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Foresight
DCITA's foresight capability takes a longer-term perspective to identify and explore the major trends and discontinuities that will have impact on Australia's future information economy performance.
Overview
The 
Australian Foresight Institute defines strategic foresight as the ability to create and maintain viable forward views and to use the insights arising in organisationally useful ways. The plan of action in Australia's Strategic Framework is relatively short-term in its outlook to provide the direction for policy and program efforts. DCITA's foresight capability takes a longer-term perspective to identify and explore the major trends and discontinuities that will have impact on Australia's future information economy performance.
Projects
Convergence
The traditional barriers between industry sectors such as film, music, publishing, broadcast television and radio, telecommunications, computing, and services industries such as education and health are being eroded or restructured, and new industry boundaries are emerging. DCITA staff (previously operating as the National Office for the Information Economy) undertook a major review of convergence in 2000 and DCITA continues to have a watching brief for Government in this area.
New Technologies
New technologies that impact upon the information economy are emerging nearly every day. The future technology space includes nanotechnology, photonics, neural networks and peer networks. Moore's Law (that processing power doubles every 18 months), Metcalfe's Law (that the usefulness of a network equals the square of the number of users) and Gilder's Law (that the total bandwidth of communications triples each year) suggest that ICT will continue to become more powerful and pervasive. As part of its foresight work, NOIE conducts analyses of future technology trends that will impact on the information economy and we plan to some of these analyses on this site in the near future.
ICT Framework for the Future
During 2002, a project was undertaken to analyse and scope the future development of Australia's ICT sector over a five to ten year timeframe. Two concurrent exercises were conducted; a mapping exercise to ascertain where Australia's ICT sector currently stands in the fast-moving global marketplace and a foresighting exercise to seek to identify the major drivers of technologically driven economic development globally and the underpinning likely success factors over the next decade. The Government's Framework for the Future Steering Committee released the report 
Enabling Our Future (File size: 343Kb) in April 2003.
Related links
- Australian Foresight Institute
- Australian Public Service Commission Futures Forum
- Australian Communications Authority Futures Panel
Contact details
Manager
Forward Strategy Section
Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts
Ph. [+61] 03 9667 8003.
Fax: [+61] 03 9667 8004