The re-election yesterday (September 7 2010) of Australia’s Labor Government by a whisker was largely by the offer of an expensive national broadband plan. The deal-clinching support by country independents will also ensure the rollout is a “roll-in”, with the focus on country Australia.
I will be fascinated to see the profound policy effects on Government and businesses, particularly as I have been telecommuting for a decade and I have become very dependent on cable Internet.
People like to make their own decisions and don’t like to be pushed. When they relocated the National Occupational Health and Safety Commission from Sydney to Canberra, only a handful (some 6) of the 70 remaining staff made the shift. I suspect that housing, family and other social commitments made the shift undesirable for most of them. In any case, Government and large organisations are notoriously bad at handling change. Occupational stress be loom larger than ever.
I see several powerful forces pushing and limiting change. Few people really like working like battery hens in impersonal offices. The opportunity to properly telecommute should allow people to live away from endless cities in the country, near the beach and in the mountains and avoid hours of travel each day. This could potentially reduce the need for roads and revitalise country areas or at least the fringe areas of cities. Organisations that encourage this trend will have to adopt management styles that are “results orientated” and less power orientated, as they less able to directly be able to observe the backs of employee’s heads. I’m sure a lot has been written about this. Some of the social fabric of work will disappear as new social networks associated with work will appear as people do like to meet face to face, despite the greater availability of video conferencing. This will be great for restaurants with wired meeting rooms. Perhaps the new status symbol will be the executive office on a golf course rather than the top floor of the building.
Against this trend will be organisations that want to keep centralised “for efficiencies” and will use the new broadband to deliver services. In some cases this would be understandable – reading of x-rays by experts in the large teaching hospitals and diagnostic imaging practices in the cities or financial organisations like banks using video conferencing with their remote clients. However these experts may want to desert central offices for nicer surroundings. Why send an expert to a remote mine when they can do the work remotely far more cheaply and quickly?
The concept that the Internet dissolves geography will really impact on education, but that “geography” will be global. Why enrol at a university in Melbourne when you have a global choice? Also, the global choice will mean that availability of choice to fit your hours rather than 9-5 will be a real factor. This will apply to all the knowledge-based service industries.
One thing that people broadband will accelerate is the complete move to a paperless office so that information can moved anywhere. I’m highly dependent on electronic resources – on-line databases, electronic resources and I have thousands of PDF files on my PC’s and servers. I index the PDF’s with Google Desktop so that I can find that particular bit of information very quickly. I expect Cloud Computing to take off really rapidly as information move from clunky office machines to distant servers with people and organisations becoming even more dependent on the Internet. We should see a really flurry of publications and new experts on the consequences of the new broadband in Australia as the real impact of its arrival seeps into the consciousness of the nature, as the real planning for the social changes occurs.
We will also become much more vulnerable to cyber attack and a new preparedness will have to match the change. I’m sure I’m just seeing a few of the profound changes that will occur. Those who see more clearly will truly reap the rewards.