Tag Archive for: STEM

Australian Signals Directorate will need to be flexible to staff its REDSPICE program

In July, the Australian Signals Directorate launched REDSPICE, a $10 billion initiative to grow its workforce by 1,900 people over the next decade across the range of the agency’s capabilities and supporting functions. To meet this aspiration, however, ASD will have to contend with many of the workforce challenges that face all defence sector employers, and most employers of technology focused workforces nationally.

There aren’t any silver bullets that will wholly solve the workforce access and retention challenge, but taking the work to the workers is a step in the right direction. In answer to the chronic worker shortages in Canberra, REDSPICE also aims to have 40% of ASD’s workforce located outside of the nation’s capital.

Distributing this workforce outside of Canberra is an excellent idea, and is likely inspired by past experience. Back in 2015, ASD launched the innovative strategic industry partnership (SIP) program, whereby it engaged industry partners to develop workforces outside of Canberra, namely, in Adelaide, Melbourne and Brisbane. I often point to this model as an example not only of taking the work to the workers, but also of not insisting that technology workforces be wholly conjured up in Canberra.

ASD will no doubt have good insight from its SIP providers as to the efficacy of a ‘take the work to the workers’ approach and, where it has worked well, should look to supercharge those results in those locations, as well as explore opportunities to replicate successes in other places.

Unfortunately, this is against the backdrop of a broader problem; Australia has a skills shortage in the science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) fields. Employers in defence and adjacent sectors are finding it very difficult to attract workers with STEM skills across the experience spectrum. For example, software engineering, a critical skillset for the defence sector, including ASD, is in short supply and has a strong demand forecast.

A two-week coding bootcamp doesn’t create a capable developer, but some industry employers are adopting innovative partnerships with training providers to focus and truncate formal study programs, and to integrate the learning experience into on-the-job environments. Such approaches may create a capable software engineer within 18 months, or half the time it currently takes to create a graduate engineer. ASD would do well to explore such programs should its demand for specific skills warrant.

The good news is that ASD has an edge: it’s attractive. Anecdotally, ASD hasn’t had a significant problem getting graduates because of a perception that it offers exciting and meaningful work in a field that will provide excellent future employment opportunities.

ASD’s reported experience with graduates is good news, but it’s yet to be seen if it can offer the same pull factors to the experienced professionals that it will undoubtedly need to scale up its workforce. And it’s here that there needs to be a hard-nosed look at how ASD will compete with other employers, especially with those in the banking, information technology and consulting sectors that may not require drawn-out and invasive security vetting processes.

Offering interesting and fulfilling work is a great advantage, but ASD must also offer a comprehensive employer value proposition to attract and retain staff, and that will mean paying top salaries.

One of the greatest barriers to ASD quickly accessing talent has been the imperative for its people to hold the highest level security clearance, top secret—positive vetting. Under REDSPICE, ASD has stated an intent to create physical spaces where work of lower classification may be undertaken, with the commensurate lower level clearance requirements for staff. Still, there will probably be no escaping the requirement for a large part of the workforce to hold high-level clearances, and perhaps over the longer term the new top secret—privileged access clearance will provide ASD and its partners access to a wider pool of potential workers. Where prospective workers are required to undergo the lengthy high-level vetting processes, ASD must provide sufficient candidate-management resources to reduce drop-out rates due to recruitment process fatigue.

Finding workers is one thing; keeping them is another, especially in a highly competitive labour market. According to ASD’s 2020–21 annual report, this time last year the agency employed around 2,150 staff. It had a separation rate of 9.2%, which is considered fairly healthy for most organisations and is half that of many defence industry businesses.

Allowing for the current workforce size and an annual separation rate of 10%, and assuming that the workforce would need to grow by 210 people per year, ASD will have to recruit 425 people in 2022 and up to 615 in 2031. Those are not small numbers for an organisation unaccustomed to such growth. The size of the challenge will be exacerbated by the security clearance requirements and long recruitment process, which may see high drop-out rates.

