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Look to the stars

Deanne McIntosh, Information Age

16/06/2008 14:34:50

There's not much Dr Paul Scully-Power hasn't done - he was Australia's first astronaut, after all! Aside from having flown aboard Challenger on the 13th flight of the Space Shuttle, he has also served with the US Navy, NASA, the Pentagon and the White House, and has extensive commercial and government experience here, the US and UK.

Scully-Power's experience covers the fields of technology and strategy, defence and security, aviation and aerospace, ICT, oceanography, and education. He is considered a world expert in remote sensing: visible, infra-red, radar and acoustic and has published over 90 international scientific reports and journal articles, including the Bakerian Lecture of the Royal Society. He is a Doctor of Science in Applied Mathematics, discovered the phenomenon of ocean spiral eddies, and is the 1995 University of Sydney's Distinguished Graduate.

These are just the edited highlights of an illustrious career. While we would have liked to spend all our time with him talking about space travel, here we explore his views on our industry.

INFORMATION AGE: What do you think of the state of the ICT industry in Australia?

PAUL SCULLY-POWER: It is certainly a vibrant industry and ever-changing with the introduction of new technologies. However, there are two streams: the large established players and the smaller, more nimble players. The real question is how do you integrate the smaller players into the mainstream? This is especially critical because of the (rightly so) desire of large corporations to have reliable ICT systems that are robust, scalable, and secure. Many corporations are therefore loath to involve the smaller players when embarking on a technology refresh program. This then comes down to the willingness of CIOs of major corporations to involve selected smaller players into a team at the very outset of designing an ICT architecture.

IA: Do you think Australian companies are innovative? Do we have a culture of innovation in Australia that fosters entrepreneurs?

PS-P: Some, but not in any way the majority, of Australian corporations are innovative. It depends on the industry, and more importantly on the management's willingness to engender a culture of innovation. Australians are typically an innovative lot, probably due to the history of being small, isolated, and not having "money to throw at problems". Australians typically think first and then invest monies in new processes, and new services. The real issue is how to capture that innovation and from it gain commercial success. We have many entrepreneurs, but they are typically inept in presenting their wares on the world stage. We need to harness those Australians who have extensive international experience, especially in technology, and harness them in a way that they have a voice in the corporate boardrooms of Australian companies.

IA: What should we be doing to boost the ICT industry here? Should government have a role?

PS-P: Government through policies and regulation, government instrumentalities, such as NICTA and CSIRO, universities, and industry all have a role in boosting the ICT industry. But since the ICT industry is global, we in Australia have to focus on specifics within the ICT industry that can put us on the world stage.

One of the major drawbacks to achieving this is the lack of knowledge of all that is going on in the ICT field throughout Australia, and the lack of mechanisms of facilitating partnerships between and amongst the players. We need to foster partnerships to develop and commercialise the real breakthrough technologies in Australia.

IA: What are the consequences if we don't do anything?

PS-P: This is an oft-asked question and really comes down to whether we are committed to developing technologies in Australia, or are simply content to be users and adopters of others' technologies.

If the latter, in a knowledge-based world it will have a significant negative effect on our balance of trade. And whilst this may be okay while we are living off the mining boom, it will have a longer term impact on our economic growth and sustainability.

IA: How do we foster innovation?

PS-P: The key to innovation in ICT is to key on customer needs (pun intended). NICTA has adopted this approach in its "use-inspired research", and corporations need to adopt a similar approach. Then innovation needs to be fostered by encouraging employees to suggest approaches that best fulfil customer needs. It is this creative mindset, emboldened with actual targets to achieve, that leads to real breakthroughs. Innovation cannot happen in a vacuum. And it should be remembered that innovation is not invention; rather most of the innovation comes from putting different pieces of technology together in different ways to solve business problems. And some of this technology is multidisciplinary.

IA: Where is ICT going?

PS-P: ICT is leading the charge of a changing world. Moore's Law is more than just computing power - it really covers applications of technology, and hence business models. And remember that Moore's Law is doubling every 18 months. This means an order of magnitude (a factor of 10) in five years. And an order of magnitude change portends an entirely new paradigm.

So what is the next ICT paradigm? I believe it to be ICT as a commodity. We will plug in to the ICT grid just like we plug into the electricity grid (although probably wirelessly), and be able to buy just what we need. This will encompass computing power, storage, security, applications, services, and of course the many facets of communications, be that voice, data, video, social networks, etc. It will be augmented by a data intensive world where many things are tracked, including water and energy monitoring and interval metering of household electricity use.

IA: Are our universities and schools doing enough to train young people for the current work environment?

PS-P: This is a question that has within it the seeds of a possibly misguided approach. For the current work environment is not the work environment of even the near future. Jobs, technologies, and services are changing rapidly, even over a five-year period, and we therefore have to train the young folks to think analytically and creatively, to learn how to find out information for themselves, to be able to be critical of all the information out there, and to have some understanding of international cultures and politics.

The high school graduates of today will probably find themselves in about seven different jobs throughout their lifetimes, and therefore training is an ongoing endeavour that has to be inculcated in our universities and schools. And we desperately need to change the mindset on science and technology which are thought of as not being "cool", and especially thought of as not providing the salaries commensurate with law and finance.

IA: Why do so many ICT projects fail? How can we make them more successful?

PS-P: I hate to mention it, but many ICT projects fail because ICT is often treated as a standalone discipline. ICT is an enabler of business, and ICT projects need to be seen in that light. This means that many different people within an organisation need to be consulted at the requirements stage of an ICT project, and that the ICT leader needs to have that rare combination of technology know-how, business acumen, and large project management and logistics. Moreover, at the board level there needs to be expertise in technology, and the board needs to articulate clear goals for the ICT project, and not just budgets.

IA: Your career has been so varied and distinguished, did you actively follow a career path or did you take advantage of opportunities that came along?

PS-P: Since the world is changing rapidly, so are opportunities, and there is today probably no simple career path that can be followed. One therefore needs a framework to look at the opportunities.

I have found that a simple framework is one of (a) can I make a significant contribution in that job? (b) Will it be a learning experience? And (c) can I have fun?

IA: How did the NASA opportunity come about? Can you give us a little background on that? That's a dream for so many of us!

PS-P: That is a long story, but I was working for the US Navy at the time, NASA needed someone to instruct the astronaut corps on the earth sciences, and that role led to an invitation to fly. The more interesting question is why did NASA want instruction in the earth sciences? It was an innovative approach by NASA in that astronauts get very little relaxation time on orbit, and that that time is spent looking out the windows at the earth. And just as one gets far more out of a visit to an art gallery if one has done an art appreciation course, so, too, do astronauts get far more out of looking at the earth if they have done an earth appreciation course