Government should force the IT industry to bridge the data divide

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.