ASD must also have a strategic plan to utilise SIP and service provider workforces as a hedge against supply and market forces that may hamper its ability to hire permanent public service staff, as well as to obtain maximum exposure and access to the desired pool of workers through alternative employment arrangements and conditions. The reality is that certain technology workforce cohorts will only take jobs as contracted staff because of the higher remuneration and work–life and program flexibility that this model offers. These cohorts won’t be accessible through public service employment; hence the need for industry partners.

The REDSPICE program is an ambitious plan to enable ASD to double in size and strengthen its vital role in our national security, and must be applauded for its intent. However, great care must be taken to properly resource recruitment and retention enablers, as well as invest in ways to ensure a reliable supply of talent through the education and private sectors.

Lockheed Martin’s local chief says Australia has skills needed for high-tech defence landscape

If you need cutting-edge skills and technology—high-tech gears for satellite systems, top-level secure communication systems or a deep knowledge of artificial intelligence and machine learning—you can find them in Australia.

‘What this country has is amazing’, says Lockheed Martin Australia chief executive Joe North. ‘But you’ve got to go and find it, that’s the challenge.’

North tells The Strategist these capability jewels include companies such as Ronson Gears, once solely an automotive engineering company. ‘We’re working very closely with them. Their gears are going to be on the next satellites, shuttles and everything else.’

In communications, Clearbox Systems started in 2007 with six people and is now a leading designer, manufacturer and integrator of network and spectrum management systems for Defence, government and the commercial sector. That includes gathering information for signals intelligence, C4I (command, control, communications, computers and intelligence) systems providing commanders with battlefield information, and radar.

Adelaide University’s Australian Institute for Machine Learning is one of the world’s most highly regarded institutions building expertise on challenging areas flowing from artificial intelligence.

‘There’s very good talent in Australia, smart people and good innovators’, says North, ‘but it’s a matter of connecting them with the programs where their skills are needed, not just finding them’.

That involves helping people with skills to complete the requirements they need to work within the Defence system. ‘You’ll look at what they are using and whether it meets all the requirements and see how we can help them along and invest in that. They’ll be wanting to protect their intellectual property, which is what any company will do. That’s okay because we’re looking for the capability they bring’, North says.

When work began on the first of Australia’s three air warfare destroyers, the Lockheed Martin team installing the Aegis combat system was about 98% American. For the second ship, that was down to about 60%, and for the third, nearly all the members of the company team were Australian.

During the Covid-19 lockdown, a ship needed a complex upgrade at sea before the RIMPAC exercise, and the team that provided it was all Australian. ‘That was the first time outside the United States that an all-sovereign team had made capability upgrades as large as that. They did it flawlessly.’

As the Covid crisis deepened, company executives had fortnightly phone calls with ministers. These meetings were coordinated by the head of the Defence Department’s Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group, Tony Fraser, and covered a wide range of processes, from operating within health requirements to keep the work going to ensuring that small companies subcontracted on major projects were paid promptly.

Lockheed Martin Australia hired more than 200 additional staff as it worked through the worst of the pandemic.

Now it directly employs about 1,160 Australian staff and provides work for 5,150 more in subcontracting companies. That includes 220 Australian engineers working on the combat system for the navy’s Attack-class submarines.

North says Australia’s 2020 defence strategic update provided an excellent plan for the equipment the Australian Defence Force needs in a rapidly changing strategic environment at a time when the digital age is accelerating technological change in areas such as hypersonics, machine learning and AI. With all advanced weapons, such as hypersonic missiles, a modern military will have to be able to use them and defend itself against them, he says.

Today, the F-35 joint strike fighter is able to gather and deliver a huge amount of information. That data is being integrated with the Aegis combat systems on the navy’s warships and with future army capabilities.

It’s necessary to harness the speed of quantum computing and scale it to allow pilots, the combat officers of surface warships and submarines, and others to deal with threats such as missiles able to travel many times the speed of sound—giving humans very little time to think in an environment where response times are the key to survival.

All of that has to be incorporated, upgraded and made to work seamlessly in a world of manned and unmanned platforms where aircraft, ships and ground forces can talk to each other and assess very quickly which platform is best placed to deal with a threat.

‘Space, air, land, surface ships, submarines will all be netted together via cyber’, says North. ‘And once we’re there, we’ll get to the stage where these computers will learn as they go.’

