Australian governments must support Australian e-business enterprise

Recommendations for Corporates and Government

Ongoing action from the business community and government is needed to ensure that Australia realises the prize from e-business. This action will need to be sustained for years to come, and strong leadership will be needed.

As a first step, and aiming to complement existing policy, the Business Roundtable has sought to identify a group of achievable recommendations. The recommendations selected are not intended to be exhaustive or comprehensive. Rather, they fill identified gaps in existing policy and reflect the Roundtable members’ areas of concern and expertise.

Encouraging Rapid Adoption by Corporates, SMEs and Government

Accelerating the rate at which e-business technologies are used across the economy will ensure that Australia more quickly reaps the resulting productivity benefits.

1. The BCA should facilitate the establishment of an index to enable e-business benchmarking and assist with e-business education.

The index will significantly supplement existing measures of e-business take-up, which are superficial and do not focus on corporate effort. It will also enable companies to benchmark themselves against best practice in areas such as interactions with suppliers, customers and employees, infrastructure and managing for value.

2. Governments should encourage small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to come online by providing incentives to conduct all their interactions with government via the Internet.

Regular SME interactions with government create an ideal opportunity to encourage SMEs online – examples are the Business Activity Statement and government procurement. Government savings from SMEs’ use of online services can be passed on to SMEs as incentives.

3. The National Office for the Information Economy (NOIE) should monitor state and local government online migration.

Good progress in monitoring online migration at the federal level should be extended to the state and local government levels. By measuring the progress of state and local governments in e-adoption, NOIE will encourage online migration of these bodies.

Using e-business as a catalyst for innovation

As businesses transform their processes for the online world, e-business represents an opportunity for increased corporate innovation. This opportunity should not be lost.