firms.
Interestingly the government announcement gave an example of local food manufacturer BlueEsky looking to ‘speed up their operations with AI and robotics.’
Robotics really consists of three disciplines; the machinery to move and grasp etc (actuation, locomotion and manipulation), the devices to sense the environment and finally the intelligence to control movement, interpret inputs and make decisions. But robotics need not be limited to factories.
Fruit picking robots are already being developed in the academy and commercially. (It is worth noting also how orchardists have started to espalier their trees – which both improves light distribution and access to fruit.)
In NSW, the 2021 Budget included $48 million for an expanded Farms of the Future program. This is specifically focussed on constructing and operating a Long-Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) in the five target regions. This will enable communication across wide areas and complements existing mobile and broadband services.
While the focus is on accessing static sensors, one of the original ALP Digital Economy projects focussed on using sensors to track stock movements which enabled fertiliser use to be targeted and reduce run off.
Wide area communications of course does not only help with sensing, but also with control. What is, after all, the differences between the advanced ag machinery with a driver sitting in air-conditioned comfort and a driverless truck in an Australian mining site?
The answer is simply connectivity. The more intelligence that is built into the remote agent the less throughput that is required of the connectivity.
Now to the problems revealed by the pandemic.
Mid-pandemic, we are being reminded just how dependent our agriculture sector has become on migrant workers, be they backpackers or Pacific Islanders.
The recent UK free trade deal has removed some of the work restrictions on backpackers from that location and prompted a suggestion that even when borders open, we will still be short of workers.
The proposed new agricultural worker visa to be offered to ten ASEAN countries has horrified long term professionals in immigration policy.
Speaking on ABC’s The Drum Abul Rizvi (at 41:20) noted that he had worked for twenty years at the Department of Immigration and that one thing they said to themselves over that time was that ‘Australia should never become a low skill guest worker society.’ They said that because they could see the exploitation of these workers that has occurred in the US, Europe and gulf countries.
One of the real problems with meeting the demands of employers for low paid workers by importing low paid workers is that you remove the incentive for the investment in the more enduring solution, which in this case is robotics.
The other sector that has been high on the list demanding access to imported workers has been the tech sector. The same problem occurs there of course, that allowing importation of workers reduces the incentives to invest in our own development.
More worrying however is the experience of overseas students doing postgraduate study in IT in Australia. They are entitled to work domestically for two years after their graduation but report that Australian employers are reluctant to take them on. That is a topic, however, for another day.
The other huge impediment to AgriTech is the structure of Australia’s agriculture sector. One of the reasons so much Australian agricultural land has been acquired by international investors is because they are willing to make big investments in technology.
Our largest pool of investment funds, superannuation, finds long-term investing in agriculture unattractive because of the liquidity requirements imposed by our rules around superannuation choice.
Australia has a huge opportunity to increase the productivity and value of our agriculture sector.
Realising that opportunity doesn’t require the diversion of water from environmental flows nor increasing the amount of land cleared for agriculture. It is about applying technology to our farms and not trying to rely on a low-paid and exploited underclass of guest workers.
Sitting in my hotel room in Melbourne I am beginning to feel anxious at being away from home with the onset of a Sydney lockdown that bodes ill for this latest round of Covid-19.
With just over three per cent of our population vaccinated fully, and government and citizens in Sydney clearly not taking a lockdown to mean a lockdown as every other state knows the concept, we are open to the rapid spread of the Delta variant of the virus.
While personally I am wondering when or how I will be able to return home, with my @AuManufacturing hat I am beginning to wonder how manufacturing itself is going to escape the variant as we did earlier waves of infection.
Then with masks, social distancing, separation of groups of workers from each other, the establishment of secondary production sources and control rooms, and a lot of luck, most manufacturing managed somehow.
Sydney lockdown: Can manufacturing escape the latest Covid challenges?
Compare that to countries from Malaysia to the US where manufacturing was fully closed for weeks if not months at a time.
But with this new variant is 60 per cent more transmissable, social distancing and masks are not going to be enough.
Someone only has to be in the same space as an infected individual the day previously to fall victim to the now airborne infection.
And not enough of us have been vaccinated because even with 18 months warning, Canberra has simply not bought enough and enough types of vaccines.
