Australia 4.0: The NBN needs a National Application Network (Web 3.0 social, political and industrial “Central Brains”) to coordinate and achieve national innovation, collaboration, productivity and outcomes

NOTE: I posted this article in the LinkedIn NBN Group. I have added it here as a post.

If you could create a “Central Brain” (or Facebook) in 5 days to focus the effort and wisdom of 2 Billion people, what problem would you solve? What social, industrial or political endeavour would you transform?

Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN) will connect 20m people in a faster network. The NBN appears to rely on a “build it and they (ie benefits) will come” approach. Australia needs a complementary and proactive National Application Network (NAN) strategy to reconfigure what we do and how we do it for national benefit. We should reconfigure our community with more efficient and effective peer to peer social, industrial and political structures, rather than opaque Web 1.0 hierarchies and channels.

“A common problem for many Governments is that they use yesterday’s institutions to meet tomorrow’s problems (Australian Government Innovation report)”. It would be a wasted opportunity to simply speed up the existing inefficiency of Web 1.0 channels hierarchies and channels or wait a decade for the private sector to deliver the peer to peer structures that directly drive greater productivity. Tomorrow’s problem’s need Web 3.0 networks. A National Application Network (NAN) provide new structures to facilitate new ways for people to interact which directly result in productivity gains. This management “Hack” has been submitted in the McKinsey-HBR M-Prize, an open innovation project to reinvent management for the 21st Century ( http://is.gd/mcmprize ).

Australia’s National Digital Economy Strategy aims to to achieve 8 outcomes:
1. increase Australian households’ online participation
2. increase Australian business’ and not-for-profit organisations’ online engagement
3. smartly manage our environment
4. improve health and aged care
5. expand online education
6. increase teleworking
7. improved online government service delivery and engagement
8. increase digital engagement in regional Australia.

Each of these outcomes can be achieved with specific, or complementary, “Central Brain” which connects people across organisations, industries and Australia. By leveraging open source software communities (ie; standing on the shoulders of giants), a template “Central Brain” can be delivered in 5 days, customised and publicly available in 90 days.

It is my ambition to apply the lessons of social networking and open source to financial markets and economic development. I want to crowdcreate Equity Market 4.0 and inspire Economic Development 4.0. Toward this end, I have developed two Slideshare presentations ( http://www.slideshare.net/marcuscake ) and offer delivery of a template “Central Brain” prototype in five days which can be customised in 30-90 days (to meet requirements). I have also built “Central Brain” prototypes underlying a National Application Network and can demonstrate some of them today.

The presentation “Economic Development 4.0: A Central Brain to organise community innovation, collaboration, wisdom and effort to prioritise and achieve global outcomes” provides an overview of a National Application Network and other “Central Brains”. Existing Central Brains include Democracy 3.0, Equity Market 3.0, Climate Stability 3.0 and Health 3.0. New “Central Brains”, like Education 3.0, can be created in 30-90 days (assuming a specific peer to peer configuration).

Government departments could be assigned a “Central Brain” to sponsor, spawn and promote adoption – Equity Market 3.0 (Commercialisation Australia), Education 3.0 (DEET), Health 3.0 (NEHTA), Climate 3.0 ( Dept of Climate Change), Democracy 3.0 (Australian Electoral Commission) or Environment 3.0 (Dept of Environment). A template “Central Brain” could be delivered to each department in five days, customised and launched in 90 days.

As part of the NBN project, should the Australian government create a National Application Network that includes Web 3.0 “Central Brains” on the Critical Path to Economic Development 4.0 (or Australian 4.0)?

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The National Application Network strategy could build on the Economic Development 4.0 presentation below.