Some cautionary notes about the government's e-vision

Maybe there's something in this deliberately bleak story that might point us to doing things differently. We hear that the government is going to create a Single Supplier Register. That's principally for the convenience of government though, I admit, there may be a few up-swings for the Acme's of the world – maybe they get found easier and sell more to government but maybe not – remember, it's not a pre-qualification tool. Maybe they get paid faster, though they still have to interact with four different systems.

So, let's turn the tables. Let's hallucinate for a moment and imagine that there's a secure repository "out there" in Australia's cyberspace managed by private enterprise that has the capability to store lots and lots of information about companies who wish to trade online. It might contain name, address, phone and fax numbers, email addresses, names of office bearers, ABNs, export certificates, and public keys. It might indicate which e-commerce systems these companies use, and what sort of message and file inter-change formats they prefer. It might contain data about which panel contracts the companies are on, and perhaps some information about their consortia relationships, the countries they interact with, the standards they comply with. It might even contain their catalogue in a standard form. There are many things this hallucination might contain, including all the things the government proposes for the Single Supplier Register. It would be the single reference point for interacting with any company on line and permit companies to enter and maintain their data in one place. That would make a difference to Acme.

Now, if this existed, would the government still be planning to create its own Single Supplier Register, or would it become a paying customer of this private sector service?

My guess is that government would think of lots of "good" reasons why it still needed to do it itself. And that would be the wrong answer. I urge you to think about that.

Now it's time to stop hallucinating. And for me to come back to reality.

What does the Government need to do in harnessing its massive buying power to encourage the uptake of e-commerce by suppliers, particularly among SMEs?

• It could consider providing some incentives for adopting e-procurement. ABL believes that as part of its e-procurement implementation program, the Federal Government should undertake speedier payments to suppliers who use e-commerce.
• Accelerating the pilot programs. Last week the Federal Government announced the first of a number of pilot and demonstration projects. The first one involves the CSIRO and the Office for Government Online. We think these pilot projects are vital to build confidence and demonstrate the benefits for all players. We look forward to the roll out of more projects.
• We need a unified e-commerce vision. At the moment, different agencies are doing their own thing on different aspects of e-commerce. NOIE is supposed to have oversight of the whole thing, but in practice we have split reponsibilities between departments and agencies. We need a single entry point where business can access all government e-commerce initiatives, whether they be regulatory or aimed at enhancing the uptake of online business.
• Make sure than rural and regional businesses don't miss out on this, given the problems they face in gaining access to competitively priced telecommunications infrastructure.
• Need for raising awareness of the benefits of e-procurement for SMEs.