Manufacturers need to immediately plan for Covid disruption.
I am no expert on what that means for individual companies.
It might be that the ultra-strict requirements previously for dangerous occupations such as in abattoirs might have to apply more widely.
According to the Victorian government these were: “At a minimum, a surgical face mask, a face shield and gown or other protective clothing must be worn unless it is not reasonably practicable or unsafe to do so; protective clothing should be changed at the end of each shift and washed appropriately.”
A passion to solve some of our most difficult sustainability challenges – such as energy disruptions in developing nations and the protection of turtle habitats – has led two female innovators into careers in technology.
Finding solutions to environmental problems must start by pinpointing the problem that needs to be solved: “Start with the ‘why’ and the solutions will present themselves,” said scientific futurist, drone expert and Australian National University associate professor Dr Catherine Ball.
“When people fixate on the technologies, they become very blinkered towards the capability of other opportunities.
“When looking at environment monitoring, as I did with turtle nesting habitat behaviour, it was about gathering the data and having the best technology platform to do that,” she added. “This is where drones came in.”
Katerina Kimmorley, Corrie McLeod and Dr Catherine Ball: See What You Can Be
Starting with the problem of climate change led to solutions embedded in STEM for renewable energy and clean tech investment director and QIC Global Infrastructure consultant Katerina Kimmorley.
Working on energy poverty in India, where a significant proportion of people lack access to stable electricity, the problem was how to get the best, cleanest technology to the people who need it most in an affordable way. Establishing a social business and living in India for five years, Ms Kimmorley applied the technology, but with a real emphasis on the problem.
“If you stay focused, you can utilise a whole raft of other technologies to scale something, sometimes even beyond your biggest dreams,” she added.
Ms Kimmorley and Dr Ball spoke with InnovationAus Publisher, Corrie McLeod, as part of See What You Can Be, a new series of interactive webinars championing Australia’s extraordinary female changemakers. This episode discussed their passion to positively change the future and what opportunities lay ahead of future leaders looking to do the same.
As women now working in STEM, both Dr Ball and Ms Kimmorley had an early interest in science. At times, Dr Ball was the only girl in a physics class or faced pushback from male colleagues, but she continued on.
Her advice to women in burgeoning STEM careers is simple: “It can seem incredibly daunting, but just know that change isn’t easy and you’re not on your own. There are always people who want you to succeed, even if they’re not in the same room”.
On the other hand, going to an all-girls school and with a group of likeminded friends who were passionate and focused on science, Ms Kimmorley relished physics and learning about the infinite expansion of the universe.
In her professional life now, Dr Ball is actively working to end the ‘manels’, or all-male panels, at conferences and events in her area of drones and robotics. While it’s not a problem unique to men, confirmation bias can see conferences organised largely by men end up with male-dominated panels.
“It’s a natural human trait. Therefore, you need diversity at the top, because if you don’t have that, you don’t get diversity in the groundswell,” she said. “I won’t subscribe to this idea of being the only woman in the room – there are many excellent women in our field.”
Industry events are also an important way for women in STEM to broaden their professional links. However, Dr Ball has found qualified women may not put themselves forward and need to be invited and actively encouraged to participate in a highly visible way in industry forums.
“Your network is your net worth. You can create your own pathways and opportunities by putting yourself in situations where you can form relationships,” said Dr Ball.
Ms Kimmorley said women wearing lots of different hats have still got to try and allocate time and effort to go to and put themselves up for speaking positions at professional events. “But, when they’ve got a lot of things going on, it’s often the first thing that drops off,” she said.
These events are a way to form connections with people who may go on to become your sponsors or mentors. As Dr Ball sees it, sponsors will open doors and opportunities, where mentors will always keep you growing. “It’s important to have professional champions throughout your life – people that realise your passion and push you on, she said. “And, if you can’t find them believe in yourself and follow your hunger.”
Ms Kimmorley said champions have been the key to her career and that “it’s about seeing what you can be”.
Find out more about See What You Can Be, where insightful women share what they have learned on their STEM journey – including success stories, opportunities and barriers to entry – while encouraging viewers to challenge outdated stereotypes.
InnovationAus has partnered with Cool Australia to make the video recordings and assets available to teachers all over Australia as resources, should they fit elements of their teaching focus.
