Learn from the mistakes of others

Crow beaters

Meanwhile, the South Australian Government is copping flak from the local ICT industry. The Government, which once outsourced its whole IT operations to EDS, is a potentially sweet honey pot for the lucky players who are picking up a piece of the action. However, the local ICT industry, which wants a slice of the $500 million-a-year pie, is up in arms over what it believes is a purchasing system heavily weighted in favour of large multinationals.

The ICT Council for South Australia, which represents 1200 companies, has called on the state's Labor government to support local players by removing the uncapped liability clause from its contracts. The council's chairman, David Raffen, says uncapped liability is a barrier for local companies and favours multinationals whose solutions may be inferior. He says while the South Australian Government happily gives contracts to overseas vendors with no local connections, Australian companies venturing abroad find it difficult to explain to potential clients why their own government is not a customer.

Sadly, this is nothing new. In the 20 years since we started reporting on the Australian ICT industry, the nation's ICT trade deficit has grown to more than $20 billion and the main culprits have been our own state and federal governments, who account for almost half the ICT spend in Australia each year.

Successive state and federal governments have at times tried to tackle the problem but there seems to be a peculiar, self-abasing purchasing culture within government agencies that believes that multinational equals big and big equals good, while local equals small and small equals bad. For what it's worth, we would like to add our voice to that of the ICT Council for South Australia and ask all Australian governments to correct their past ICT purchasing mistakes.

Stan Beer <stanbeer@itwire.com.au>
May 2, 2006

Crow beaters

Meanwhile, the South Australian Government is copping flak from the local ICT industry. The Government, which once outsourced its whole IT operations to EDS, is a potentially sweet honey pot for the lucky players who are picking up a piece of the action. However, the local ICT industry, which wants a slice of the $500 million-a-year pie, is up in arms over what it believes is a purchasing system heavily weighted in favour of large multinationals.

The ICT Council for South Australia, which represents 1200 companies, has called on the state's Labor government to support local players by removing the uncapped liability clause from its contracts. The council's chairman, David Raffen, says uncapped liability is a barrier for local companies and favours multinationals whose solutions may be inferior. He says while the South Australian Government happily gives contracts to overseas vendors with no local connections, Australian companies venturing abroad find it difficult to explain to potential clients why their own government is not a customer.

Sadly, this is nothing new. In the 20 years since we started reporting on the Australian ICT industry, the nation's ICT trade deficit has grown to more than $20 billion and the main culprits have been our own state and federal governments, who account for almost half the ICT spend in Australia each year.

Successive state and federal governments have at times tried to tackle the problem but there seems to be a peculiar, self-abasing purchasing culture within government agencies that believes that multinational equals big and big equals good, while local equals small and small equals bad. For what it's worth, we would like to add our voice to that of the ICT Council for South Australia and ask all Australian governments to correct their past ICT purchasing mistakes.

Stan Beer <stanbeer@itwire.com.au>
May 2, 2006

no really, it is.

or perhaps i really mean, "wow, that takes me back ..."

( Read more... )

no really, it is.

or perhaps i really mean, "wow, that takes me back ..."

( Read more... )

ICT industries are so profitable because, outside of hardware, they are very, very cheap to run compared with the prices that people are prepared to pay for them.

And since humans are social animals, any industry that derives it's income from exploiting human social relations will be very popular. This includes the entertainment industries, magazines, and all that jazz.

The Industrial Revolution was remarkable because of the pace of the technological arms race - particularly in Western Europe. Nevertheless, the trend to want bigger or faster or more was not new even then.

The Corporation, The Trust, The Trademark, The Patent and other social constructions arose as a part of the response to the pace of change. Everyone wanted to be first, and to be biggest. The British eventually won by social reconstruction. We are still working within this social framework now.

It is ironic that the tools created a couple of hundred years ago to encourage social and economic growth, 'notionally' for the benefit of society as a whole, are now used to control segments of society and have captured economic growth. The Corporation and Intellectual Property have been manipulated out of the shackles of their original purposes to serve their own interests. The Corporation is now considered the model for human governance rather than a mechanism for encouraging (and protecting) investment. Intellectual Property was also supposed to encourage and protect investment - in innovation and development - but is equally useful in preventing competition and bludgeoning opponents, especially if they might be shouldering in on 'your' market share.

Both The Corporation and Intellectual Property are social constructions. Neither is necessary for either Capitalism or for Economics to function. But they are very expedient mechanisms for creating the all important 'growth' that the ascendant models of social value exchange are being based upon.

Words are important. What we mean by 'growth' and 'value' and 'a better life' makes a big difference to what we get in the end ...

ICT industries are so profitable because, outside of hardware, they are very, very cheap to run compared with the prices that people are prepared to pay for them.

And since humans are social animals, any industry that derives it's income from exploiting human social relations will be very popular. This includes the entertainment industries, magazines, and all that jazz.

The Industrial Revolution was remarkable because of the pace of the technological arms race - particularly in Western Europe. Nevertheless, the trend to want bigger or faster or more was not new even then.

The Corporation, The Trust, The Trademark, The Patent and other social constructions arose as a part of the response to the pace of change. Everyone wanted to be first, and to be biggest. The British eventually won by social reconstruction. We are still working within this social framework now.

It is ironic that the tools created a couple of hundred years ago to encourage social and economic growth, 'notionally' for the benefit of society as a whole, are now used to control segments of society and have captured economic growth. The Corporation and Intellectual Property have been manipulated out of the shackles of their original purposes to serve their own interests. The Corporation is now considered the model for human governance rather than a mechanism for encouraging (and protecting) investment. Intellectual Property was also supposed to encourage and protect investment - in innovation and development - but is equally useful in preventing competition and bludgeoning opponents, especially if they might be shouldering in on 'your' market share.

Both The Corporation and Intellectual Property are social constructions. Neither is necessary for either Capitalism or for Economics to function. But they are very expedient mechanisms for creating the all important 'growth' that the ascendant models of social value exchange are being based upon.

Words are important. What we mean by 'growth' and 'value' and 'a better life' makes a big difference to what we get in the end ...