There will still be men and women in the loop. ‘The tough part for us in going to that next level will be to ensure that they can trust the information they’re receiving. That’s the whole power of digital, and the whole challenge of digital at the same time. And it’s all happening at light speed. We have to ensure that we’re not firing 10 missiles at one target when we need only two. And when you get that capability, the rest of the world is going to want it.’

North says the necessary levels of research and ideas to deal with such challenges are emerging in Australia. ‘The engineers coming out of college walk right into the digital models and they’re training some of the other generations on the new tools. That’s the power of what’s coming out of the schools. Today’s engineers are very sharp and they’re telling us where we can do things differently. They’re constantly looking and learning.’

He says Lockheed Martin Australia is focused on getting as much as possible done here. ‘If we can do it in-country, let’s see who can do it and bring them in. If we find someone very close to what we need, how do we invest and get them over the edge? We can give them the tooling, the expertise, or we can have subject-matter experts from other small to medium enterprises go in and help them out.

‘Once we’ve found the capability in-country, we’re not going to put up a factory for the appearance of saying, “We’re here.” We will see how to leave that part of the business with them and integrate them into the program.’

So, can Australia provide enough skilled workers to complete these major projects?

North says that across Australia, systems engineers are becoming increasingly hard to find and Adelaide is becoming saturated with both defence work and with the development of the space industry.

‘We’re working with universities and we’re encouraging primary and high schools to expand their curriculums to introduce some of these critical skills prior to and in college.’

Lockheed Martin Australia brings students to its facilities for courses to build up their expertise.

It’s crucial to get more women into the industry, North says. ‘We’ve got to get more females into STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] and bring them in to show them what kind of careers they could have in engineering. A lot of them think they’re going to be building structures or welding on the line, when in reality they’ll be doing a lot more engineering analysis and design.’

Another source of workers is the men and women leaving the ADF who have either retired or who are keen to do something else with their hands-on experience.

The company has picked up many people from the aviation industry, which was hard hit by the pandemic.

Dealing with Covid-19 has also accelerated a change in Lockheed Martin’s corporate culture, with more personnel given the opportunity and the equipment to work remotely. ‘Not everybody wants to move, and in today’s world of digital technology they don’t need to’, says North. ‘We’ll link up the cities and the sites. We can have satellite offices wherever we need them. If we find a program that needs people in one part of the country and we find another area that’s rich in those people, we’ll set up a facility, outfit it and have it tied back into the main system. They don’t need to always be on site.’

These skills were needed to keep up a work tempo which increased as the company maintained ships and aircraft working flat out during last summer’s bushfires.

North once ran a program in the US state of Wisconsin, where the shipyard brought young people into the industry straight from high school. ‘We found about half of those in high school wanted to go to university and the other 50% wanted to go to work. They started training as early as their sophomore year in high school to weld the materials that we’re using and to learn how to run cabling on ships. They were then brought in for the summer intern program and now we’re doing that here at the uni level as well’, he says.

‘The submarine program operated in Adelaide has a good internship program where they bring them in from university and give them hands-on skills. Then they go back to university to finish their degree and we’ve been successful as they graduate, hiring those same folks that we’ve invested in.’

Closing the information technology gap for Indigenous Australians

This post is kicking off a series from ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre on Indigenous Australians in STEM and cyber policy.

As a shy teenager growing up in Darwin in the 1980s, I was always intrigued with IT—but I never had any exposure to the industry and was certainly never made aware of the pathways to pursue a career in the field. I remember attending a career expo at high school and visiting a university stand, only to be steered away from it and advised by a teacher, ‘You should probably do a trade.’

Fast-forward two decades and I now have a number of successful businesses, two of which are IT companies: Yerra and Indigimation.

My experience working in the industry has dispelled many of the myths and misperceptions I’d held about IT. Many people believe that to work in IT, you need a degree and you need to have technical skills. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth and I’m absolute proof of that.

Surprisingly, though, I am still one of very few Indigenous Australians working in IT in this country. There are even fewer working at the CEO or managing director level in the Australian public service and the private sector. In fact, Indigenous Australian participation across the STEM fields (science, technology, engineering and maths) is very low.

