This report recommends Australia and India leverage their bilateral partnership in cyber and critical technologies to support inclusive digital development in Southeast Asia, and strengthen the foundations of Southeast Asia’s digital economy.

The governments of Australia and India should take a more coordinated approach to their digital engagements with Southeast Asian countries, and further consider establishing a Joint Working Group on Digital Engagement to bring together like-minded partners.

Given that India and Australia face digital development challenges that are similar to Southeast Asia, an Australia-India spearheaded cooperation should be approached through a troika-type collaboration with Southeast Asian partners. This collaboration should look to address the region’s digital skills shortage, improve cyber resilience and contribute to digital public infrastructure. This requires a multi-stakeholder effort involving governments, the private sector, civil society and the technical community.

A priority area for additional support are efforts that enhance the digital knowledge and digital business skills of the Southeast Asian workforce. International initiatives should seek to augment or connect with existing local digital skilling programs. Specific areas of focus for Australia and India could include support to female digital entrepreneurship, and improvement of access to online courses and training to upskill MSMEs.

To improve cyber resilience operationally, Australia and India could strengthen and deepen relationships with Southeast Asia’s national cybersecurity agencies and national Computer Emergency Response Teams by exploring ways to share collective resources, expertise and experiences more effectively and more widely across each country’s economic sectors and non-metro areas.

At a strategic level, through the Australia-India Joint Working Group on Cyber Security Cooperation, the two countries could consider the possibility of sharing strategic assessments of the regional cyber threat landscape with Southeast Asian partners.

Finally, India and Australia should explore regional marketplaces for digital public goods and infrastructure which could offer further business incentives to digital, technology and cybersecurity communities in Australia, India and Southeast Asia.