Data on the digital economy in Tasmania: Report from the 2010 Tasmanian Innovation Census

The rollout of ubiquitous high speed broadband infrastructure via the National Broadband Network project will have potentially dramatic impacts on Australian businesses, in terms of presenting both increased opportunities and new competitive threats. There is a need to better understand how improved broadband infrastructure will impact on business innovation capabilities, activities and performance, and what types of policies and programs are required to maximise opportunities offered by ubiquitous access. This requires data and information on current business usage of the internet across all industry sectors, firm sizes and regions, and monitoring of changes over time. Although detailed data is available for business internet usage at the national level, there is a distinctive lack of state level data. The aim of this report is to present a set of baseline data and indicators on business internet usage in the Tasmanian economy, generated from the 2010 Tasmanian Innovation Census (TIC) databases. Though commentary is provided on tables and charts presented, extensive analysis of the data is not within the scope of this report. The first part of the report describes the methodology of the Census and presents some basic industry structure and business demographic data. The main part of the report presents the specific data and indicators derived from the 2010 Census questions on internet usage.