There are many reasons for this. Indigenous Australians are simply not exposed to IT and are not encouraged to pursue IT as a career option. According to the data collected in the 2016 census, most Indigenous Australians lean more towards careers in health care, social assistance, or public administration and safety.

Location is also a significant factor. Many Indigenous Australians still live on their countries (ancestral lands), which are often in remote areas of Australia. For these Australians, the disadvantage is exacerbated simply due to geographic location. Some Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, for example, are cut off from the rest of the world for months during the wet season. And many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have to leave their countries to find employment or to attend primary school, high school or university. In doing this, though, they must leave their families, their cultures and kinships systems and supports and live a life that for them can be very foreign, isolating and intimidating.

Yet a STEM education is considered to be critically important for Australia’s current and future productivity.

Indigenous Australians have the opportunity to achieve financial success through a career in STEM. Why shouldn’t we encourage our First Nations peoples to strive for that through education, training and employment in the IT industry? Why can’t we be a people who are rich in culture and rich in wealth? This is absolutely achievable for Indigenous Australians, and participation in IT is key to getting there.

So, what needs to be done to encourage Indigenous Australians to choose IT as a career?

First, we need some good role models—we need Indigenous Australians to see other Indigenous Australians working as IT professionals. For this to occur, opportunities need to be created. We need to tap into existing talent and the Indigenous IT professionals who are leading the way in the industry. We need to promote them and to connect them to our Indigenous Australian youth, to help them to understand that there are ‘blackfellas’ working in this field, and that it is something they can do as well.

It’s also important to talk about how diverse the industry already is. And we need not hold back about relaying information on the many career and financial benefits of being an IT professional.

What would it be like for my people to have access to resources, employment, education and connections with the world through technology? What if the natural innovation of Indigenous Australians and the richness of the oldest living culture could not only be harnessed, but memorialised and shared virtually through technology, for the rest of the world to learn from and participate in.

Through IT, Indigenous Australian individuals and communities could further their economic development by creating online Indigenous businesses that wouldn’t be hindered by anything besides the lack of connectivity. That would allow Indigenous Australians to remain on their countries, and enable the world to connect with a people and a culture that have existed since long before colonisation and the introduction of IT into our society.

We as a people used our skills, knowledge and innovation as tools to survive and flourish, and although IT may still be very foreign for many Indigenous peoples and communities, embracing IT in our everyday lives may give us the very tool we need to sustain, preserve and communicate our status as the oldest living culture on earth.

Before we can ‘close the gap’ we need first to close the information technology gap for Indigenous Australians. Only then will we see change.

Note: ASPI’s International Cyber Policy Centre and local Indigenous business Yerra, in partnership with SecuriDay, are holding a one-day cyber camp for Indigenous 9- to 13-year-olds on 7 December at Questacon in Canberra. More information is available on the ASPI website.

How education and outreach can inspire the next generation of space thinkers

This is the 13th in our series ‘Australia in Space’ leading up to ASPI’s Building Australia’s Strategy for Space conference.

With the announcement of the Australian Space Agency, our space industry can start to focus on the opportunities and benefits that it will bring. No longer will the global space industry be the domain of overseas government agencies and multibillion-dollar budgets. Space is now part of the commercial sector and, as the price of participation falls, Australia will be well placed to be part of that.

Development of a domestic space industry will give Australia better access to the global industry, which is estimated to be worth $1.1 trillion by 2040. Around 10,000 Australians are already employed in the space industry, but many with expertise have left the country in search of work or are working outside of their areas of expertise so that they can stay in Australia. By 2030, however, the industry is estimated to have created around 20,000 high-paying jobs.

What this means is that Australia needs to develop a space industry–ready talent pool. We need well-educated young people with strengths in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), as well as people working on computer algorithms, space policy and ethics, law and finance. They need to be willing to learn new skills and embrace life-long learning as technology changes and improves.

The report of the review of Australia’s space industry capability, released in March 2018, recognises that we’ll have to work on our space jobs pipeline, both in schools and in the broader community:

Recommendation 8: The Government gives priority to strategies that enable: active engagement with Australian schools and the broader community on global space activities; space-related training and education to improve capability; space-inspired STEM outreach; and industry-led research collaboration to underpin the space industry.

