GEOG2030 Global Development

Discussion on the stage of E-development in Australia

and policy recommendations

Woody Wong
Introduction
Developing an E society has been a global trend in recent years. It is characterized by “the pervasive
influence of advanced technologies in (micro)electronics, informatics and telecommunications on
people’s mindsets and lifestyles” (Loo, 2012). It is important to note that in an e-society, e-
technologies are totally integrated into daily life, and people can use it casually for shopping,
socializing, learning or working, without much serious considerations. It become part of daily routine.
In addition, it is indicated there are different stages of E-development, depend on the performance of
different criteria. The stages are namely formative, developmental and mature. The stages of e
development are an important indicator that measures how a country utilizes the information
technology to achieve efficiency and convenience. According Loo (2012), different components such
as e-commerce, e-working, e-networking or e-government can be used to evaluate the degree of E
development in a country. More importantly, government’s role and policies are also an important
indicator of maturity of E-development. Under globalization, Australia has become one of the mature
E society. This essay will consider which stage of E-development is the most appropriate in describing
the situation of e-technology in its territory, supported by contemporary facts and figures. Some
policy recommendation will be suggested to facilitate the development of E-society for Australia.

Analytical framework for identifying the stage of E-development in Australia

To analyze the development of information technology in Australia, the framework below is adopted.
Table 1 shows that four dimensions will be examined, namely E-Government, E-Commerce, E-
Working and E-networking. There will be different indicators to measure the development in each
stage. Last but not least, users, government’s policies will also be taken into account. As we all know,
the infrastructure and E-technologies are getting improved and improved. It is believed that Australia
is beyond formative stage.Yet, some people may doubt if Australia is at the developmental stage or
mature stage. In general, Australia has been having a nearly all-round E-development and proceeded
to mature stage. The following parts will elaborate this statement by facts and figures of different
indicators with four E-dimensions being more significant, and explain why mature stage is more
appropriate in describing the E-development in Australia, rather developmental and formative stage.

Users, hardware, software, government’s role and key policies

Without a doubt, there is an upsurge in the number of internet users in Australia in recent years. For
instance, according to Sensis (2017), the smartphone ownership has reached 81% in 2017. And it is
claimed that less than 1 percent of population never access internet daily. Also, the popularity of e-
devices implies e-technologies become affordable to everyone. Under globalisation, expensive high-
tech product are also developed in Australia. The wide price range of e devices should be the signs of
mature E-development in Australia since the situation of number of users, software and hardware
has been better than in developmental stage

Moreover, the accessibility of e-technologies in Australia is getting higher. Forlin, Chambers, Loreman,
Deppler & Sharma (2013) indicated that in secondary schools, there have been e-devices designed for
inclusive education. For example, disabled students can access to learning technologies. It is clear that
government is using technologies to build a more inclusive society. Besides, It is common that smart
devices like laptops or ipads are open for access in school. The wide provision of public E-
infrastructure implies that Australian government policies is getting closer to mature stage than
developmental stage.
Table 1: Analytical framework stages of E-development and correspond indicators, based on the
model by Loo (2012)
E-Government
E Government in Australia is regarded as mature since it is adopted more extensively and more
standardized. Undoubtedly, Australia has adopted several type of e-means to facilitate governance to
reach the mature level of E-development. According to United Nations E-Government Survey (2018),
Australian government ranked the second with the index of 0.9053, which is just lower than that of
Denmark by 0.1. It is obvious that Australia can be regarded as the leaders of E-government over the
world. Garner (2016) claimed ⅛ people aged 14 or over will look up government website for getting
information and booking services. The figures implies there are over 324 millions Australians benefit
from e-government. Chugh and Grandi (2013) also indicated that over 60% of australians used e-
government services and the overall satisfaction was 86 percent. Several online systems are available
for citizen services. For instances, Australians can pay the tax via credit card, easypay or BPay. All of
those channels are online based to provide the most conviennent payment. Also, Accenture is
developed to facilitate tax payment process, together by public and private sector. Accenture (2014)
reported that by using the self service portal, taxpayers can manage their tax payment accounts or
even view the status of their superannuation fund and accounts, which were done by paperwork
previously. This suggests that Australians successfully replaced most of the traditional paper-
based working procedures by the e-means, Accenture. It is believed that the efficiency and
accuracy of government financial services was boosted online platform in the sense that
administration staffs and taxpayers can save 35,000 hours and more than 100,000 hours respectively
(Accenture, 2014).
All these feature support the stance since in mature stage, government’s e services from different
departments are more uniformed and united than in developmental stage.

