Statement on Online Australia Day, 27 November 1999

Roger Clarke

Principal, Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, Canberra

Visiting Fellow, Department of Computer Science, Australian National University

© Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd, 1999

This Statement was prepared on and for Online Australia Day, minor revision of 29 November 1999

This document is at http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/II/OLADay99.html

Over five years ago, I laid out what the Government needs to do to lead, stimulate, co-ordinate and regulate the country's information infrastructure.

Here's the 'state of the e-nation', as I see it on 27 November 1999:

• the long-promised enabling legislation relating to evidence and signatures (the Electronic Transactions Bill 1999) has finally been passed, on 25 November 1999 [the initial version of this document incorrectly assumed that it was still before Parliament]. It will initially apply in only very few circumstances, and there have to be doubts that it will be sufficient to establish business confidence - see Clarke 1999;
• the long-awaited Privacy Protection (Private Sector) Bill is still just that - long-awaited. Public confidence in electronic commerce will continue to be lacking unless the Parliament provides substantial and real protections (and there are signs that the Government's Bill will fail that test), and until it has been introduced, debated, passed, assented to, and come into force. Given normal legislative cycles, think in tems of 2002-2004;
• the Government Public Key Authority (GPKA) had an opportunity to make sure that the public key infrastructure (PKI) includes the necessary privacy-protection features. It has spurned that opportunity. As a result, there will be wholesale rejection of the technology by citizens and small businesspeople, losses on investments, and an ongoing impediment to public confidence in electronic commerce and electronic services delivery. It appears unlikely that the National Electronic Authentication Council (NEAC) will solve the problem either;
• our international connectivity is still inadequate. Between ourselves and our neighbours and primary trade partners in East Asia, the bandwidth is woeful, and the paths are tortuous;
• the prices charged for connections and traffic are extraordinarily high in comparison with the only countries that matter - our competitors, particularly the U.S.A. and Canada. The difference is around a factor of 3, i.e. 300%;
• ISDN would once have been considered broadband, but now offers capacity only marginally better than mainstream modems. Yet ISDN is still priced ridiculously high, and hence is hardly used;
• cable passes the houses of about 2 million, mostly affluent people. Cable TV has been regarded with apathy by most of them, and the carriers are losing money; yet no-one in the derisorily uncompetitive marketplace has seen fit to price Internet access via cable at an affordable level;
• many regional and rural areas suffer appallingly poor bandwidths and hence Internet services to and from those areas are seriously inadequate. A Bandwidth Enquiry is currently being conducted, which presented an opportunity to address the problem. Instead, the Enquiry is doing its level best to sustain the pretence that the problem doesn't exist;
• the few carriers have serious conflicts of interest, because they are also providing all levels of value-added service (and hence are suppliers to their competitors);
• the regulatory environment is seriously inhospitable. The Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Act 1999 (BSA) was passed on 30 June 1999. The censorship regime that the BSA establishes is based on utter technical ignorance, and is intrusive, ineffective, costly and at this stage completely confusing. See the EFA page;
• the most recent insult to the Australian public was the passage of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation Legislation Amendment Act 1999. Despite the Cold War being well and truly over, this gives yet more powers to ASIO, enabling them to hack into computers and place tracking devices on cars and humans. It was passed the day before Online Australia Day 1999 ...

In short:

• such positive things as the Government is doing are moving forward at glacial pace:
• there are many vital areas in which it has failed to act, and continues to fail to act;
• whereas, in the regulatory arena, it is making every available mistake as quickly as possible.

In my 1998 statement on Online Australia Day, I said that "For the Information Society to underpin the Information Economy ..., it is essential that access be ubiquitous. Access to the information infrastructure must not be thought of as a paid service, or as an optional extra; rather it must become available to everyone, everywhere, just as readily as the air that they breathe, and the shopping centres, pubs, clubs and coffee-shops that they congregate in"; and I was upbeat about our prospects of achieving accessibility, and e-competing with the best in the world.

A year later, I'm downcast, because the Commonwealth Government is making a complete botch of its responsibilities.

References

My 1994 monograph was called 'Information Infrastructure for The Networked Nation'.

My site provides materials relating to many relevant matters, including the Information Economy, the marketspace, 'cyberculture', and public policy aspects of the information infrastructure.

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Created: 27 November 1999

Last Amended: 29 November 1999

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