Opinion: Forget making a quantum leap, just give us our digital licences

When it comes to new technologies, the Queensland Government loves to make grand pledges. How about we just get the basics right first, writes Dan Petrie.

Queensland will be a technology powerhouse is a declaration that sits alongside the very fast train, a relocated navy to Townsville and a million new homes by 2030 as a theme that rolls around every six months, particularly when there is a good news story attached.

If only the state government could adopt that same theme of excellence with respect to its own antiquated technology, that would arguably be a much better news story.

Digital drivers’ licences, paying for public transport on a phone and not having to attend government customer service agencies to provide a paper form are still in the testing phase and when compared to NSW, the questions as to why it can’t be done in lock-step with other states remains unanswered.

This year, outgoing NSW customer service and digital government minister Victor Dominello was quoted in this column about the critical need to embrace technology.

“Since 2019, 85 per cent of transactions regularly accessed by customers have been transitioned to an online experience, including licence and registration renewals, trade licence verifications, change of address and registering a birth,” he said.

NSW, like countries all around the world, has had digital licences in place for several years now, with the state’s technology-first culture a boost for its investment attractiveness for industry and tertiary sectors alike.

Queensland auditor general Brendan Worrell in his 2022 annual report said the state is not deploying its technology assets well, and will spend more than $52.2bn on its own infrastructure over the next four years.

A digital license trial is being rolled out in Townsville, but the rest of the state is still waiting. Picture: Supplied.

Last week, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk made a worthy announcement of $76m to provide schoolchildren with Quantum technology skills. Quantum technology is the understanding of quantum mechanics (physics of subatomic particles) that have enabled technologies such as MRI machines and semiconductor chips.

Queensland’s tertiary sector within the national framework around this sector already does great work but how will quantum technology be taught? And how much of this investment in “tech” will yield an outcome?

Research can stretch into multi-decade efforts where the outcomes can be mixed and the technology ever changing.

Writing a syllabus that caters for teaching this technology is also challenging. For the record, online provider Udemy has a Quantum Computing and Intro to Quantum Machine Learning for $45.

The truth of the matter is that most school age children are not interested in Quantum computing, and improving education outcomes across the state remains a very difficult proposition when much of the technology our school age children are familiar with are videos on phone.

The Premier’s ambition along with the minister Leanne Enoch around this more advanced form of technology is noble but when the state can’t even deliver digital technologies well, understanding who works where may illustrate some of the challenge.

Technology as an employer in Queensland employs fewer people now than it did in 1999 (25,777 are classified as IT workers under the ABS category, RQ1 in the detailed Labour force data) while the category “professional, scientific and technical” at 220,000, a doubling of the workforce of the same period, is bracketed under an incredibly broad set of job descriptions.

In terms of developing the technology economy that dots so many of the government’s press releases it instructive to know the Palaszczuk government’s Advance Queensland program has showered $750m on researchers and early-stage start-ups where an audit of its success and indeed failures remain unknown.

Many of the declarations around job creation are spurious to say the least, and while grants are intended to help establish businesses the idea governments would back winners in technology at the expense of more successful sectors is a question the government has to answer.

While a quantum leap into the future is wonderful to surmise, the question of what we can do in the here and now is probably more pertinent.

The answer of how effective the current strategy around Advance Queensland is would also be helpful!