Smartening the Australian Economy

Glen Boreham, Managing Director IBM Australia and New Zealand addressed the National Press Club Wednesday on "Towards a smarter economy". He later have an interview with ABC Radio covering many of the same topics: "Smart technology linked to economic recovery" as well as the transcript, an MP3 audio file is available.

MARK COLVIN: The technology company IBM says Australia should buy more 'smart technology' as a way of beating the global financial crisis.

The head of IBM's Australian arm, Glen Boreham, says the Federal Government could grow the economy by 1.5 per cent in ten years.

How? By making sure computer chips and wireless devices are embedded in the nation's infrastructure.

Mr Boreham says getting infrastructure to work together well could bring big economic and environmental gains in managing electricity, irrigation, health and broadband communications.

And Glen Boreham told PM's Ashley Hall that putting smart devices into cars could solve a lot of traffic problems.

GLEN BOREHAM: If we were able to look at a network of understanding where cars were on a road. That filtering into computers that could analyse data and do predictions. So that they could say well if there's a breakdown here, it will have this sort of flow on affect, we could then actually get information to people in real time. ..."

From: "Smart technology linked to economic recovery, Ashley Hall, ABC Radio PM, 10 June 2009