This weekend sees the opening of a global gathering of ICT executives, government officials and policy makers, who are meeting to share ideas on how ICT can drive economic growth, create jobs, overcome social exclusion and improve quality of life. (more…)
HP’s acquisition of Autonomy resurfaced the debate about foreign acquisition of UK tech companies. Although not difficult to find commentators who will tell you how these things always go wrong – the usual line is when times are hard the new parent reverts to type and to home turf – it could and should be a good move. It puts the powerful Autonomy sails on HP’s boat and gives Autonomy CEO Mike Lynch a hand on the HP tiller. It should bring more power, cash and reach to Autonomy and its management team. Indeed Mike Lynch has been setting out his vision for Autonomy in an interview this week and strongly makes the point that, “Autonomy will remain headquartered in Cambridge and all key R & D will remain in Cambridge.”
Yesterday’s post-riots debate in Parliament thrust the role of communications and social media into the spotlight, with suggestions that networks such as BBM should be closed down to prevent rioters communicating. Labour MP Tom Watson called the move “Luddite” and the users of social networking sites erupted in disbelief according to the FT. I was at an Arab IT conference in Damascus earlier this year just after the Egyptian’s closed down their networks. The “hands-off our network.” chatter here does bear a striking resemblance to the chatter there and across the Arab region at the time. But the reality is that things are different here. There is a wider understanding across much, if not most of society of the benefits we enjoy from fast, secure and private communications, and extensive use of social media; from getting a good picture of what’s going on in the street to organising clean-up parties. The Metropolitan Police is using its flickr pages to display images from the disturbances of people they want to identify and Sussex police has 30,000 twitter followers, up from 19,000 a month ago.
Intellect and the tech industry we represent have been working closely with the government since 7/7 to improve intelligence gathering in our connected world, always of course within the legal framework that society has decided it wants. I’d be surprised if, with years of experience of dealing with tech-savvy international criminal gangs and terrorists, the UK authorities need more powers and know-how to deal with communications between rioters. As for turning off the networks – well that really would be Luddite.
I’m currently in Australia visiting Intellect’s counterpart, the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA) and I’ve got some fascinating insights since my arrival here.
“G’Day.” (They really do say this – even in a business setting!). Jack, one of AIIA members, picked me up at Canberra airport after what seemed like a lifetime on three successive planes. “The bill’s being paid by AIIA?” queried the receptionist at Canberra’s smartest hotel as Jack helped me check in. “Yes”. “Including incidentals?” “Er… maybe not the Krug” Jack joked weakly, clearly nervous about the open cheque he was signing. Angus, Intellect’s Financial Director, would have been proud of him. Nice room, unpacked, now what? Sleep/run.. run/sleep? Opted for a short run on the ‘try to get on local time asap’ principle. I was told last night that Oz city maps are always bigger (or is that smaller) scale than UK. Which could explain why I ended up running for an hour – not 30 minutes as I’d planned.
On Sunday afternoon I had a briefing in AIIA’s office followed by drinks and dinner with Ann Steward and her colleagues and some AIIA board members, including Fujitsu who are generously sponsoring my trip.
The run/sleep strategy seemed to work as I began Monday fresh from a full night’s kip. Just as well as we visited two cabinet ministers and then had a two hour presentation and Q&A with a collection of CIOs and industry on our public sector programme.
The ministerial meetings were a revelation. Unfortunately the PM was busy and so couldn’t meet, something about a global economic crisis! But I did meet with the Australian equivalents of Stephen Carter (Stephen Conroy -The Digital Economy minister) and Alistair Darling (ish) (Lyndsay Tanner – the Finance Minster).
Both were very open and completely switched on to the role of technology in a modern economy and assured me the vision really started with the PM Kevin Rudd. I asked Stephen how he’d managed to persuade his ministerial colleagues to commit to spend A$43bn on a 100mb next generation network. In summary they were tossing billions on banks and car yards so why not into something that would put Australia in a good place for the future? A refreshingly forthright approach I think you’ll agree.
I was also interested to hear that the AIIA had also produced something similar to the ITIF report and Stephen said it arrived just at the right time to support the case. Lyndsay was full of praise for the Peter Gershon work and also talked about the web 2.0 pilots they are running. This is very similar to UK Power of Information work which they were very aware of.
A very enlightening first couple of days, and with more lunches and dinners on the agenda it looks like I’ll need to keep running! Tomorrow starts with coffee with the British High Commissioner and ends with a flight to Melbourne for another workshop with members on Wednesday – then repeated Thursday & Friday in Brisbane and Sydney. I’ll keep you posted.