The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet’s (PM&C) Critical Technologies Policy Coordination Office (CTPCO) has launched a program of stakeholder engagement activities for 2021, exploring current and emerging critical technologies to recognise those which will be key to Australia’s future prosperity.
Established in the PM&C in July of last year, the CTPCO provides coordinated whole-of-Government advice on technology developments, opportunities and risks, and recommends actions to promote and protect critical technologies.
PM&C said CTPCO’s stakeholder engagement would seek to understand the benefits and risks for Australia’s national interests across health, agriculture, banking and finance, energy and environment, communications, transport and logistics, as well as defence and defence industry.
“The current focus for CTPCO are the agriculture and health sectors, with ‘deep dives’ underway for the biotechnology and photonics critical technologies,” PM&C said.
“Stakeholder consultation for these focus areas will commence shortly and will be available on the CTPCO webpage,” it said.
PM&C said CTPCO had prepared a background paper on protecting and promoting critical technologies to help inform its stakeholder engagement.
In its paper, Protecting and Promoting Critical Technologies, CTPCO said the critical technologies were current and emerging with the capacity to significantly enhance, or pose risk to, national interests.
“Everyone has a role to play to ensure Australia can safely, securely and efficiently adopt critical technologies,” CTPCO said.
“Government has a role to play in assisting society, academia and businesses to build the right skills and acquire the necessary tools to manage their own risks,” it said.
CTPCO said those skills and tools would be essential to the efficient and effective adoption of critical technologies in a safe and secure manner.
The Department’s three-page paper Protecting and Promoting Critical Technologies can be accessed at this PS News link.
