 Good evening government officials, distinguished guests, members of industry, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Cody Adam, and it is my pleasure to welcome you to this installment of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's New Colombo Plan Momentum Series presented by Telstra and Infosys tonight, focusing on digital inclusion within Australia and across the Indo-Pacific region. This event is taking place on Gadigal land of the Eora Nation and I'd like to pay my respects to the elders of this land, past, present and still to come and acknowledge their continual connection and contribution to land, water and culture today. I'd like to extend this welcome to any First Nations people in attendance this evening at the beautiful Telstra Customer Insights Center or online via our live stream. By way of introduction, I was fortunate enough to be a 2019 New Colombo Plan Mobility Grant recipient for Indonesia. I travelled to Jakarta while I was completing a Bachelor of Accounting in the Co-op Scholarship Program at the University of Technology in Sydney. I'm now in the final semester of a Master of Business Administration in Entrepreneurship also at UTS and the co-founder of SNAC which is a mobile first app that enables educators to create bite-sized videos in a format that uses 98% less data than conventional video. It's an honor to welcome and introduce our distinguished guests and panellists this evening. Lindell Stoiles is Telstra's group general counsel and group executive for sustainability, external affairs and legal. Lindell has a passion for breaking down barriers and prejudices, creating opportunities for inclusion and building diverse teams which has led to her involvement in organizations supporting the indigenous community and asylum seekers. Andrew Grof is the senior vice president, region head of Australia and New Zealand and industry head for financial services in the Asia-Pacific region at Infosys. Andrew is a visionary and authentic leader who is passionate about encouraging Australia's youth to build digital careers and develop their STEM skills. He also chairs the Infosys CSR program in Australia and New Zealand called Pathways. Bruce McGuire who is joining us online today is the lead policy advisor for Vision Australia and plays a key role in the development of the organization's public policy positions on issues that affect people who are blind or have low vision. Bruce continues to play a key advisory role and works with government, industry and the broader disability sector on topics such as access to information, access to the built environment and access to new and emerging technologies. I would now like to invite Michael Bergman, the director of the New Colombo Plan from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to share his introductory remarks and open the session for us tonight. Thank you Michael. Okay, thanks Cody. Hi, evening everyone. Thanks Cody. I'd also like to acknowledge the Gadigal of the Eora Nation, the traditional custodians of the land and pay my respects to their elders both past and present. As Cody said, my name is Michael Bergman. I'm the director of the New Colombo Plan, a fantastic Australian government initiative which I hope you all know that already and a warm welcome to our NCP community here around the country across the Indo-Pacific including our NCP business champions, NGOs, business and academic partners and of course alumni and current scholars. Having been part of the NCP team for a number of years now, I've had the privilege of working with many NCP supporters who have worked tirelessly supporting and promoting the NCP program as well as mentoring, nurturing and very importantly employing our NCP scholars and alumni. And the NCP is all about connecting a new generation of Australians with the Indo-Pacific. We normally do this by sending scholars out to the region for long term immersive experiences and supporting Australian universities to deliver shorter term targeted mobility programs. And we have a vibrant alumni community and again great to see some of you here with us today. Inclusion has been a central part of the NCP from the beginning. The NCP is for all young Australian undergraduates and we work hard to support access to the program from students from regional remote communities, low socioeconomic backgrounds, students with disability just to name a few. But of course we haven't been sending too many students out to the region lately which is where Momentum comes in. And the success of Momentum in 2020 at the height of the COVID crisis is down to that invaluable contribution from the business community and academic partners and thought leaders who willingly share their knowledge, their expertise and their time to support the NCP community and to support the objectives of DFAT and the Australian government. So again thank you all for your support. And the contributions of Infosys and Telstra clearly demonstrate the value of collaboration between government, NCP and our business partners. So again thank you to Lindell and the Telstra team for your support now and of course in 2020. And Lindell your contributions at the Beyond the Glass ceiling panel discussion while we need more women leaders is a session that's still talked about. We've still got lots of interest in that and whether we're going to do something very similar soon. Thank you Andrew and all of the Infosys team for sponsoring 10 2021 scholars for the NCP, the NCP Momentum series itself and for investing valuable intellectual capital in supporting the NCP program. And I'd also like to acknowledge the contribution of Bruce McGuire from Vision Australia and it'll be great to hear about Bruce's rich, diverse and fascinating experiences given his expertise on topics relating to access to information, access to the built environment and access to new and emerging technologies. And once again thanks to Cody, co-founder of SNAC, NCP alumni for sharing today's session and Cody's own NCP journey experiences and entrepreneurial success is itself a fascinating story. Very quickly before we dive in and hear from our speakers I just want to share one very quick personal perspective on the issues of inclusion, access and adoption. Prior to working for foreign affairs and trade in my early career I worked for the Australian Electoral Commission and as Australians would know federal elections can be called at any time. They're delivered across all of Australia, our external territories and then working with my foreign affairs colleagues open to all Australians in all corners of the world. And they're compulsory. My American friends couldn't believe that us rugged, individualistic Aussies would in their view meekly bow our heads and be forced