Australian E-government is more interactive so mature stage is more appropriate to describe the
state of development.To a further level, Australian has already developed E-channels for public
participation. According to Australian Government (n.d.), it is common for Australians to participate in
consultation by online registration. The details of public consultation is all uploaded to the
government website. Citizens can feel free to submit their opinions to the officials by email. Email will
also act as a mean of notification to citizens. Significantly, the public consultation manifest the features
of “two-way communication and interactions” in Mature Stage (Loo, 2012). Unlike developmental
stage, there are no more printable hard copy of consultation form required. Instead, it is obvious that
different electronic platforms have been widely adopted to save man powers and administrative costs
in E-government in Australia. Mature stage should be more appropriate to describe the stage of E-
government.
Figure 1: E-Government Development Index survey conducted by United Nations (2018)

E-Commerce
Electronic channels play an important role in facilitating commerce and boosting the economy. E-
commerce is defined by Loo (2012): the use of e-technologies to simplify and speed up commercial
transactions in both manner of business to customers (B2C) and business to business (B2B). In a
mature stage, E-commerce should be adopted extensively and growing continuously.

Firstly, Australian E-commerce is beyond developmental stage as online shopping has been
integrated to daily life. For B2C, in Australia, online shopping has boosted the economy in two ways:
stimulating direct online transactions or providing information to encourage customers to
shop at offline retail stores. According to Australia Post (2018a), the growth rate of expenditure on
online goods was 16.2% more than that of traditional retail. And the amount of online transactions of
goods reached $21.3 billions. Notably, more and more transactions regardless of being online or
offline, were made by e-payment or e-devices. Australia Post (2018a) indicated “Fast forward to 2017,
and one in five online purchases were made from a mobile device, payment services such as Buy now
pay later had attracted over 1.5 million customers, and online spending grew by 18.7%". It is also
reported that online shoppers were growing by more than 50%, they are aware of the discounts,
products review, price comparison before they shop at traditional retail shops. Online advertisements
such as Black Friday or Boxing day sales attracted customers and has boosted the offline sales volume
by 27% and 35%. This implies E-commerce also support the non-e channels economies. The sales
volume told that Australians nowadays do online shopping as a part of daily life. Unlike
developmental stage, online shopping is not done only when necessary. With the facts that total
volume of sales via internet and traditional ways are boosted by B2C e commerce to a higher degree,
Australia is more likely to be at the mature stage.

Secondly, technologies innovations has pushed the E-Commerce further to mature stage. For B2B,
trade among business enterprises have been already developed well in Australia. Common e-platform
has facilitated trade among business enterprise in the form of information flow. Figure 2 shows that
more and more firms are using digital marketing to facilitate trade among entrepreneurs. For
example, according to greenhat (2016), firms no matter small, medium or large size are adopting
digital marketing platform like Marketo, Hubspot or Pardot. Nearly 80% of the companies responded
that content market are significant in B2B commerce and they will allocate more resources to it.
Another example is the utilisation of social medias. Half of companies claimed that social media like
linkedin leads conversion t revenue and sales acceptance or follow up leads. This help differentiate
the stage of development in the sense that Australia’s e-commerce is no longer dominated by
traditional web-based information flow. The rise of social media manifested the mature stage’ s
features which is multiple channels in B2B commerce. With these in mind, various form of digital
marketing has become the essential tool which facilitate interactions and sales among companies, in a
higher level. Australia should be at the mature stage.
Figure 2: Preference between digital tactics and traditional tactics among Australian business (greenhat, 2016)

