How We Think

Australia’s economy is now heavily digitally geared. Key sectors such as manufacturing, retail, hospitality, and banking and finance are moving rapidly to online preferences.

COVID-19 is foremost a health crisis but it is also an economic crisis. Governments, businesses, communities, and individuals will all need to find a path through the uncertainty because it will be part of our transition from acute outbreak to recovery, and then emergence into the new normal.

Digital trust underpins every digital interaction between government, business and people. We make judgments by assessing and quantifying an expectation that by exposing some portion of our digital selves to these entities, they will treat our information and identity with respect.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) today released latest employment data. For those looking for some insight into the impact of COVID-19, you will need to wait. The next release will tell us more about that.

The role of digital and data in government has been steadily escalating for some time now. Yet its adoption has accelerated to warp-speed in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Technology has enabled workers to continue their jobs from home, and government digital apps and systems have responded at pace.

This pandemic is teaching us all how to cope with true uncertainty. In our well ordered and largely predictable lives it is usually only personal misfortune that brings chaos to that structure.