to go to the polls. I'd explain that inclusion plays a massive part. The government and the AEC work very hard to make the process as inclusive as possible but recognise that many parts of the community will still face challenges in participating. Australians are generally okay with doing their bit, even being compelled to. As long as it's simple, easy to access, easy to understand and preferably a sausage is involved somewhere. But I won't go into the issues of digital inclusion online voting, other digital electoral services. Guaranteed our expert speakers here today will be far more interesting but as a semi-reformed election I'd be very happy to talk at length about networking later. So without further ado I would love to welcome you all to our third NCP Momentum session for this series which promises to be another very exciting discussion. Thank you again and over to you, Cody. Thank you. Thanks, Michael. Awesome. So to set some context for our topic this evening, I'd like to begin with a quote from Sir Timothy John Burners-Lee who is the computer scientist best known as the inventor of the World Wide Web. As we move toward a highly connected world it is critical that the web be usable by everyone regardless of individual capabilities and disabilities. The recent COVID challenges combined with the rapid pace of globalization and technological advancements many would argue now is the time to reimagine our future where together we, governments, academia, the private and NGO and small business sectors must mobilize our collective resources, intellectual capital, and look outside our industry silos to create opportunities for one and all in our communities irrespective of their abilities. We are fortunate tonight to have a panel of truth thought leaders in the digital inclusion space sharing their valuable insights and experiences with us. There will be opportunity for questions following this discussion and to begin, I'd like to ask you, Lindell, if you would share your perspective on why it's important for corporates to focus on digital inclusion and how do corporates contribute to the creation of and then leverage Indo-Pacific ecosystem to improve digital inclusion as a whole. Thanks, Cody. I think if I start from the perspective of what corporates get out of digital inclusion and I think it's pretty clear that corporates get a lot so whether that's a reduction in costs or an increase in efficiencies or a whole in our case a revenue stream and because we benefit so much from digital inclusion I think that means that we should also think about the impacts and the harm that we can cause if we don't include everyone and that's particularly relevant at Telstra where our purpose is to build a connected future for everyone to thrive and that's everyone it's not just the minority I'm sorry majority it's not just people who live in urban areas or people with particular skills it's a purpose of trying to drive that connection so that everyone can thrive. And if we look sort of outside or we look at our Australian experience and look outside you can see that there are really particular challenges that our region experiences so both within it there's a disparity of wealth within our country and there's a disparity of wealth and opportunities across our region and that is made work that's been made worse by you know factors like climate change where you know a lot of countries in our region are feeling that full force and impact of climate change that is exacerbating this disparity between wealth and inclusion in our region and then you've got sort of natural geographic issues of topography and things like that so whether you're looking at the highlands of New Guinea or the underpopulated areas of Australia there's particular challenges there for digital inclusion and we're confronted with them every day. So what does that all mean? I think it means that we all have a role to play. Corporates absolutely have a role to play but we can't actually do it on our own we don't actually have all of the research all of the information to do it on our own but there are things that we do do and I think our region presents well it's got those challenges it presents real opportunities those challenges actually present really novel opportunities for us to explore solutions and I'll give you just a few examples before I get cut off. So one of them is Telstra funded many years ago in 2016 the cerebral palsy alliance started up in a remarkable accelerator program which was specifically designed to get the seed funding and the skills and tools that Telstra and others contributed to fund digital startups that focused on particular issues of disability so specifically focused on how you could tackle some of those issues and provide better inclusion and now we look at it they've funded more than 30 digital disability startups in a very broad range of fields. Another example within Telstra is our helix community so this is an internal community that was set up by our people who love data and analytics and all of that sort of stuff and there's an 800 people who are members of helix and they got together to actually basically the primary purpose was to improve data literacy across Telstra and digital data literacy in particular. What they then realized was that there was this huge pool of talent and knowledge and so they created this virtual volunteering program where they go into not-for-profits and they help the not-for-profits with their particular data issues and those virtual teams are made up of people from Australia, India and Philippines all of the key jurisdictions in which we operate. If Andrew you could share your perspective on where we should focus our efforts to improve digital inclusion within Australia and then contribute to a broader Indo-Pacific ecosystem. Okay thanks Cody and look I'll talk about Australia first and I just think a little bit of context. The Australian government has put forward a vision that says we want to be a leading digital economy in Australia by 2030 and in fact I've had the great pleasure of working on a digital and telecommunications committee which is chaired by Andy Penn looking at that and so you know that aspiration is important and if you want to be a digital leading economy it's clearly got to have all aspects of inclusion to do that. It's a lofty aspiration but I know there's a lot of focus from Telstra and Infosys and many other organizations working with the government to try and get there and I think there's three key areas is digital literacy, digital skills and digital access and I just touch a little bit on the first two of those around literacy and skills. You know I'm sitting here with some fine young Australians that are part of this NCP program but you know