You cannot change a culture overnight but you have to try as if you could… It’s like pushing a rock uphill. You need strength, passion and persistence.12
To continue to innovate rather than stagnate, the Queensland Government now needs to focus on building the cultural infrastructure that underpins a Smart State. The 2005 Smart State Strategy points to the need for broader community engagement. ‘Government will use its influence to cultivate a confidence about the importance of knowledge, creativity and innovation to our future. This must occur at every level – as part of the education and training system, in Queensland’s small business as well as big business. The people who shape Queensland’s thinking share this responsibility for promoting the importance of knowledge, creativity and innovation in our lives.’13
At its best, community engagement creates space for dialogue between a citizen and a government that changes both of them. Developing a culture of knowledge, creativity and innovation will not be simple. The Queensland Government needs strategies that can facilitate cultural change by giving as much autonomy as possible to the community about change. Strategies that engage with communities in the Smart State need to accommodate diverse responses and forms of engagement.
The findings of this report are informed by the Queensland Government’s own strategic framework for community engagement. Government could continue to market its Smart State. It could do its marketing better and in a more targeted way. It could clarify misunderstandings, present positive images and eventually more Queenslanders might understand what it is trying to do. Or it could build on its communications and marketing approach and seek a deeper level of engagement in the Smart State, creating the cultural infrastructure that will lead many more Queenslanders to embrace a future where knowledge, creativity and innovation accompany sunshine and sport as key life values.
This report suggests that governments seeking a smart future ought to lead by example, valuing knowledge, innovation and creativity in their own business and providing smart services. The State Government should continue to be a champion of education and training and should continue to be the loudest voice advocating the need for Queensland to become smart. This is part of the Government’s challenge that it has already defined for itself - an ambitious vision to transform Queensland.
The Smart State Strategy has developed organically, starting as a bright idea and taking on momentum with each iteration. Education and industry sectors have been involved along the way in Smart State initiatives. So in many ways, the Government has worked with the segments of the population most likely to embrace the Smart State vision (education, research and industry leaders) and it may be that ownership among these groups will begin to filter through to other segments of the community. Feedback to date suggests that there is some ‘stickiness’ in community attitudes in Queensland, that the Smart State – the importance of education, knowledge and innovation to the future – has some traction now that is new and different.
More targeted communication that makes the concept of the Smart State relevant to a wider range of stakeholders will form a foundation for effective consultation and engagement. The development of a fully-integrated communication strategy along the lines outlined in the previous section will be fundamental to ensuring that the Government is successful in changing the cultural infrastructure of the state to deliver on its vision for the Smart State.
It needs to be clear in all communication that the Smart State is aspirational rather than descriptive of Queensland now (in the way the Sunshine State describes Queensland now). While the Queensland Government’s rhetoric for the Smart State makes clear that the Smart State is a vision of the future, mass marketing tactics like Smart State number plates describe a current situation not an aspiration. They will not sit comfortably with Queenslanders who don’t see Queensland as particularly ‘smart’ or who don’t like competing with other states (except in sport) and being ‘the’ smart state. The number plates read Queensland – the Smart State not Queensland – Getting Smart, or Thinking Smart. There is no sense of journey here, of Queensland – A Learner Smart State.
One difficulty of engaging the community in the Smart State is the perceived ownership by Government of the Smart State vision. It is always more difficult to engage people in a set of values they have had no role in developing. While the Government has made a number of attempts to engage with various communities, the perception remains that the Smart State is owned by the Government.
In addition, the Government needs to provide stories of what it means to live in a Smart State that connect more intimately with people in their everyday lives. Well publicised stories of smart heroes and heroines from all walks of life need to be provided on a continual basis. There is scope to engage the community more deeply in existing events such as the Government’s Smart Awards by introducing a People’s Choice award or e-voting. In this context it is important to ensure that the Government expands the focus of the Smart State to encompass other areas such as the arts and the creative industries. Recent advertisements about the new buildings on the South Bank cultural precinct are an important development along these lines that need to be built on in the future.
The Smart State would also benefit from being brought down to earth in a local community as more than rhetoric, preferably a local community that has been traditionally disenfranchised from decision-making.
With Queensland Government support and facilitation, such a community could devise its own version of smartness, its own priorities and indicators for being smart and implement a smart community strategy. One local community might have learnings that could be mapped across the State, on a community-by-community basis.
Two of the issues emerging from research on community views of the Smart State concern the extent to which Government itself is ‘smart’ and the perceived failure by the Queensland Government to solve some of the major issues facing the Smart State into the future.
Smart regions are characterised by smart governments which are exemplars of knowledge, creativity and innovation at work. Smart services will be the best advertisement for the Smart State. Some of the most critical issues facing the Smart State are providing health services to an aging population, particularly in rural and remote areas, and infrastructure and sustainability in the south east in the face of water shortages and rapid population growth. These issues would benefit from community engagement in solutions.
The recent announcement by the Government of a fibre optic network for Brisbane and eventually the state as a whole will be a significant step forward in both demonstrating leadership but also in providing people with a daily experience of what it means to live in a ‘Smart State’.
Yet, arguable the most important single initiative the Queensland Government could take to engage the community in the Smart State would be to work with all providers of education and training in order to build an education system from early childhood to later life that promotes innovation and lifelong learning, with high levels of participation by the broader community.
The Government has already embarked on a reform process of its own education business, introducing an extra school year, focusing on middle years and ensuring all young people are in learning or earning until they turn 17. However, much more could be done in order to have a smart statewide education system where every stage leads to development of the skills and attributes that make us innovators and entrepreneurs.