When the anonymous civil servants who drafted the Data Protection Act (DPA) in 1998 set about their work, they were smart enough to realise that the world of computers was likely to evolve considerably.

Keeping the law up to speed with the pace of technological change was always going to be a challenge, and the principles-based approach that underpins the DPA has worked well. Precedents set through case law have allowed the Act to encompass technical developments ­ although Marks & Spencer’s challenge to the Information Commissioner’s enforcement of laptop encryption represents a new test.

But even such legal foresight was unlikely to have taken into consideration the internet, cheap storage, USB drives, broadband, social networking and all the data-intensive applications upon which modern business life depends.

So it is right to heed the calls for a review of the DPA that will see it through its next decade.

But today, law enforcement is not enough to securely protect data. A new DPA needs to go hand in hand with best practice IT management.

When the DPA came into force in March 2000, the article in Computing concentrated on the specifics of the new law and the challenges it posed for IT departments.

Any similar feature now would cover the legal aspects in just a few lines. The complexity of the IT protecting people’s personal information has increased exponentially. And with it, the awareness of identity theft and the potential for misuse of our data has grown in parallel.

Self-regulation and self-discipline are now just as important as legislation.

Every employee needs to be constantly reminded to protect corporate data as if it were their own. And processes such as information lifecycle management need to sit alongside all the security procedures necessary to treat our information with the care we each wish it to be handled.

A review of the law is timely. The review of your IT management practices should be constant.

The oldest and truest cliché about data privacy is that technology is both the problem and the solution.

This is the cleft stick in which the government finds itself when it comes to the use of information in the growing number of databases storing our personal details.

There have already been murmurings that ministers want to relax elements of the Data Protection Act to allow further cross-matching of data in different Whitehall systems.

Where such a practice has been put in place, there have been successes. For example, cross-referencing between visa applications and the police fingerprint database has led to the arrest overseas of people that committed crimes in the UK.

Perhaps the highest-profile example is the car tax disc web site, which combines information on MOT results and motor insurance details to deliver one of the better online public services.

But the downside of this cross-matching has privacy campaigners up in arms.

What might the government learn about each of us were it to piece together fragments of our lives scattered across disparate departmental databases?

The fundamental principle of data protection legislation is that personal data should only be used for the purpose for which it was originally recorded. Excessive cross-matching would be a clear and controversial infringement ­ but you can be sure the government will look for more situations where it can claim that the benefits outweigh the risks.

The difficulty will come from the fact that trust in the way government uses our data is at an all-time low. HM Revenue & Customs has been told in no uncertain terms that it must develop a culture of information security and data protection as the price of the failings that led to the loss of CDs containing 25 million child benefit records.

The rest of government needs to learn the same lesson ­ as do corporations. The potential benefits of information sharing, cross-matching and data mining are real ­ but the risk can only be justified when the right culture and processes are in place.

By this time next week you will almost certainly be fed up of hearing that Bill Gates is leaving Microsoft.

But you will forgive us, we hope, for marking his leaving in this column ­ – after all, Computing has written more words than most about the world’s biggest software company since it was formed.

Clearly Gates’s departure to focus on his charitable foundation and his new description as the world’s greatest philanthropist is a significant milestone.

When he shuts his office door for the last time, the man who has arguably done more than any other person to help create the technology revolution will be a technologist no more.

So goodbye Bill, and thanks for all the bugs.

History will undoubtedly be kinder to the Microsoft founder than his critics have been, and regardless of what anyone may think of the company’s dominance, his contribution has been without parallel.

The real issue for IT managers, though, is not Gates’ past, but Microsoft’s future.

Nothing will change when the great man walks away from the day job in Redmond.

The empire he built will not come crashing down overnight. The research labs will not be short of new ideas. But there are more question marks over the direction of the company than ever before.

Most experts see a steady decline in the importance of Windows as we know it ­ – an increasingly bloated operating system that drives ever-more energy-hungry computers. At some point there will have to be a fundamental rethink of its role.

MS Office, the great cash cow, similarly faces emerging competition from free rivals that may one day threaten its dominance of the desktop.

And Microsoft’s abortive attempt to buy Yahoo shows the company has still to determine its future shape as the world moves increasingly to the internet.

Nobody’s IT strategy will change because Bill Gates is no longer at Microsoft.

But future IT strategies are likely to take a very different approach to its products.

"Until high-speed connections are available, in even the remotest areas, then the benefits of broadband will be limited. We run the risk of social exclusion and the so-called digital divide.”

Now take a look at this story about next-generation broadband from this week's issue of Computing: Network deployment may open up digital divide

It would not be unreasonable to assume that comment was made in support of this week’s article. In fact, this quote was taken from a column published in Computing on 22 May 2002. Here we go again.

The move to a broadband Britain was a slow and at times painful process involving extensive finger pointing among BT, ISPs, content providers and government. But we got there; broadband is now an everyday part of the UK’s technology infrastructure ­ albeit with frustrations over speed and availability in some rural areas.

Nobody can doubt that the investments made by everyone involved in the industry were worthwhile, to reach the point where people are able to receive free broadband services as a perk of buying satellite TV or a mobile phone.

Entire industries already depend on broadband for their existence. There would be no iTunes, for example, no YouTube, no BBC iPlayer, to name just three of the most popular services enabled by high-speed communications to the home.

But still we have the same issues being debated as we enter the era of next-generation broadband.

There is no doubt that the economic case for ubiquitous 100Mbit/s connectivity will stand up to scrutiny. This is simply a must-have.

At government level, there needs to be a recognition that broadband infrastructure has become a critical national resource on which our future economic success depends.

Much of the support from Whitehall emanated from broadband champion Stephen Timms, but some of the momentum he generated seems to have been lost since his change of role in January.

Most of all, we must avoid a repeat of the finger pointing of 2002. Everybody wins from next-generation broadband, so everybody must play their part.

Are the arteries of the internet really in danger of becoming clogged up?

There has been much debate recently over the capacity of the internet to cope with the growing popularity of high-bandwidth services such as online video.

Some ISPs have been moaning in particular about the impact of the hugely successful BBC iPlayer -­ a complaint that has been received with derision from web users, not least those writing to Computing’s letters page (letters.computing.co.uk).

The irony is not lost on those who recall the early days of broadband, when ISPs accused content providers of doing too little to provide sites that would encourage users to upgrade from dial-up connections.

But now the father of web gurus, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has raised another arterial issue -­ that the problem is not too much content, but too much useless content.

Berners-Lee fears that the internet will lose credibility as a business and consumer tool because of the spread of false, misleading or simply annoying information ­ the web equivalent of spam for email. Would you really trust Wikipedia as a 100 per cent reliable source, for example?

All these debates are inevitable for what is, after all, a very young technology in terms of mainstream use. Barely 10 years ago the internet was unheard of outside of tech-savvy circles. Ten years after the car was invented, people still thought it necessary to walk in front of them waving a red flag to warn passers-by.

The reality is that the internet shows no signs of slowing down in either popularity or connectivity. The government and the telecoms industry are slowly waking up to the need to invest in next-generation broadband infrastructure. And the iPlayer demonstrates the benefit of providing quality content to the right audience.

There is no need for a healthcheck yet. IT leaders need to be aware of the issues under debate, but should not be deterred from investing in a future where information and connectivity are the lifeblood of business and government.