and I'm sure it's actually not a representation of the whole of society but at Infosys a couple of years ago we did a survey it was particularly done at youth 18 to 25 year olds it was done all around the globe it was done in Australia, Germany, France, UK, US, India, China and looking at the engagement with digital technologies and one of the findings of that was that in Australia our youth 18 to 25 year olds were actually among the most digitally aware across the globe in terms of using digital technology there's a but however they were the least interested in actually getting behind the scenes and working in in digital technology so it actually leads me to there's a point we need to do here about cultural shift and you know the opportunities that digital brings and the opportunities it means for inclusion you know if you want to again if you want to be a leading digital economy we have to address that that culture and there are amazing opportunities and careers that are enabled by digital technology and I know I don't need to tell the people sitting in this room but as a country that's something we have to work on and I think you know again reflecting on COVID and you know as already talked about some of the impacts and we are in a very fortunate situation here but if you look at those businesses that had digital capabilities and how they survived and actually thrived during the COVID crisis there's been some research done that those companies that had good digital platforms actually grew their revenues by six percent plus in a year when many, many were struggling to survive and I know from customers we've worked with all around the Asia PAC region they've said to us had we not done the sort of digital transformations we'd done over previous years we would not have been able to survive that COVID environment so it's such an important thing and I think you know in Australia we were you know we're physically in Ireland here and that was part of what has been able to manage and help us be in the environment. When you come to being a digital economy and a leading digital economy you can't be a digital island so that inclusion has to be there and your point about working across the Indo-Pacific is really important so and I think you know organisations like Telstra and Infosys are making a big difference can make a big difference and we have to work with government and we have to work with academia to make that happen and that's what the NCP is all about which is such a fantastic program. I'll give a couple of examples from Infosys as well I mean we're working with the Welder Economic Forum one of our global ESG goals is to help ensure that 10 million people globally are able to learn digital skills that wouldn't have otherwise been able to and in 2019 in India we had over 15,000 individuals who benefited from the Infosys Foundation program to learn digital skills so that inclusivity is important and and bringing it right back here to Australia I think there's a video note note it's going to be played later but we have this this program you mentioned in the introduction Cody called the CSR Pathways Program and it's all about using digital technology using education learning to create those pathways for all the society and it's particularly focused on the disadvantaged groups in society and building that inclusion well thank you thank you thank you that's that's awesome uh the next question is for Bruce who is online um Bruce can you hear us I can yes can you hear me Cody yes that's great thank you so Linda and Andrew have shared a private sector's perspective being lead policy advisor at Vision Australia your views on private sectors contributions and government's role what are your views on the private sectors contributions and the government's role in improving digital inclusion as a whole well thanks Cody and as you mentioned I'm lead policy advisor with Vision Australia Vision Australia is the largest provider of services to people who are blind or have low vision we we provide services each year to more than 26 and a half thousand clients in Australia today there are 384,000 people poor blind or have no vision and that's estimated to increase to 564,000 by 2030 and the main reason that that's that that's increasing so rapidly is because we have an aging population and uh blindness and vision loss are primarily associated with uh age as is disability in general and when we look at the the statistics for disability in general we find that that uh almost 18 percent of the Australian population has a disability that's almost the equivalent of the entire population in New Zealand and getting pretty close to the populations of Sydney and Melbourne now if if people with disability are excluded from the digital landscape then it's a bit like rolling out our national broadband network forgetting about Melbourne or only including a few suburbs uh in Sydney so people with disability are not on the fringes and they're not floating in a backwater and they're not in a bubble we're at the heart of society and and and human experience now government can play a very pivotal role by creating and maintaining a digitally inclusive landscape one important way they can do that is by having accessible ICT procurement policies that are based on national and international standards products and services that are purchased by governments can drive innovation and change in the private sector and an experience in other countries particularly the the US and and Europe shows that if governments mandate accessibility in in their contracts and in their their tender documents then over time more digital accessibility finds its way into the private sector but the but governments alone can't achieve digital inclusion and and uh there are contributions being made by the private sector especially when it works in partnership with people with disabilities to co-design products and services or develop disability inclusion action plans we find that there's an increasing number of national and multinationals that are investing significant resources in in benchmarking their products against accessibility standards such as the the web content accessibility guidelines which Tim Berners-Lee sort of sort of spearheaded back in the back in the late 90s and and in fact that they're making important contributions to the development of those standards because they recognize that digital inclusion benefits all of us and excluding some sections of the community will ultimately have a negative impact on all of us thanks Katie. That's awesome thanks Bruce just staying with you as the lead policy advisor at Vision Australia what are your views on the state of digital access in Australia today and where is Australia in this journey and what