Speech: Launch of the Knowledge Economy Institute

I’m very pleased to be here for the launch of the Knowledge Economy Institute.

Can I begin by offering my congratulations to Sirca Group CEO Dr Mike Briers, KEI Chair Chris Vein, and founding member companies Sirca, RoZetta Technology, Cisco, Bosch, the University of Tasmania and Curtin University.

There are three things I’d like to highlight with the launch of the Knowledge Economy Institute. First, the emergence of Big Data as a way of creating value out of nothing at all. Next, how the Knowledge Economy Institute can help build on the strengths of the Australian economy by applying Big Data technologies to traditional industries. Finally, I’d like to look at how the Knowledge Economy Institute is seizing the opportunities of the future as Australia faces a globally competitive marketplace.

Everybody’s talking about big data and the internet of things.

But of course 15 years ago everybody was talking about the Y2K bug and that turned out to be a fizzer.  I always thought it was a danger sign when big law firms were setting up Y2K bug practice groups.

Recently when I spoke at the launch of RoZetta Technology I argued that the lyrics of the 1983 Air Supply song ‘Making love out of nothing at all’ pointed us to the principle of ‘making value out of nothing at all’, and this was what big data allowed us to achieve.

Idly googling this morning to see if there were other insightful lyrics to be found in the annals of pop music which might cast light on the question of big data, I found a song I must confess I have never previously heard of, “The Knowledge” by Janet Jackson in which she warbles “Insight to what’s going on, Information keeps us strong,” which seems equally fitting for tonight’s event.

Now the concept of big data is easy enough for even lawyers like me to understand – but the execution is a whole lot trickier – and there are lots of issues to work through.

For example, who owns the data – and has the right to deal with it?

How do we bring together the wide range of parties with a stake or interest in the data? There are the competing interests of the holders or owners of data, the potential users of the data, and those who stand to save money or otherwise benefit from the use of the data.

There is also the sheer technical challenge of having the scale and computing power to store and analyse the vast quantities of data involved.

Now in addressing all of these challenges the KEI is here to help – drawing on the experience of their constituent organisations such as Sirca.

Take the project that I am incapable of giving a speech without mentioning, Sense-T in Tasmania and the sensors which monitor the heartbeat of oysters.

That project integrates data from existing sources, owned for example by the Tasmania Government and its agencies – as well as data generated by sensors established for the project. So these stakeholders needed to be coordinated to make the project viable.

But before this project could be viable it was necessary to convince farmers and viticulturalists and aquaculturalists on the benefits to them of having this data.

There was the job of working out how to gather, store and analyse the data.

And then the job of producing outputs that people running a farming business could use, to help them get better yields or make more cost effective use of pesticides or fertilizers or otherwise improve their economics and productivity.

It seems to me that the challenge of selling end users on the benefits is becoming easier as more and more people are telling the big data story – in its many manifestations.

The industry body Communications Alliance has just announced its ‘internet of things’ think tank to look at, amongst other things, ‘access to big data analytics capability’.

The Australian Farm Institute has come out with a report highlighting that big data can have a revolutionary impact on agriculture, in a special issue of Farm Policy Journal.  The issue includes case studies of how big data is being used, in precision dairy farming in New Zealand and using genomics and digital data in the sheep industry.

Last year well known consulting firm Lateral Economics prepared a report entitled ‘Open for Business: How Open Data can help achieve the G20 growth target’. I hasten to add there is quite a nexus because if big data sets held by government are made open they are much more likely to be exploited.

What impresses me about the strategy underpinning the Knowledge  Economy Institute is that it involves building on existing strengths – in at least three ways.

First, it uses the strengths of partners. The Knowledge Economy Institute draws on a range of partners including 40 universities, plus commercial organisations such as RoZetta, Bosch and Cisco.  It is a business model which is highly appropriate for the internet age – it is networked and distributed.

A second way that the KEI builds on existing strengths is by building on the impressive track record which SIRCA, and its commercial spin-off RoZetta, have established in in big data.

Thirdly, the strategy involves a clear focus on sectors where Australia already has strengths.

It makes sense to focus our big data efforts on sectors where we are world class, such as advanced manufacturing, food and agribusiness, medical technologies and pharmaceuticals, gas and energy, and mining equipment, technology and services.

The Knowledge Economy Institute is an Australian venture looking to seize the opportunities of the future.

In a globally connected world, to succeed as a digitally based business you need to be world competitive.

If you are, the opportunity is there to win global market share.

If you are not, then it is incredibly easy for customers in Australia to simply go to the best supplier in the category anywhere in the world.

The Sirca story to date is a good example of this – the organisation started in 1997, and they now sell data to 600 global financial clients and collect data from every stock exchange in the world.

Many tech industry leaders make this point.  For example Atlassian co-founder and CEO Scott Farquhar gave the JJC Bradfield lecture last year at my request and underlined how Atlassian set out to be global from the outset.

It’s very exciting to see the ambition of the Knowledge Economy Institute – and the way that the existing capabilities of Sirca and RoZetta are being leveraged to make them available to academics and industry across multiple sectors.

This is the future of the Australian economy – using world leading information technology to leverage off our existing strengths and build strong positions in the future.

To conclude, I’m very excited to be here for the launch of the Knowledge Economy Institute.

I’d like to congratulate Sirca and its forty university partners, as well as Bosch, Cisco and RoZetta together with Curtin and the University of Tasmania in having the drive and vision to bring this important organization into being.

As I discovered entering the Parliament five years ago, you get a magic power – to declare things open – and I am very pleased to exercise that power today in officially declaring the Knowledge Economy Institute open.