Building the Quad technology workforce pipeline and research relationships
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In this publication, Dr Miah Hammond-Errey explains why it is essential for the Quad members to add cooperation on STEM workforce issues to their critical and emerging technologies agenda.
Key points
- Maintaining a STEM workforce is a critical but often overlooked component of strengthening national critical technologies capabilities. Many areas require Quad alignment across complex domestic levers such as education, training and skills programs across the talent pipeline.
- Quad countries bring different and potentially complementary strengths to this challenge.
- The research relationships between Quad countries are under-developed, especially when compared to their research partnerships with China.
Policy recommendations
- Quad members should add – and indeed embed – cooperation on STEM workforce issues to their critical and emerging technologies agenda, across diverse pipelines and education and vocational pathways.
- They should create more incentives and infrastructure for joint research, especially on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cybersecurity.
- This effort should focus on under-developed relationships between Australia, India and Japan rather than these countries’ already strong relationships with the United States.
- There is scope to align national skills taxonomies, workforce and centre of excellence mapping so that we have common language and standards for the future technology workforce and can better leverage tech workforces.
About the series
This paper has been written for the Quad Tech Network Dialogue, as part of the Quad Tech Network (QTN) initiative. QTN is an initiative of the NSC, delivered with support from the Australian Government. It aims to establish and deepen academic and official networks linking the Quad nations – Australia, India, Japan, and the United States – in relation to the most pressing technology issues affecting the future security and prosperity of the Indo-Pacific.
