Role of Telecentres in Rural Development in Australia

Australia’s rural sector is experiencing a great crisis both economically and socially due to the prolonged drought and low commodity prices. Australian Government has been implementing various types of programs to adjust and revitalise the rural industries and communities. Recent developments of information and communications technologies offer a great opportunity to facilitate the rural adjustment and development process in Australia. However, it has been recognised that obtaining access to the new technology is often difficult for people in rural communities because they have much less opportunities to access to it compared with the urban counterparts. Therefore, Australia has been experimenting several programs to enhance information technologies (IT) in rural areas, such as Australia Telecom’s ‘Viatel and Elderslink’ system and ‘Agrinet’, ‘Computer Aided Marketing Service (CAM)’, ‘Global Information Links (GIL)’, etc. Among other things, telecottage concept has been focused on by government and communities. ‘Telecottage’(telecentre) is a new approach to rural development using the modern information technologies. The world first telecottage was set up in a small village in rural Sweden in 1985. The concept is “to assist rural communities overcome isolation from government and commercial services through the use of modern telecommunication technologies ”. The idea has been adopted by a number of countries around the world. Australia is one of those countries who has adopted the telecottage concept as a new tool for rural and remote regions development. In 1992, the Australian Federal Government commenced the Telecentres Program which aimed to assist rural and remote communities to establish and operate community facilities where all people could gain easy public access to computers and information technology for education, training and enterprise purposes. There are currently about 120 telecentres in rural Australia, with funding from a range of Federal, State, local government and community sources. The Australian Rural Telecentres Association has been formed at the national level to promote networking of these centres. The Australian model is said to be a multifaceted community type of program. Its objective is to provide all * To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: MHF03033@msn.com areas of the telecottage concepts such as communication and information access, distant education and training, local competitiveness and employment. Under the Federal program, initial cost for establishing the facilities are funded by the Government, but the responsibility to manage the centres is on the broadbased community groups that are formed at the beginning of the centres. All centres are required to be self-sufficient after a few years. Therefore, this program is not taking a traditional ‘top-down’ approach, but a ‘bottom-up’ approach emphasising community participation. It was reported that the telecentre model was most successful in communities which are able to work co-operatively to a common purpose. This paper will report the progress of the Australian telecentres, and discuss the roles, impacts and issues of telecentres in rural development in Australia.