INTHEBLACK July 2022 - Magazine - Page 24
F E AT U R E
// T R A N S F O R M AT I V E T E C H N O L O G Y
“ I F YO U T H I N K O F A L L T H E A D M I N I S T R AT I V E S T U F F
T H AT G O E S O N I N B A N K I N G , F I N A N C E , G O V E R N M E N T,
CUSTOMER SERVICE, TRACKING RECORDS AND
I N F O R M AT I O N A N D D E L I V E R I N G S E R V I C E S , T H E R E ’ S
H U G E S C O P E T O A U T O M AT E I N T H AT S PA C E .”
STEFAN HAJKOWICZ, CSIRO
start-up that specialises in accessibility mapping, so
that people in the disabled community are able to
better navigate streets and suburbs.
“The city just becomes a piece of software that
enables all of that to happen,” she says. “And that’s
all about the growing population, because it’s not just
about the job opportunity. It’s the partner that comes
along, it’s the children that need to go to school and
it’s the wellbeing.”
Wellington in New Zealand and cities around
Australia are using digital twin technology. In
Wellington, homeowners can go into the city’s website
and see the effect that rising sea levels would have on
their properties.
Technology can play an important role in lifting
participation in the workforce, because two of the
major barriers to people participating in work are
caring responsibilities and distance, says O’Mahony.
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24 ITB July 2022
“Through mobile technologies, it is easier for those
folks to work flexibly and work even if they have other
responsibilities. What the pandemic showed us is that
being able to work from home is possible too, and that
can also increase participation,” he says.
TECHNOLOGY INTEGRATION
In terms of boosting productivity through the
adoption of technology, Australia is lagging in the
take-up of AI technologies – in terms of government
investment and the number of business leaders
who are interested in incorporating AI into their
operations.
This is in part because Australia has a relatively low
level of manufacturing compared with industrialised
countries in North America and in Western Europe,
and it’s often those industries that attract very high
levels of spending on R&D and innovation.
The gains can be substantial – a Deloitte Access
Economics study has found that 58 per cent of
businesses making use of machine learning report
productivity benefits.
Many of the early-use cases for machine learning
are on the customer side. TPG Telecom is mining its
consumer database to better tailor its products, and