is the role of the private sector and government to truly improve digital inclusion? Well there's there's many things that that I and other people who are blind have vision can do now that we couldn't do when I was younger so for example I can browse virtual supermarket aisles and I can order groceries online I can buy and read more digital books than I could ever have imagined when I was you know when I was a kid I can do my own banking online now I can read newspapers online and when I was when I was young people had to read them to me but I can't check my eligibility for the COVID-19 vaccine and find the nearest clinic because that particular web-based tool doesn't comply with the accessibility guidelines when I use an iPhone out to buy groceries from one of our biggest supermarket chains I can't pay by credit card because last year in the middle of the COVID pandemic when people with disability felt most vulnerable and excluded that particular supermarket chain made a change to their iPhone app which made the credit card payment process completely inaccessible for those of us who use the the voice-over screen reader which is which is in every iPhone off the shelf and they they still haven't fixed it and in fact whenever I and other people who are blind or have no vision visit a new website or download a new app whether it's from government or the private sector we can never be sure if it's going to be accessible to us sometimes we have to use five different web browsers and four different screen reading programs to find a combination that gives us access to the features we want to use on the website or in the app and sometimes there isn't any combination that works so I think of the digital inclusion journey as a mountain range and we've definitely climbed some of the mountains and we've stood on their summits and we've remembered where we've been and we've we're proud of what we've achieved but the highest mountains and the fastest flying rivers in between them are still ahead of us if we're to climb those mountains and cross the rivers and forward the streams then we must have a whole of society and a whole of life commitment to putting disability at the front and center of everything that we do in the digital space governments must lead the way with robust accessible ICT procurement policies and other mechanisms for making sure that all government digital products and services are accessible including vaccine eligibility checkers and the private sector has a generational responsibility to use its knowledge and skills and resources to remove the digital inclusion barriers that they have you know helped to to create and to make sure that their websites and apps and digital products and services are accessible so that the digital space becomes barrier-free and fully inclusive the digital inclusion for people with disabilities is achievable we've got the technology we've got the knowledge we've got the skill and together we've got the resources the barriers that get in the way are all created by people and they can only be eliminated by people who always say no to exclusion and and yes to inclusion we're all people regardless of which sector we are operating and so we can all be part of the solution the digital landscape is ours and it will be as inclusive as we want it to be thanks Katie well thank you Bruce such a powerful message and an awesome call to action for us in the room I think it's certainly an area which I don't have much awareness in and I think yeah it's definitely a huge area to bring the conversation back in the room I'd love both Lindell and Andrew for you to share your perspective and reflecting on Bruce's comments share the role of the private sector to create an environment that supports people with a disability in Australia and potentially contribute to build a more equitable Indo-Pacific can you also comment on the role of the government and academia as well as the private sector on this issue yeah Andrew yeah okay sure so and thank you Bruce that was incredible and yeah Bruce talked there about the statistic 18 percent of the population so you think about that yeah just about one in five people in Australia have some form of disability the other interesting stat that I've seen is if you look at the employment situation of the working age population those who have a disability are twice as likely to be unemployed as those who don't have a disability so it is a big challenge I agree with Bruce we've climbed the first mountain but we've got plenty of mountains to go and there's plenty of challenge and plenty of learning but I think there's also a significant opportunity there as well you know and and to your point it actually has to be collaborative across business academia across government and actually I think there's also a role for the not for profits and I'll explain some examples about that that that emphasis is working on and when I when I talk about there being an opportunity there's a real win-win here there's an opportunity to create income you know through employment opportunities to create fulfillment to create purpose and to tap into the skills shortage you know I talked a little bit about the emphasis survey looking at in my industry in the IT industry we have a huge shortage of talent in Australia and there's a huge shortage in most western countries around the world of talent in the IT industry it's not the only industries there's a lot of industries in Australia that have a shortage of talent and they're particularly suffering from it right now because of the COVID situation we don't have the mobility of moving people around the planet like we ordinarily did and there are some things despite the digital technologies we've got you need certain skills in certain places so there's an opportunity to create fulfilling employment opportunities provided we have the right digital accessibility provided we have the right opportunities of inclusion and there's an opportunity to solve talent shortages that we need in areas that are important for for the economy as a whole so that's why I say it's a real win-win and it's a journey of learning you know certainly when when I look at this from an emphasis perspective we're learning and we're lucky that we've had we have some great partners we're working with an organization called A&D a fantastic organization it's the Australian network on disability and you know they've helped us in a couple of areas one has been first of all around workplace accessibility so having whether it's the physical environment whether it's the digital environment having that right accessibility in place and the second is and you know Telstra and Infosys as far as I know there's 11 companies in Australia that have been credited as a