Inspiring the next generation of space professionals obviously means that schools, early childhood education and extracurricular activities will play a vital role in engaging children with STEM early and sustaining that interest.

However, many believe that we’re almost at crisis point in our STEM education. Australia has declined in both absolute and relative achievement in science and maths.

Source: Australian Council for Educational Research

Australia’s National Science Statement, released in March 2017, found that enrolments in STEM subjects were at the lowest level in 20 years.

Much is already being done to address these issues, and the space agency will have a role in promoting and coordinating the existing programs and resources, as well as identifying the areas in which there are gaps.

There are many programs that provide STEM course materials for teachers and K–12 students that link to the Australian curriculum and are, or could be, based on what we need for Australian space programs:

  • Programs like the Australian Academy of Science’s Science by Doing provide investigative resources for earth and space.
  • CSIRO provides activities and teaching resources in its Australian Telescope National Facility division.
  • ARC-funded Centres of Excellence ASTRO 3D, CAASTRO and OzGrav are relating their cutting-edge research to programs and resources that help teachers link curriculum content to how space science is being done now.
  • Programs like the University of Melbourne’s Telescopes in Schools, ICRAR’s SPIRIT, CSIRO’s Pulse @ Parkes and MSATT allow students to collect astronomical data, drive telescopes and complete astronomy projects before they reach university.

There are also many programs that strengthen the connection that young people have to space and give them more awareness of the breadth of career options that will be open to them, inspiring them to work towards a rewarding career:

  • The YMCA Canberra Space Squad shows the best that Canberra has to offer for a career in space to students in Years 7–9.
  • The National Youth Science Forum connects Year 11 students to institutions and businesses that are part of the space industry.
  • The Royal Aeronautical Society partners with UNSW Canberra to run Cool Aeronautics to introduce schoolchildren (particularly primary-school age) and the public to the world and people of flying, aerospace engineering and space.
  • The Australian Youth Aerospace Association runs the Rocket Project to showcase both the theoretical and practical applications of modern rocketry.
  • The Young ICT Explorers is a competition that encourages school students to create an ICT project.

The space industry jobs of the future will also require 21st-century skills such as entrepreneurship, design thinking, and creative and collaborative thinking. Already there are great programs in place for that, too:

  • Questacon’s Smart Skills Initiative is a suite of programs that engage young people in innovation, technology and design thinking through hands-on challenges, projects and workshops.
  • Origin Energy’s littleBIGidea is a competition that focuses on new inventions by kids in Years 3–8.
  • Lighthouse Innovation’s Teen Startup Program encourages kids to come up with a business idea and learn how to pitch it.
  • Programs such as those run out of the CBR Innovation Network connect and support entrepreneurs, small and medium enterprises, and researchers through events and workshops.

There are many programs like these around Australia, and new ones being created by government agencies, entrepreneurs and not-for-profits. The Chief Scientist has set up the STAR Portal, which enables teachers and parents to access all STEM resources and programs in one place. As new programs get developed, they can be added to the STAR Portal.

If we can provide the inspiration and the skills, both in schools and as extracurricular activities through the ‘gateway’ of space, Australia will be in an excellent position to provide the people power needed in the space industry jobs that are about to be created.

Inspiring the next generation of space professionals

This is the 12th in our series ‘Australia in Space’ leading up to ASPI’s Building Australia’s Strategy for Space conference in June.

To make a case for a scientifically literate population in a country that has just announced the creation of its own space agency is about as necessary as convincing people we need reliable sources of food, water and electricity. Clearly, we need to have a steady flow of people with sufficient science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) skills to support industry. The source of those STEM professionals? Our schools.

Many of us born in the 1960s, were inspired by a steady diet of Apollo space missions and (quality) science fiction, and so were naturally drawn into the sciences. These days, we need to remain technologically literate at all levels and in all occupations or face the consequences. It’s no longer only a personal choice but also a national imperative. We must inspire generations of scientists and engineers. The question is, how?

