Does the government have the right idea in helping small business in Australia? And can a joint public/private sector working party help?
I have written before in this column about unemployment among ICT professionals and the plight of Australia's small ICT businesses trying to get their share of Government spending. Each issue is at a new crossroad.
The two are inextricably linked and a couple of current events emphasise this. Recently the ACS polled its 15,000 members in an attempt to find support for the anecdotal data collected over the past two years. The survey sought meaningful figures on how many ICT professionals, who were ACS members, were out of work or under-employed, by areas of specialisation, age, gender, and other criteria.
According to our survey, 11.9 percent of our members are out of work, almost twice the national average. We think that's a conservative figure.
Senator Richard Alston attacked the findings as -blatant grandstanding" and used ABS figures to claim that unemployment was at 3.8 percent, and DEWR figures to show it as 7.5 percent.
A professionally and/or academically qualified ICT professional forced by lack of job opportunity into driving a cab is, we say, an unemployed ICT professional. But not by the Government's measure.
The second event is the imminent announcement of proposals to create a level playing field for SMEs seeking some of the estimated $3.5 billion to flow from Canberra into the ICT market this year.
A joint working party representing the public and private sectors was set up last year by Senator Alston. Its aim has been to review the Federal Government purchasing system and recommend ways to make it easier for smaller operators to get their share, rather than just multinationals with the financial and lobbying clout to take about 95 cents in every Federal ICT dollar.
Private sector interests were represented by established SME operators nominated by the Australian Computer Society (ACS) and the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA). On the other side of the table were the three government departments and agencies responsible for the bulk of outsourced government ICT business.
The impediments to SMEs are in the processââ,¬"the way in which policy intent is interpreted by bureaucrats. Of course politicians want to see our small ICT businesses thrive: they provide employment and pay taxes, success keeps local dollars at home, and the people toiling within them vote.
Yes, the Coalition has set up guidelines for companies to register their financial bona fides as suppliers under the Endorsed Supplier Arrangement (ESA), tenders are posted on Commonwealth Web sites along with advice on how to respond. It's not perfect, but a start.
It also decreed that contracts of $20 million must preserve 10 percent of their hardware component, and 20 percent of software and services, for SMEs.
At a recent Government forum to help SMEs do business with it, much was made of its procurement guidelines, that the Government's first priority was value for money, and that few would be denied if they did their homework. Within the guidelines . . .
The 70-odd SMEs that attended made just as much of how little of it works. Tony Robey (an AIIA representative on the working party) asked how many present had scored a government contract over $1 million. None had.
Any contracts at all? Very few. It's probably why they were at the forum anyway, but many still told of the guidelines counting for nothing in reality because departmental buyers dealt with whom they liked, and no SME had a chance if it couldn't be sued for at least the value of the contract they sought.
Size does matter.
It comes down to the very nature of bureaucracy, the interests of the public service existing uneasily with the ambitions of politics. If we accept that the Coalition is genuinely committed to growing our knowledge economy, then it must do more to police the application of the practical intent of its policies by its bureaucrats.
The joint working party's role in this is crucial.
Richard Hogg is National president of the Australian Computer Society (ACS). The ACS is the recognised association for Information Technology (IT) professionals, attracting a membership (over 16,000) from all levels of the IT industry and providing a wide range of services. A member of the Australian Council of Professions, the ACS is the guardian of professional ethics and standards in the IT industry, with a commitment to the wider community to ensure the beneficial use of IT.
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