disability confident recruiters so that whole process of how do you create those opportunities for disability is important and a good example we've done we have employed a number of high-end autism spectrum candidates who are the most outstanding young men and women who are working at our customers in really important roles they bring fantastic skills but if you if you looked at that group and you went through a traditional recruiting process there's no way they could it doesn't work it doesn't work so you have to adapt that you have to have different ways of assessing skills and fit and what's suitability but then the skills that that these young adults have bought have been absolutely fantastic working in our quality engineering in our test testing areas so that's the that's the opportunity to me is yes challenges learning to go but there's a big win in opportunity and it's interesting you say there's almost this mark that you put the accreditation that your organization to be a leader in industry and I think that's something that all organizations should look to to become accredited that they are they provide opportunities in a fair way and that's that's admirable yeah yeah and I think and you know it yes it's great to have the accreditation but actually what it is it's that learning journey yeah how do you take the journey to get from the first mountain that Bruce spoke how do we go from Kosiosko to Everest yeah it's a learning journey thank you awesome Lindell would you like to expand yeah sure thank you and I'm still stuck on Bruce's analogy as well of the mountain and the river it says so much and when I think about it from Telstra's perspective we're seeing absolutely enormous growth in digitization across the economy and that is just absolutely only going to accelerate even more but we are seeing as the other speakers have mentioned as well sort of pockets of Australia and the region that are just not excluded and that's that's actually not getting better it's getting worse and one of the things that we have done is because there are so many things out there what we wanted to do was to get really good data really good research into how we could actually make the great have the greatest impact and many years ago we started funding some research that's produced by RMIT and Swinburne universities they produced this report each year the annual digital inclusion index and what it does it's slightly different to the metrics that you mentioned Andrew but we assess digital inclusion on the basis of access so digital access digital affordability but also digital ability and that is that actually having both the physical ability that Bruce mentioned but also the literacy I guess if you like I think it picks up your literacy point and it looks at digital inclusion across those three dimensions and the last report which was produced in October last year presents really quite stark findings for Australia it is Australian data at the moment that provides an opportunity in itself but if you take some of the stats 2.5 million Australians are not digitally connected so that's one in 10 Australians if you look at cohorts of kids out of low really low income homes 800,000 secondary school students are not digitally included and that can be one of those three reasons either they can't their families can't afford it they don't have access because they live in areas that are either remote and not connected or they can't afford to be connected or they don't have the ability to actually use the connections that they could otherwise get that's an extraordinary number of students really when you think about it the other group and there has been some slight improvement in this group thankfully but the other group as of October last year was the over 65 year olds who were the least digitally included group in Australia and that presented some real challenges for them when we saw a lot of Australia going to you know isolated living conditions and you had you know a significant number of them it was actually one in five of them that weren't digitally connected so what we've done is we take that research and we try and design some projects around that once again these projects at the moment are only Australian based but I think there's an opportunity there and to give you a flavour of some of the projects we've got access for everyone which is a project that supports people suffering financial hardship we have a program called safe connections which supports women and children who are experiencing family and domestic violence and that's including by giving them phones that the people the offenders can't actually access we have some programs for focused on digital literacy so there's the tech savvy seniors get one guess who that's focused on and then also the deadly digital communities and so this is some work that we do in in digital in indigenous communities and the name was name came came out of some of these projects that we've done in Queensland and the Northern Territory finally we've also got a foundation and the foundation our Telstra Foundation is separate to Telstra and it runs a broad range of projects but what its its purpose really is to drive social change through technology and so there's a broad range of projects that they support I think that sort of should give you a flavour of the type of things that's all local like it's local data local local experiences but I think I get quite excited about the opportunity to take some of the experiences that we see in our in the Indo-Pacific region and see if we can do something there and if you look at a disability like unaddressed hearing loss the World Health Organization has estimated that unaddressed hearing loss costs the world in economic terms almost a billion dollars a year and that's not even taking into account the impacts like the social and productivity impacts and general happiness impacts of the people that affected by unaddressed hearing loss and the one of the programs that was one of the digital startups that I mentioned from that remarkable accelerator program was specifically designed to pick up unaddressed hearing loss in school children with their SoundScout Scouts app and so these people got together and developed an games-based app that it can be used for children to identify whether or not they have any hearing loss that's been so successful it's now offered free by the Australian government to all school children and it's funded not by us any longer it's funded funded through philanthropic and government means so it's been an extraordinary success. I think just to sort of go back to the question rather than my examples but when I sort of sit back and think about it I think how can we actually do something so what's my when I think