The key is to increase engagement between high schools and the STEM community. The importance of schools is often simply overlooked by scientists and engineers. While ‘outreach’ by universities and government facilities is exceptional, there needs to be long-term one-on-one engagement between professionals and (targeted) young students, giving those students opportunities to work on extended projects in science and engineering.

Science Mentors is one program that addresses that need. It partners individual students with STEM practitioners in academia, government and industry. Students are guided through six-month projects by a mentor in the student’s preferred branch of science. The student and mentor design and perform an experiment that culminates in a formal, referenced and refereed report on the student’s findings.

Students learn valuable skills, such as how to gather data and state their hypothesis and how to state in mathematical terms the theoretical underpinning of their projects as well as to reference their own data or a reliable source in everything they write. In short, they’re made accountable for their claims.

The program targets students from Year 9. If we wait until students are in Year 12, it’s usually too late. By Year 11, most students have decided on their university degree and have chosen the courses necessary to gain entry.

After 10 years of development, Science Mentors caters for fields ranging from genetics to geology, physics to pharmaceuticals, and even rocketry. Experiments are typically done at the student’s school, though in some cases students attend week-long sessions at a university or an industrial laboratory because their projects require specialised equipment. The program began at Melrose High School in Canberra, but it’s about to be rolled out across the Australian Capital Territory. Currently approximately 100 scientists and engineers from academia, government and industry support the program.

Until two years ago, one branch of science was missing: astronomy. Then, the best a student could expect was to be plonked in front of a computer to download someone else’s astronomical data for analysis. This was frustrating. So I designed an astronomical teaching facility, which was funded by Denis and Vee Saunders, and hosted by ANU’s Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

As the project developed, others donated equipment, expertise and time. The result is the McNamara-Saunders Astronomical Teaching Telescope (MSATT), which currently caters for a dozen student projects.

MSATT’s design is an important example of the philosophy behind Science Mentors. During the design phase, people asked if the telescope would be automated so that the kids could use it from school. That made as much sense to me as asking students to learn to bushwalk using the internet. I wanted the kids under the stars, in the dark and cold, choosing, attaching and calibrating whatever instrument was needed to work with the telescope. I wanted them to own the data, a principle common to all Science Mentors projects.

The results have been terrific. Here’s one example: a 14‑year‑old Year 9 student measured one of nature’s fundamental constants. I remember the look on her face as she sat in front of the small whiteboard in MSATT’s dome looking at her final answer: 323 906 537.7 m s-1 (she was in Year 9, and we hadn’t covered significant figures yet.) That look was one of the most memorable expressions I’ve ever seen.

That number—her measurement of the speed of light—resulted from her observations of eclipses of Io, one of Jupiter’s moons, made over several months in 2017. It’s accurate to within about 8%.

She used the same data to calculate the mass of Jupiter, arriving at a result within 0.1% of the accepted value. That’s not bad for a 14‑year‑old who had never attempted such a thing before.

MSATT students are now learning lunar, planetary and deep sky imaging, photometry, spectroscopy and visual observation methods such as those used to determine the speed of light. There’s so very much more that can still be done, however. MSATT is one telescope: we need more facilities like it, including some for radio astronomy. We have the dreams; now we need commitment.

Science Mentors isn’t original. It’s based on the age-old apprenticeship model—which is simple, inexpensive and highly effective. It shows kids that STEM is hard work, yes, but also rewarding, substantial and fun.

That is critical because if we don’t nurture and inspire students today, we won’t have anyone to employ in our new space industry tomorrow.

And what of the young girl who calculated the speed of light by looking skyward? Not content with finding one of nature’s fundamental constants, she’s now learning planetary imaging in preparation for the 2018 opposition of Mars, an event that presents a fantastic opportunity to study the atmospheric and surface ice behaviour of the planet over four months. Who knows, one day she might even go there.

Australia’s cyber smart workforce

The long awaited Australian Cyber Security Strategy, released yesterday by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, outlines a $230 million investment in national cyber security over the coming four years.  

While developing Australia’s cyber workforce in order to become a ‘Cyber Smart Nation’ is one of the Strategy’s four key pillars, it’s been allotted just $13.5 million of total investment.

