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19 May 2006

Confidence, trust and security

Confidence, trust and security are powerful online enablers. Government should build public trust and confidence in going online and address barriers to consumer confidence in ecommerce and other areas of online content and activity.

Society must have the confidence to go about its business without fear, fear of terrorism, of deficient infrastructure, of breakdowns of major components of the financial system, of the weakening of the rule of law.

If communities, enterprises and individuals perceive that the globalised information economy is not serving their particular needs or if they perceive that the benefits flowing from that economy are distributed in a grossly unfair manner, the acceptance and trust in the new technologies will wither.

And the national economy and community life will also wither.

To avoid this, we need to know what communities, enterprises and individuals need, what they want, and what they expect. If there is congruence of needs, wants and expectations, it is more likely that there will be greater confidence in the information economy and in its tools. We need a level of confidence such that people and enterprises will feel safe in making investment decisions and in using those tools.

Developing a successful and sustainable information economy requires a social as well as a political consensus as a prerequisite. Then, a mechanism to integrate private and public interests is essential for the maintenance of that consensus. The problems that emerged in the dairy industry deregulation process - and that may emerge with the introduction of the Government "access card" - illustrate how a painfully constructed consensus for change can quickly dissipate when the pain of change starts to affect private interests.

The value to the public interest can easily be lost among the multiple private interests that exist in such circumstances. The challenge is to bring about change that satisfies both public and private (or regional or sectoral) objectives and, most importantly, to do it in a way that is perceived to be fair to all those interests.

This is where culture intrudes and its influence cannot be ignored. Managing a range of complex factors over time to maintain a consensus for change and to retain control over direction requires the capacity to integrate the needs of many and a high degree of flexibility.

The marriage of integration and flexibility enables an organisation or a country to be responsive to the developing environment and to the changing needs of its constituent parts. Also, security and predictability are essential if a country is to attract and retain the level of foreign investment it is likely to need. The need for investment in a growing economy can rarely be satisfied by domestic sources alone, especially in a medium size economy like Australia, which needs to spend big on infrastructure for the future.

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