The Internet Industry Association (IIA) has released one of the most ambitious lists yet on its wishlist for ICT policies under the Federal election.
It's recommendations, outlined in Principles for a Digital Economy include:
General Recommendations
1. International benchmarking of regulation: We recommend that Government commit to a process of benchmarking our regulations and initiatives against other Western democracies in recognition of the fact the digital economy is borderless and skills and capital are increasingly mobile. Australia should aim to become a “Net friendly” destination for innovation and investment.
2. Build a strong policy research base in Australia: Evidence based policy formation implies the existence of valid and reliable evidence. As a nation we must appropriately resource the research sector, and encourage better linkages between the research community and industry, and the research community and government. The implementation of national policy priorities, while the prerogative of the government of the day, is best done when those priorities are grounded in a sound understanding of the issues and policy options by which they can be addressed.
3. Reaffirm the centrality of ICT innovation to the digital economy: The ICT Industry Innovation Council through its research has affirmed the central role of innovation. While Australia is enjoying a period of relative wealth and cohesiveness our future prosperity will be determined by maintaining sustainable productivity growth and increasing global competitiveness. Innovation will be essential to delivering the individual and collective productivity that will sustain Australia’s wealth and expansion in a diverse range of international markets. Fundamental to the innovation that drives productivity is the development and deployment of information and communication technologies. We therefore urge our political and business leaders to make it a national priority of government and business to drive productivity improvement through the development and deployment of information and communication technologies.
Broadband and telecommunications policy
4. Bipartisan support for national broadband: Parties should commit to bipartisan support for an open access wholesale only fibre-to-the-premises network with equivalent access for all access seekers, extended to provide ubiquitous superfast broadband access to all homes and businesses with wireless and satellite technologies.
5. Regulatory reform: This must be accompanied by regulatory reform to ensure:
- a level playing field for all access seekers
- regional parity to the greatest extent possible
- transitional arrangements to protect competitive services
- a guaranteed ability to differentiate products
- the incentive to invest in innovative products and services
6. Spectrum allocation: Any allocative process for spectrum should require the statement of a public benefit test to ensure that such allocation is based on national interest considerations, recognising spectrum’s role in broadband, and broadband’s role as an enabler of innovation across the economy.
7. Development of broadband applications: Government should consider stimulatory measures to promote the development of localised broadband applications and services, ie. those most likely to deliver on Australian innovation, social and cultural policy objectives.
8. Online services: Government departments should be required to advance plans on how they will deliver (on the Gov 2.0 agenda for) online services to the population. The political parties must commit to advance this agenda as part of their broadband adoption strategies.
9. Teleworking: Teleworking must become a national priority. Government must lead by creating a policy framework for adopting pro-teleworking policies within relevant departments. Furthermore, it must commission a review to examine any consequential law reforms necessary to remove legal impediments to broad economy-wide adoption.
10. Broadband education: As with public funded advertising in support of the migration to digital television, Government must commit ongoing funds to educate users about the benefits of superfast broadband to encourage uptake.
eSecurity and cybercrime
11. E-security education: All school based computer literacy programs should introduce training in eSecurity risks and their management.
12. An international CERT: Australia should work with other developed nations to foster the creation and extension of international Computer Emergency Response Teams in developing economies where they do not currently exist, to provide a streamlined international response to emerging threats at a technical level.
13. International cooperation: Complementing this, Australia should press for the creation or support of international agreements to foster the creation and implementation of consistent laws and streamlined protocols between law enforcement agencies to address cybercrime.
14. Resourced policing: Domestically, we favour continued resourcing and training of traditional policing to equip forces to deal with crime as it moves online.
15. Focus on DNSSEC: As a part of critical infrastructure protection, the overall domain name system (DNS) in Australia must be hardened in line with overseas efforts, and efforts to secure the DNS through the DNSSEC initiative adopted.
Copyright
16. Embrace content opportunities: For its part the IIA will continue to actively promote engagement with content owners to accelerate the development and delivery of new commercial models whereby accessible, affordable, legally available content can be provided to Australian internet users. Our Synergy roundtables are evidence of our commitment to this process. We call on Government to support our efforts to encourage traditional content owners to embrace the opportunities afforded by the digital economy.
17. Copyright reform: Political parties must commit to reforming the Copyright Act to extend safe harbour protection beyond ISPs to pick up content hosts, universities, auction platforms, user generated content sites and other online services consistent with spirit of the AU/USA Free Trade Agreement.
18. ACTA debate: Australia should not agree to sign on to any concluded Anti- Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) text without first allowing a full and proper public consultation and debate to occur.
19. Online engagement: Consistent with Recommendation 6 of the Gov 2.0 Taskforce, the IIA urges Government to commit to a policy of ensuring that, subject to the limitations identified by the Taskforce, public sector information should be open, accessible and reusable.
Cybersafety and children
20. Local research into cybersecurity: Government should sponsor local research into online risks. In particular, it should support Australia’s participation in current international research to establish the comparative position of Australian children online vis-a-vis their counterparts in 25 other nations.
21. Cyber safety research: Government should provide a more consistent and effective approach to resourcing cyber safety education programs that rely on clear goals, theory, interactive learning or integrates with school curricula with a view to instilling behavioural change as our common goal – a safer online experience requires children themselves to exercise informed and safer choices in their online activities.
22. No Online Ombudsman: The proposal for the establishment of an Online Ombudsman is not favoured until it can be established that such a role will add value to online safety and avoid adding delay to current processes.
Data retention
23. Public debate on data retention: Government must commit to a public debate about the merits and impacts of data retention prior to any new regulation being tabled. In the absence of broad community (and industry) support for such a proposal, a data preservation approach in respect of individual ‘targets’ under appropriate lawful authority is to be preferred.
Read what the rest of the industry wants