Page 1498 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 4 May 2016
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outcomes that are co-designed and fully informed by the range of possibilities offered by Canberra’s innovative small business sector.
Directorates can engage with the market early to better understand the options and to consider the solutions in the market. This will ensure the government is in a position to understand what is really needed, as well as the range of options available in the market. This is likely to be particularly useful in fast-moving technology fields where it may be difficult for government to stay abreast of developments.
Importantly, this program equally delivers benefits to small business. The local small business sector wants greater opportunities to work with ACT government agencies in an engaging and innovative way. This small business community participation in the co-design process to create the small business innovation partnerships program framework ensures that it addresses their needs as well as ours.
The program is about ensuring local small businesses get access to government contracts and that these contracts give them the opportunity to commercialise their products. Critically, small businesses will retain the intellectual property for their development, allowing them to resell their product across Australia and overseas. This is particularly important because it allows small businesses to utilise their engagement with the ACT government as a springboard to upscale their business and commercialise their ideas. They can go on to sell the products they develop for the program to other governments and organisations in Australia and around the world.
As Minister for Small Business, I appreciate the challenges small businesses face in securing contracts with government, and many of these are small businesses that already successfully sell their products and services around Australia and the world. We want these local businesses to be able to engage with their local government first and find common ground.
As the Chief Minister said recently in his state of the territory address, we want to ensure everyone has a fair chance to show government how their products will improve efficiency and productivity. We need the innovation, efficiency and agility the small business innovation partnerships program will give us, delivering benefits for government and small business alike.
MADAM SPEAKER: Supplementary question, Ms Burch.
MS BURCH: Minister, how is the Arboretum piloting the small business innovative partnerships program?
DR BOURKE: The National Arboretum Canberra is engaged with local small business APositive to build an app that will provide an augmented reality experience for visitors to the Arboretum. The app will track a visitor’s location in the Arboretum, finding which forest they are in and then play appropriate sounds from that forest’s country of origin. It will create a unique visitor experience.
The app is being implemented in the Arboretum as a pilot project under the small business innovation partnerships program. The project was initiated in the fourth
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