E-Working
Notably, Australia is closer to the conditions at mature stage as E-working has engaged the lower
level employe. E-working is defined as “working away from the traditional workplace for a
substantial proportion of one’s work time with the support of e-technologies” (Loo, 2012).
Significantly, Australia is moving towards mature stage of E-working. In developmental stage,
According to Loo (2012), E-working’s benefit was misthought as “ reducing traffic congestion due to
commute”. it is unfortunate that people are aware of the benefits, but E-working is not implemented
universally. Only senior staff in large companies were entitled to work away from offices. However,
the mindset among labors has changed. More benefits other than alleviating congestion are explored.
The report by AlphaBeta (2017) told the higher flexibility is a result of increasing proportion of labor
force using digital talent platform. For instances, 70% of australians aged 34 or above are using such
platform like being a airtasker or freelancer to earn extra incomes. Also, it is estimated the e-working
will contribute to GDP for 1.9 more percent in the future. Such figures indicate that the target of e-
working is expanding and the adoption of e-technologies in workplaces is more universal. More
importantly, technologies such as telecommunication are creating jobs like freelancers to people. This
is definitely a sign of mature e society (Loo, 2012) since more people engage in E-working
environment.

Moreover, it is found that more and more firms are willing to formalise “home office” in companies’
structure. E-working has became more mature than developmental stage. Figure 3 suggested that
there has been a substantial increase in regular E-working among firms. This implies companies are
structured to implement working from home in a regular basis which raised the maturity of E-
working in Australia. As a result, E-working is more formalised than in developmental stage.

Figure 3: Regularly work from home, major occupation group from 2001 to 2016 in Australia (The Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre, 2018)
E-networking
Obviously, the age of users indicate that E-networking in Australia is going beyond developmental
stage. In mature stage, E-networking is invented not to serve economic purposes, but to strengthen a
community’s bonding. Loo (2012) claimed that E-means are evolved to make the society more
inclusive and equitable. In this sense, the user group should extend from only young generations to
elderly. According to Sensis (2017), there has already been a more evenly distribution on users in
terms of age. It is undoubted that the Australia is closer to the mature stage.

In addition, e-networking means are not limited to social purpose, but extended to other purpose
like politics. Bruns and Moon (2018) claimed that “social media is likely to be the driver of political
instability. This is supported by the increasing electoral turmoil since 2007 and the emergence of
major platforms such as Facebook and Twitter have at least occurred in parallel with one another”.
This reveals that more and more political parties have been using social media to boost election
campaigns. And, the influence was great, resulted by political instability. E-networking is getting more
mature.

Figure 4: social media usage by age (Sensis, 2017)

Policy recommendations
Although mature stage is more appropriate in describing the stage of E-development, it is found that it
is not fully mature. In E-dimensions namely government, commerce, working and networking, the
indicators are satisfactory but not excellent. There is are some problems identified in each E-
dimension. The following parts will elaborate that how the suggest policy implementation can address
those challenges.

E-Government and government’s role in building an inclusive and user-friendly E-society

Firstly, government should by multimedia, enhance the usability of its websites which provide online
informations and services. It is found that the E-content in the website are not sufficient in the sense
over 80% of interviewee thinks audio and video clips for introduction of online information and
services are unavailable and limited (Fan, 2017). This may adversely affect the browsing experience
of users. Such that Australian government should utilize the multimedia channels to facilitate the E-
information flow and transmission in their websites. For example, there can be more videos
introducing the services and tutorials for people with low digital literacy. Therefore, citizens can find
it more user friendly and enjoy the benefits of E-government more.

For inclusiveness, according to United Nations E-Government Survey (2018), the E-participation index
ranking of Australia was the seventh while Australia ranked the second in E-government. This implies
that there should some challenges in the electronic participation means of Australia. It is found that
disabled people may find it difficult to use the e-means to participate in public affairs or access
to online information. The accessibility of government websites need to be raised. It is found that
disabled people such as eyesight disability can hardly use the e-services provided by the government.
Although it is claimed that the website reached international standards of disability navigation, you
can hardly find or switch the mode of disability navigation in the website. According to Fan (2011),
35.7% of interviewees cannot find the disability access in the website. The matters is about the
prominence of accessibility. Therefore, E-participation index may lag behind. As a result, it is
recommended that Australian Government should make the accessibility mode more obvious in the
website. There can be functions that allow people to switch the navigation mode when they access the
websites to increase the prominence. Also, Krä mer, Schnurr, de Streel (2017) claimed that
authorities should be in charge of enforcing non-discrimination obligations against internet platforms.
Thus, Australian government should form strong and well-informed institutions or departments.
Those departments should execute the non-discrimination with legal binding force to raise the
accessibility in websites. Therefore, government can play the leading role to manage the disability
accessibility in the internet to build an inclusive E-Society,