about what's my call to action and I think about what it is we actually need to have a greater impact on our in our region and I think we need we need the research so we need the research to sort of tell us where we can best have an impact I think we need innovations to take that research and turn it into really useful products programs services and the like we need the skills and that's where the STEM becomes critical and we're absolutely experiencing the same sort of thing where we're suffering from a lack of lack of skills in the area and the universities are really struggling to keep up and we need capital and when I look at those four things I think the Indo-Pacific region is full of all of them so we've got some of the best academic research in the world we've got great innovators that can come up you've heard some examples of products and services today but there's great innovators that can come up with really good things we've got the universities that can provide the skills and the training and we've got the capital but I think what we're missing is that ecosystem and an ecosystem that includes corporates governments academia and right across our region and that's where I see the NCP has and scholars have really such an important part you've had you know the breadth of experience the connections and that really broad perspective that I think will be really useful to bring this all together and create that ecosystem thank you yeah it's it's so it's great to hear such a strong commitment from leaders in the industry and as a young person it's just I love the the statistics and one thing that I've come across in my work with snack is a UNICEF statistic that's two-thirds of the world's school age population still have limited access to internet and when you put it on on that stage it really I think in Australia specifically in Sydney we we do take some of this digital experience for granted and so thank you I think that concludes our panel discussion for this evening however now would be a great opportunity to turn to the audience in the room and online for any questions for our panel so we have some microphones roving if you could just raise your hand if you have any questions or contributions or comments and also we if you're watching online on the live stream drop a comment and and we'll be able to answer your questions as they come through hi thank you for the great panel discussion my name is Johnny and my question revolves around how we can create I guess grassroots change alongside institutional change so we've heard from Telstra and Infosys about the various things that we do on the institutional level so where we do have access to that amazing research the resources that go into this sort of thing looking at all the people in the room today as well I'm sure there's a lot of people out there that might not necessarily come through institutional channels but would also like to contribute towards digital inclusion what are some I guess of your call to actions for them what can they be doing to be part of this movement um thanks for the question Johnny I think one of the one of the things about grassroots and you're right you know some some of this can come through large institutions some people don't work with large institutions or they're not involved and I mentioned before that to me it's it's there's business government academia but also the not for profits as well and I think something that you know has always been a grassroots of what we do in an institution has been the aspect of volunteering and I think that can be done through some of the not-for-profit organizations sort of grassroots level and I think one of the greatest things and you know some of our got a number of interest people sitting in the room here who've been involved in it is mentoring and you know you've all had a tremendous experience over the last couple of years to find that situation where maybe you can go and help someone who's you know a disadvantage got less opportunities in that and to help mentor them along the way and just share your experiences and help them think it through I think that's one way of you know sort of grassroots um help that can be done and the other is the thing about inclusion and the the comments I made before about culture it's a mindset and it's a mindset um that we need to grow in our society to for people to understand you know yes there's some challenges but there's a big opportunity as as Bruce said people are people you know regardless of what they've got so I think you can you can help with the mindset and the culture shift you can help with with volunteering and and potentially help with mentoring and that can be from anywhere you don't need to be part of a big institution to do any of that I might just check Bruce did you have any comments on that particular question yeah look I I think that that's that's that's that's right but I think one of the one of the um really great things about the kind of technology that's that's coming through now and in fact that we have now is that uh anyone can try it so if you have an iPhone if you have an Android phone you can experience what it's like to use the voiceover screen reader or what it's like to use the the you know the screen magnification um sort of software in the in the phone because because there is a you know screen reader voice over screen reader in every iPhone that you buy sort of off the shelf so the more people that the more people that try those things just to get it just to get a feel for you know for what it's like then the more likely it is that when you know when they develop apps when they develop websites they'll be thinking about well how how someone who's using this voiceover screen reader going to access going to access um you know my you know my website or my or my app I think the other the other thing is to to have that inclusive inclusion you know mindset inclusive design um any any products and services that you're involved with designing ask about inclusion give some thought to how how are the diverse range of people that that that make up our our society going to you know going to use those things whether it's a whether it's an app whether it's a website or whether it's a you know whether it's a product the organizations that you you you work in certainly inclusion inclusion has to be you know embedded into the you know into the corporate culture and that can be done from you know from the top down but it can also happen from you know from the bottom up so I think for me the the the key thing is to start thinking inclusively and and apply that thinking for everything you do I think Johnny the only thing I'd add and it picks up on something that Bruce just mentioned um slightly different language