Government should force the IT industry to bridge the data divide

The IT industry in its rush to bring faster, better and "more robust" product to market has ignored the impact of the so-called "data divide" where one group of people is considered "IT-aware" and the other group is considered "not aware".

This "not aware" group essentially comprises the public at large including professionals in many fields who have had little or no exposure to IT in the course of their careers and home life.

Many of us may consider this almost unheard of. Some may even consider the phenomenon of "IT-unaware" people as "not possible". After all, we are reading this article on an Internet-capable device and most of this group would probably consider doing without their PC or laptop and/or PDA a parlous state of affairs.

Yet this "data divide" is now having such an effect that it is causing considerable suffering in society and a noticeable loss to the economy.

Consider first the inter-personal side of the human dimension. How tolerant are you when attempting to explain how some of your information reaches its destination when speaking to an IT illiterate person (a sadly pejorative term)? How tolerant are you when trying to explain to this same person the benefits of research on the Internet as an almost limitless repository of information?

In most such cases, one party has the appearance of an ardent zealot of almost messianic proportions and the other party has a glazed look whilst muttering something about needing to immediately talk to someone else or needing to refresh their beverage.

All this angst occurs at just the interpersonal level. What cost is this discomfort (to the individuals concerned and society per se) including the inevitable distancing of persons whenever the subject of IT raises itself - usually instigated by the zealots?

Sadly, most of us who are attuned - albeit reluctantly - to today's demanding work and social norms will dismiss this aspect of "the divide" as trivial and "passing" but I suggest otherwise. Further study should not only continue to highlight but also quantify the cost to society of this.

Second, consider the impact of IT on all persons throughout their daily lives. That is, does anyone really care what impact IT has on the human soul or spirit considering that humans are exposed to some aspect of IT almost every minute of every day? Whether in the kitchen, commuting to work, or at work, microchips and IT control our day.

Again, this aspect of our tech-riddled "brave new world" is usually trivialised by the assumption that this is now the norm. How good for us is this vaunted progress?

History has shown us that a head-long and hasty dash down one path without suitable planning can have its negative consequences e.g. colonialisation, the early parts of the industrial revolution, the highly questionable benefits of "the nuclear age", allowing pharmaceutical companies to patent certain parts (if not all) of genome sequencing and, no doubt, more to follow.

At the risk of inviting mutterings such as "it has ever been thus" referencing the human condition and its insistence on progress via the painful method of trial-and-error, if there was ever a time for justifiable interdiction, it is now. In this information age the majority of our working day is preoccupied with data (information) manipulation as the mechanism for getting things done.

Farmers still grow product but the "growth" process is regulated by IT e.g. computers assist in land usage planning, grain and livestock inventory monitoring, planting seasons, when to rotate crops, etc. Manufacturers still "make" things but shop floor and process control is by computer, robot assembly is computer controlled, inventories and distribution are computer assisted.

In the service industries survival is simply not possible without IT e.g. office productivity tools (word processing, spreadsheets, databases, etc.) and accounting systems are mandatory. From primary through to tertiary industries, all are significantly reliant upon IT.

What of those left behind ? Economists and sociologists have long been predicting the serious impact of the baby-boomers (and their immediate followers) nearing retirement age. Those of that era who remain gainfully employed will see out their productive days in gainful employment (IT assisted or not). Those who have "fallen by the wayside", another sadly pejorative phrase usually attributed to those who have not "kept up", are costing economies serious money by way of unemployment benefits and health care for idleness-related maladies such as depression, obesity and more.

The so-called "bottom-line" to this problem of the "data divide" is that the IT industry did not bring society along with itself as it continued on its head-long dash down the now near-supersonic information highway.

The IT industry's own immaturity and petulance can best be exemplified by its reluctance to provide a steady growth of well-trained personnel not only for its own needs but also the commercial world.

The last two decades have seen the growth of HR agencies gleefully poaching experienced IT personnel and simply moving them around the same ever-needy companies in a costly game of musical chairs. The only winners in this game are the HR companies. The IT industry, the recipient companies and society in general have been the losers because the cost of these merry-go-round personnel has reached an artificially high level due to the growth in their demand and no significant new supply of trained personnel.

So where are we now? We have a significant portion of society essentially IT-unaware, we have a group of IT-aware personnel who are costing industry far beyond their worth, and, indeed, society in general by way of higher eventual cost of goods and services. One has only to follow econometricians' and statisticians' findings in the last decade to see how much the cost of production/provision of goods and services has increased. That is, the increase is the result of artificially high salaries and the lack of supply of suitably IT-qualified personnel.

The "data divide" has further exacerbated the gaps between rich and poor or adequately-paid and underpaid with a lack of real wage growth for the IT-unaware.

The result is that quality of product suffers, unemployment levels become more volatile (staff lay-offs continue at an ever-increasing rate as a cost-cutting measure), profits shrink, federal and state governments scurry around looking for solutions but usually only find and provide excuses (they seem to be excelling at this task of late) with no real and positive contributions.

How do we fix this problem? That is, how do we lessen this divide? Natural attrition will account for some but I suggest that the real solution is to give ready and no-cost access to training in IT to all those falling on the wrong side of the divide e.g. young school-leavers and the "tail-end" workforce (age 45+).

Of course, this solution costs. The main reason for this cost is the proprietarised nature of the IT world as indicated by a preponderance of popular software from the few suppliers who have achieved significant market share. These suppliers insist on pricing their software at a level way beyond their real worth. One has only to view the cost of these suppliers' shares as indicative of this phenomenon.

Common-use or daily-use software such as word processors, spreadsheets, databases, presentation packages and universal-style accounting packages should all be free-to-market software products. If all of these are to be combined with an open platform (no cost) operating system, we would be well on the way to helping society minimise the great "divides" of our time e.g. the data divide, the rich/poor divide, haves/have-nots divide, etc.

With the cost of acquiring appropriate systems being significantly lower, more training facilities could become available to those in need.

The self-evident ramifications of this proposal are that a major portion of the unskilled workforce would certainly be converted to being somewhat skilled, their "useability" to industry would be more appealing and whilst their salaries may not necessarily increase, at least the unemployment rate might become lower which will indirectly affect health care costs and lessen the need for government services. Society per se also wins.

Moves are afoot with these goals in mind. A few PC manufacturers made attempts at bundling the Lotus office productivity package some years ago as a no-cost item in the purchase of a PC. Mr. Linus Torvalds brought on-line the Linux operating system (an offshoot of the Unix operating system) which is becoming increasingly popular, and made it freely available to anyone interested. A significant portion of the tools needed to appear on and surf the world-wide-web (Internet) can be freely downloaded.

A pattern can now be discerned whereby we are lurching haltingly in the right direction but personally, I would prefer our arrival at a better alternative much earlier than later. Continued insistence on self-regulation by those with vested interests is clearly not for the greater good. Interdiction is not only justified but necessary.