E-commerce: raise the degree of integration

Government should enable companies to cooperate to develop a more integrated platform. In general,
Australia is doing very well in E-commerce, compared to other countries. Yet, the state of
development can be boosted through raising the external connectivity such as payment solutions.
Australian Post (2018b) reported that business enterprise tend to build their e-platforms
internally since it is believed that they can have greater control and maintain at lower cost. However,
it is found that changing complexity in cyber ecology eventually lead to over budget of internally built
platforms as a result of disintegration. This makes some of the E-commerce in Australia fell behind.
Therefore, it is recommended that Government, IT companies and Australian companies should
cooperate to develop a fully integrated platform for E-commerce. The integration means the e-means
can be more standardized and unified. Such that, Australians can not register at so many payment
platform. There will be at least one common payment method. As a result, the friction in the final
moment of online shopping can be reduced. And a “seamless” online purchase experience can be
achieved.

Moreover, there should be more investment or subsidy in E-commerce for a more extensive
development. Apart from the problem of segmentation mentioned above, it is also found that the
investment in E-Commerce is insufficient. Start-up and small scale companies may be reluctant to
develop E-commerce due to lack of experience and high cost of entry. Therefore, government can
provide subsidy to less competitive firms to develop their online platforms and enter the E-commerce
society. Hence, more firms can share the benefits of E-commerce and boost their sales volume. It is
undoubted that the overall E-commerce can be enhanced because of more potential choices for
customers.

E-working: strengthen school education

Schools can strengthen the learning of e-working skills so that next generation can equip
themselves the up to date skills for the future environment. it is known that the traditional
workplaces are being dominated by E-means gradually. According to The Bankwest Curtin Economics
Centre (2018), there are more employees with different occupations realize that more professional
skills are required in the E-society. Therefore, schools can educate students more E-technologies to
maximize the digital literacy. For example, the current curriculum should not be limited to
conventional software like microsoft office. But, schools should educate them more newly developed
software like Photoshop, Final Cut Pro or even usage of social media. Hence, the future generation can
adapt in the evolving working environment. This recommendations may also stimulate innovations
from students. It is likely that E-working technologies could be further improved under the strong
emphasis on E-working skills in formal school education.
Figure 5: The comparison of jobs that often require learning new skills by occupation, between 2005 and 2016 (The Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre, 2018)

E-networking
As it is shown that social media may be a powerful tool in social or even political purpose (Bruns and
Moon, 2018) . Changing the perspective, government should make good use of E-networking such
as social media to strengthen the local community bondings, public relations and public
participation. Firstly, it is essential for government open up the social media channels like Facebook,
Linkedin or Twitter. As a result, the social media can be used as the secondary channel of public
consultation and communication between the officials and the citizens. Therefore, government can
collect feedback from public who may feel more comfortable in expressing in social media. In addition,
government can through social media upload the events that require public participation to further
inform citizens. For example, government can encourage people to vote via social media.

Secondly, government can utilize the E-networking to improve public relations. it is found that
Facebook page have great influence in public relations. For example, government can interact with
online users in social media platform, like replying people comments on social media, to show that
officials are willing to communicate with the general public. It is believed that people will then
cooperate with government more since they feel they are involved more than before.

Lastly, government can use e-networking means to enhance community bonding. Government are
suggested to post some activities for local communities in the E-networking channels. it is because
there will a great exposure of social activities under social media. It is claimed that social media can
reach out more people than conventional means like campaign and televisions. With this in mind,
social activities can build the inter-relationship among communities. The social capital, interpersonal
trust, can be enhanced in the way of E-networking.

Conclusion
It is expected that E-development would be the global trend. To develop a high level of E-society, it is
necessary to equip a society four main aspects of E-means, namely E-commerce, E-government, E-
working and E-Networking, together with expanding the number of users, sufficient soft and
infrastructure and the support of government. Significantly, Australia is now closer to the mature
stage, supported by the significant improvements in four E-dimensions. However, there are still room
for improvements to proceed to mature stage in E-development. Furthermore, challenges and
opportunities are identified in the essay. Australia must overcome those barriers to develop a more
mature E-society by improving accessibility, enhancing user experience, education, cooperation with
private sectors and utilizing social media platforms. Therefore, E-development in Australia can be
pushed further and a fully mature E-society can be achieved.
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