Hard-hitting IT columnist Simon Moores gives his personal take on
the hot issue of the day.I counted six men standing by the police
car on the hard shoulder. Whether there were any more unexpected
passengers inside the French truck I couldn't tell, as my Harley
Davidson, with noisy indifference, thundered past the little group
on the way down to my home in North Kent.
Four hundred yards from my window overlooking the sea there's a
long patch of rough grass under the cliff. At the moment, living in
three cheap bell tents, surrounded by cardboard boxes, there's a
family with two children.
Whether they know about the £3bn that the Chancellor is making
available for government IT projects is irrelevant because I would
guess that they lie as far as it's possible to go on the wrong side
of the Digital Divide without actually falling into the sea in
front of their pathetic home.
Last Friday, one of our readers telephoned me to ask if I might be
hiring IT people. "Sorry," I said, "I can't think of anyone who is
at the moment, quite the opposite in fact."
"Well, I survived the recession of 1991 and, with luck, I'll
survive this one," he replied. "But it's strange that it seems to
be kept so quiet, the recession, that is."
So what's my point? The men in the back of that truck want work and
I'm sure that the father of the two small children on the seafront
does as well. And our reader? Well he's had work, lost work and is
looking for it again.
If you listen to the Government, then IT skills are
the way
to guarantee your future. Certainly, we all need to know how to use
a PC and the Internet and VCR and the Sky remote but those aren't
true IT skills. Even if you have "real" technology skills, finding
and keeping a job isn't as easy as it was ten years ago.
What would the result be, I wonder, when that £3bn has been spent
and perhaps another £3bn is granted on top before the next election
- public sector projects invariably overrun? We will have built our
IT equivalent of the Dome, but what then?
As a nation - and I don't just mean Greater London - will we
suddenly become a knowledge economy where the trains run on time?
When the efficiencies promised by Oracle, or Microsoft, or Sun
finally transform the public sector, where will all the people go
and where will all the jobs be? In IT? Somehow I don't think
so.
From where I sit, as cynical as you might expect, I see an IT
sector that is thinning out dramatically and a manufacturing sector
that's dying on its feet.
Somewhere in between lies the grand promise of a future place in
the evolving knowledge economy and throwing money at huge public
sector IT projects is supposed to jump-start the process.
But like the child in the fairytale of The King's New Clothes, I
have an awkward question. Has anyone given any sensible thought to
what happens if, like the Dome, the great plan swallows the money
and the result is an expensive disappointment?
And what is a job in the Knowledge Economy anyway, and how well
does it translate into Albanian?
What do you think?
Can IT revive job prospects?
Let us know with an e-mail >>CW360.com
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Please state if your answer is not for publication.ZentelligenceSetting the world to rights with the collected thoughts and
opinions of the futurist writer, broadcaster and Computer Weekly
columnist Simon Moores.