[LINK] Are clueless politicians holding back IT?

Tom Worthington tom.worthington at tomw.net.au
Thu Nov 5 10:07:05 AEDT 2009


Stilgherrian wrote:
>... Are clueless politicians holding IT back?
> http://www.zdnet.com.au/insight/software/soa/Are-clueless-politicians-holding-IT-back-/0,139023769,339299345,00.htm

Rather than politicians knowing about IT, my priority would be for them
to have staff who know about it and can give them good advice. Also IT
people need to understand the political process and to be able to explan
how it relates to politics simply and quickly.

Politics is a brutal Darwinian process where the unfit are eliminated
quickly. If you want a politician to learn about IT, then you have to
convince them this will aid their survival.

Change is possible. In several Senate inquiries in the mid 1990s we were
able to introduce Senators and their staff to the Internet. The staff of
the Parliamentary Library were a great help with this.

>   1. The structure of the telco industry...

I would not wish a knowledge of the telco industry on anyone. ;-)

More seriously, if the politicians are discussing the structure of an
industry, then they need to be briefed on that by experts.

>   2. Units for measuring data and transmission speeds ...

This is a common problem even for experts. My Green ICT students
frequently get units of measure confused, with results wrong by orders 
of magnitude. I suggest they do common sense cross checks.

>   3. The strengths, weaknesses, achievable speeds ...

I spent a week travelling around Tasmania explaining broadband options
for Tasmania a few years ago:
<http://www.tomw.net.au/technology/it/broadband/>. This is very
complicated stuff. Ultimately it will come do politcs, not technology.

>   4. The one-sentence meaning of common jargon  ...

We can give them a glossary and also try not to talk in acronyms.

>   5. The broad development process of big IT projects ...

IT people have been lying to their clients for years about cost and
risks. It is therefore very difficult to be credible and also say that
you don't know what something is going to cost, or that it is going to work.

>   6. The meaning of open source and Creative Commons  ...

Creative Commons goes far beyond IT and is a very complex topic to
understand.

>   7. That the internet is not the web ... uses beyond ... porn.

We spent a whole Senate enquiry trying to explain that. You should try
it some time: <http://www.tomw.net.au/nt/vision.html>.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Lecturer, The Australian National University t: 02 61255694
Computer Science http://cs.anu.edu.au/people.php?StaffID=140274




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