but I'd also give us a nudge I'd keep giving us a nudge I think corporates and governments for that matter um are surprisingly conscious of what the community thinks and says so I wouldn't give give up on giving us a nudge in the right direction with your great ideas thank you are there any other questions from the audience uh hi my name is Morgan I'm a current ncp scholar for this year and um I guess something that I was really interested in was I think the biggest issue with bridging digital disparities is the pace in which technology advances so what I found I work in like an IT support role to consumers and it's mostly the older generations that call up for assistance you know very basic things but what I often find is that they once they've gotten knowledge about something that knowledge is suddenly eclipsed by something new that's come on the horizon or that's currently in practice so I'm just curious to think to hear what your thoughts would be on that matter to try and kind of bridge that gap in knowledge sure there you go Morgan thank you um and look I recognize the point you pick up on it's a good one I think you you talked before about the over 65 age group and you're right you just get to learn how to use something and then a new version comes out and you're completely lost um and yeah actually you know the comment I was I was making before about mentoring I was more thinking about that but um actually helping some of the over 65s and group with that is something that that we can all do but this thing about technology constantly involving it it it's very real and everyone um all of us I mean even at emphasis one of the things we're doing with our technologies is constantly relearning and reskilling um I talked before a little bit about our program called pathways and actually what it's doing is using technology and a heritage of learning capabilities to help create small bite-sized and you talked before about bite-sized education opportunities for people to learn so we're using that to reskill our organization because technology changes we're working with a lot of our customers to help those customer organizations reskill but that's also part of that that CSR program and that initiative to help others is to relearn education um now that's for the more we have digital skills and a digital culture and you know getting as I said before getting behind the scenes of technology as a society the more that problem will start to be dealt with but I do recognize particularly with the older generation and I think that's something you know we should we should help the older generation with it's not an easy challenge versus all of you who've grown up as digital natives Andrew just sorry just to go before we jump to whose responsibility is that to upskill is it the government is it the private sector is it the academia to reach out and and provide you know new education solutions who do you think holds responsibility for I think the answer is it's all of us and it won't you know government can't do it on its own industry can't do it on an academia can't do it I really believe it's all of us and that's why you know I talked before about the digital telecom communications committee looking at 2030 it involves people from business it involves people from government involves people from some of the universities and I think that's something we've suffered from in the past it hasn't um hasn't been connected up particularly well and we need to get better at that you know I just talked before a bit about micro learning one of one of the things is to continue involve lifelong education and there's a lot of discussion about micro credentials now that's something that everyone business government and academia has to buy into okay we're going to have micro credentials you might somewhat an emphasis might learn something about the latest version of apple or whatever it is and you've got a credential for that and then the next year you can go and be employed by Telstra and they'll recognize that credential or you can be at UTS I think you you can be UTS and you learn something there and it can be bite-sized learning so but what yeah it's everyone together that's the only way it's really really going to make a difference and get us up those big mountains thank you lindel do you have anything I'll just check in Bruce or Aron would you like to make any comment there I um I might spin off a little bit from from that and look at you know look at um technology and the and the rapid evolution of technology and how that impacts on on digital inclusion from an accessibility sort of point of view um certainly you know certainly technology is is evolving much faster than than than the standards that that uh sort of mandate accessibility when you when you talk about standards development think you know think glaciers when you talk about technological evolution think melting with the polar ice cups and and and what that means is that we can't rely simply on technical technical standards to to guarantee accessibility and that's where that's that's where it comes back to the inclusive you know to the inclusive mindset one of the biggest challenges that that those of us who are blind or have no vision face at the moment is that is is the rapid uh deployment of touchscreen based uh sort of interfaces on everything from you know from coffee machines to dishwashers to to um ICT products and and even ironically enough digital pianos and and very few of those with the exception of of of the you know some smartphones uh have accessibility built in and that's that's that's partly because there are no there are no standards for how you make um the touchscreen coffee machines accessible but it's also because there's not an inclusive mindset so the developers of the coffee machines the developers of the digital pianos are not thinking um how do I make these products accessible so that people who are blind or have no vision and indeed have other disabilities can access them so I I I think the the as technology evolves faster and faster the need for an inclusive mindset becomes more critical thank you Bruce the only thing can I just add one thing to your question about whose responsibility is it and from my perspective I think we should ask ourselves what world what sort of world do we what sort of society do we want to live in and that sort of determines whose responsibility it is and for me that that is what motivates me to do something about it great thank you um I think we have time for one more question I just have a question come through from WebEx and it's slightly more specific um how I guess it's building on the the senior citizen uh discussion and how do we ensure that we get the bite-sized learning that we've been