By the Strategy’s own admission, creating a robust cyber security workforce is a fundamental prerequisite to achieving all other elements of the Strategy. However, the industry’s relative infancy means that current education trends aren’t creating the workforce that will be required to deliver the ‘innovation, growth and prosperity’ the Strategy promises.

Research suggests that there will be a global shortfall of 1.5 million information security professionals by 2020, and Australia’s no exception. An increase in cyber workforce demand is an acute national phenomenon—with the government expecting positions for computer security experts to increase by more than 20% over the next five years. In fact, trends on the ground are even more extreme, with job site SEEK showing that the number of computer security roles advertised increased by 60% in 2015 alone.

In light of these trends, yesterday’s Strategy outlines the government’s intention to increase the quality and quantity of individuals coming through all levels of Australia’s cyber security education pipeline.

The establishment of academic centres of excellence at universities is intended to enhance the quality of high-level cybersecurity education. Simultaneously, the Strategy reveals plans to increase the volume of cyber-skilled individuals through the expansion of cyber security training in Registered Training Organisations, including TAFEs, and the development of training for individuals at all career stages through cyber security short courses.

In a particularly positive step, the Strategy discusses the expansion of national cyber security competitions, such as the national annual Cyber Security Challenge Australia. Exercises such as these play an important role in talent discovery for the cybersecurity industry, yet currently only target individuals that are already in full-time tertiary education (PDF). Many highly skilled individuals aren’t necessarily being funnelled through conventional education channels. Thus, broadening the net of these competitions to a wider participant base is an essential component of capturing more of Australia’s cyber workforce potential.

This workforce plan is part of a broader government effort to address Australia’s low number of STEM professionals. The National Innovation and Science Agenda aims to increase the number of young Australians equipped for the digital age, investing $48 million in promoting STEM literacy in schools and $51 million in enhancing the digital skills of students and teachers.

Private sector organisations are also already addressing the shortfall of cyber security professionals. The Commonwealth Bank and UNSW have established a Security Engineering Partnership aimed at ‘boosting the nation’s reserve of quality security engineering professionals’. Similarly, Macquarie Telecom is collaborating with the University of Western Sydney to provide cyber security scholarships. Others such as Northrop Grumman, Telstra, Optus and Google are also looking for future talent at all levels of education through STEM-focused programs, scholarships and competitions.

Despite those positives, the Strategy could more directly address immediate skills gaps and gender representation. The Strategy astutely prioritises tertiary cyber security initiatives and the training of executives, bringing focus to efforts that will deliver change the quickest. However, it doesn’t address the fact that even these short-term goals will inevitably require several years of course design and implementation before change is felt on the ground. Even upon completion, cyber security graduates have to adjust to practical workforce dynamics and it may take significant time for them to attain the knowledge and skills enabling them to truly add value to the industry.

Unfortunately, five years is a long time in the digital world and we must consider more near-term alternatives. The NISA includes an initiative to ‘support innovation through visas’ by attracting entrepreneurs from overseas with an attractive and simple pathway to Australian residency.  However, this policy is currently limited to ‘entrepreneurs with innovative ideas and financial backing from a third party.’ Australia should consider expanding this framework to include cyber security experts and professionals, in order to immediately address the serious need for a cyber-skilled workforce.

This global employment shift isn’t only about numbers but also gender representation. Women constitute only 10% of the global information security industry, actually dropping from 11% last year.

Despite paying lip service to this issue, the Strategy dedicates only one line to how it will address this problem. Unfortunately, the effort isn’t only short but vague. It promises to undertake ‘a range of integrated actions developed with the private sector and research community’, though no detail is offered on how or when this will be achieved. It should be noted that the NISA includes an initiative to increase opportunities for women in STEM, to the tune of $13 million over five years. However, that doesn’t explain the relative absence of relevant policy in this Strategy.

Australia’s new Cyber Security Strategy provides a strong platform for the improvement of Australia’s cyber workforce, complementing the existing NISA and private sector initiatives. However, speedy implementation, plans for immediate skills gaps, and a more articulate strategy for female participation would further improve the prospects of Australia’s future ‘cyber smart workforce’.