AIIA welcomes Australia 2030 plan

The Australian Information Industry Association has welcomed the government’s new strategic plan to strengthen the nation’s innovation culture, but expressed concern over skills shortages and tax incentives for software projects.

Innovation and Science Australia this week published the Australia 2030 strategic plan, which includes a series of recommendations for the government aimed in part at stimulating higher levels of R&D expenditure by businesses.

The 30 recommendations cover policy priorities for education, industry, government, R&D and fostering an innovation culture.

AIIA CEO Rob Fitzpatrick said that by drawing together these five elements, the plan takes a holistic view of Australia’s innovation ecosystem.

“AIIA commends the breadth of recommendations in support of building Australia’s innovation capability through education and training, and specifically the focus on STEM skills to better position Australians for jobs of the future, as well as gender diversity in the workplace,” he said.

“AIIA supports the focus on SMEs and the recommendations to improve their access to export markets, and the establishment of a specific procurement target of 33% of contracts (by dollar value) being awarded to Australian SMEs by 2022.”

The strategic plan meanwhile recognises the need to strengthen Australia’s digital capabilities in areas including AI and machine learning, for further momentum in government open data initiatives and for innovation in government procurement.

But Fitzpatrick expressed concern that the report specifically mentions that software innovation does not meet the criteria for the government’s R&D Tax Incentive program.

The report states that while “software development projects may be innovative, in many cases R&D activities may form only a small part of the overall project”. For software activities to be considered R&D for the purposes of qualifying for the tax incentive, the projects must meet requirements including having the objective of a scientific or technological advance, it adds.

“This demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of R&D in an ICT context. While the government wants to encourage organisations to embrace and innovate, leveraging new technologies to build innovative world-class products and services, software innovation is essentially not covered by our one major government funded innovation program — the R&D Tax Incentive,” Fitzpatrick said.

“An apparent shift to ‘lab-based’ software claims is not a position supported by the law that was enacted in 2011. AIIA is keen to discuss this shift in position in more detail with the government.”

Fitzpatrick likewise expressed concerns over whether the recommendations go far enough to tackle the ongoing ICT skills shortage.

“Many of our member organisations rely on skilled migrants to meet short-term skill demands. While we acknowledge the report mentions the need to continuously review current immigration skill categories, the ICT industry remains concerned that major shortages in ICT are still not being sufficiently addressed and that the pipeline for ICT skills remains bleak in the short to medium term,” he said.

To foster homegrown talent, the AIIA urged the government to consider developing digital literacy in students to be as important as developing traditional literacy and numeracy.

“Many of the initiatives announced in the report reflect those advocated by the AIIA. However, government must act with urgency on these issues now and wholly support the critical role that ICT plays across all sectors if we are to see a more innovative and digitally savvy culture in Australia by 2030,” Fitzpatrick concluded.

“It must take a solid bipartisan approach to foster ICT as an industry in its own right, and see it as more than just an enabler.”

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/vege

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