talking about to smaller regional communities of specifically our elder citizens does anybody yeah I'll have a go I'll kick off I'll add so I think um that it's kind of um we've had a lot of success with our I mentioned the tech savvy seniors digital literacy program and the deadly did sorry deadly digital communities program I always struggle over that one it's kind of a combination of those two things right so these programs are really simple literacy programs digital literacy programs that are run out of local communities halls local libraries within schools wherever they're whatever makes sense within a community and really that's all they actually are is actually making sure that people have the ability to use all of the technology that is actually available to them part of the challenge though particularly in remote communities in Australia is that there's not always great technology available to them but I think we do we have had some success in helping people better use the technology that's available to them sure thank you I think uh that's a great way to wrap up our question and answer time I'd now like to invite Julia Niblett the New South Wales State Director of the New Colombo Plan from the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to close the session for us tonight thank you very much so thank you very much Cody thank you for chairing this very informative and really interesting session so well I thought the questions you asked were fantastic and I'm really glad that I was able to be privy to hearing so much about what the activities are the focus of the private sector but also the kind of challenges especially in the disability sector that need to focus our minds on how we guarantee digital inclusion so I want to thank our guests our sponsors and the NCP community for your attendance today and I just want to say on behalf of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade thanks in particular the panelists your contributions were great and I also want to thank you in particular for your commitment to supporting the NCP momentum series thank you so much for that to Lindell, Lindell Stoiles who's the Group General Counsel and Group Executive of Sustainability at Telstra, Andrew Groth Senior Vice President, Region Head Australia in New Zealand and Industry Head Financial Services Asia Pacific Infosys that's a big business card you need for all of that and you've got a digital one perfect and to Bruce McWire Lead Policy Advisor Vision Australia New South Wales I really was struck by a couple of themes that were said Lindell talked about opportunities in the region that we call the Indo-Pacific and I just want to mention to you all that I returned to Australia last year from my role as Australia's High Commissioner to Bangladesh I was very proud in that role to promote Australia's engagement in the area of digital inclusion and we did that in a number of ways but in particular we supported a lot of programs for women and girls digital literacy and digital inclusion for women and girls so DFAT funded for example the development of an app to provide information on emergency services that were available for women victims of acid violence it's a terrible thing that happens in South Asia but we helped develop this app that provided information as well on e-clinics for medical legal and psychosocial support to acid burn survivors and that was a great example of innovation and provided a lot of support to to victims we also worked very well with an NGO called Girl Effect that's run out of the the UK you may have heard of it to develop mobile research technology we wanted to work with them to develop some technology that would enable young women adolescent women adolescents and young women to undertake research and listen to other girls views you know their peers to hear about their aspirations and challenges and what they really were wanting to do to give them an avenue for expressing these things without having to sort of run things past their parents all the time they could actually talk amongst their peers and it was a great thing to have these technology enabled girl ambassadors go out to young women in the community we also supported the strengthening of institutional capacity using technology to support a lot of people with with limited abilities but also digital literacy is so vital because of its value in managing businesses and working through e-commerce and really sharpening some of the opportunities for women entrepreneurs and in particular women farmers and so being able to be part of this digital skilling up was really transformative here in the DFAT New South Wales State Office and I've got some of my colleagues here tonight we're very keen to build working relationships not just with the private sector of course that's really important to learn a bit more about what you're doing but also to develop those relationships with NGOs such as Vision Australia and I was particularly struck by Bruce's commentary and I thought your focus on inclusive design and innovation was a lesson for all of us those that provide services and it prompted me to think about some of the services that DFAT provides but also other government agencies how we need to always have an inclusive approach to design but we're also really glad to build connections to support NGOs that are involved in similar sorts of community projects and to identify those that could be useful to connect with or be of interest to the NCP community including NCP scholars so from that point of view it actually has expanded my horizons a little bit and given me some things to think about I really liked Andrew's reference to opportunities for mentoring and for volunteering which I think is a fantastic suggestion for all of us and I guess I feel a bit reassured about the pace of change of technology that it isn't just me that has to think all the time about having to learn new skills and upgrade things but I'm very encouraged by the fact that not only is it a reality for everyone even in the profession in the industry but also that you have strategies to help people snack on microbytes of new knowledge that helps everybody become more better functioning better users of digital technology so I hope you all found the session as interesting as I did I found it really exciting and I was really pleased to hear your views I'm wondering if I could ask you all to please join me in thanking our panelists and our subject matter experts for sharing their insights and for showcasing their digital inclusion projects that they continue to invest in and support both here in Australia and overseas and to thank Cody in particular for great sharing and great probing I thought that was fantastic so please join me to thank everyone