There is no doubt that the government should be ashamed of itself.

Regardless of the chancellor’s claim that procedures were not followed, the HMRC lost disks affair is inexcusable at every level. Unencrypted data? Wholesale downloading of databases? Uncontrolled access by junior staff? Each question is more staggering than the last.

But, however tempting, one department’s shambles must not be allowed to turn into a kneejerk reaction against technology.

There are clearly lessons to be learned.

Data handling practices in public and private organisations alike must be more transparent and subject to greater scrutiny.

And even the general public has responsibilities. As digital data sources mushroom, individuals will need to take more informed control of their personal information.

Better information sharing has major benefits ­cutting costs, speeding up glacial bureaucracy, avoiding duplication ­ and it is critical to the joined-up services that the government is so often criticised for not providing.

Interestingly, at the House of Commons Home Affairs committee hearing on the “surveillance society” last week, much of MPs’ censure was for too few joined-up systems, rather than too many.

There are dangers. And we must take them seriously. Though the extension of the Information Commissioner’s powers announced by the prime minister last week is to be welcomed, the changes do not go far enough. To focus minds proportionately, data protection violations should be made a criminal offence.

But ill-informed parallels between the HMRC affair and every other public sector IT scheme are unconstructive. And the unthinking assumption that government databases are an unalloyed danger is as reductive as it is absurd.

To echo Alistair Darling, the lost disks are indeed “an extremely serious failure”. But they should be used as a guide to the issues that need attention, rather than as an excuse to pretend that we either can, or want to, avoid progress.

The Cabinet Office’s Flex programme has significant potential.

Although only the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills (Dius) and the Office of National Statistics have signed up so far, as many as 20 public sector organisations are considering it.

The 2,000-employee agency tipped to be joining imminently will take it near, if not over, the 10,000 threshold where the price for everyone drops by 20 per cent.

And if take-up passes the 100,000 specified in the framework ­ which is not out of the question, particularly if the deal proves attractive to local councils ­ the cost implications are truly significant.

Much is riding on Flex. Public sector budgets are tight, and shared services are crucial for plans to cut public sector IT spend by a fifth and desktop costs by 40 per cent.

The programme’s structure is breaking new ground. As costs come down, for example, existing users will get a rebate, and a customer board will decide whether the windfall goes back to departments or is re-invested.

But Flex’s success is not simply a matter of innovative contracts; or even of addressing the cultural silos that bedevil joined-up government schemes. Above everything else, the technology itself will have to work.

After months of careful design work, the specification of the standard platform is agreed and will go into testing in February, for rollout to the Cabinet Office’s 2,500 employees  between March and June.

But the timetable is awfully tight. The Dius deal signed this week expects rollout to start next summer, and it is likely many “warm” organisations will wait to see what happens with the early adopters before they commit.

There are many lessons to be learned from problematic government IT. But for Flex the most important will be about the relationship between the customer and the supplier.

It will need to be a triumph of clear communication. Get that right, and that significant potential may start to be realised.

To say that globalisation is everywhere may seem tautological, but the statement is not as simplistic as it appears.

Clearly, national distinctions are less relevant as business goes global. But the shift from bulk offshoring of low-level processes, to Indian firms such as HCL pitching themselves as “innovation partners” (Rising costs force India to shift focus to partnerships) is taking the principle to the next level.

HCL is right. As geographic differences are eroded, so businesses can make more complex choices about where to get what they need.

Liverpool Victoria’s decision to ditch its monolithic £160m, 13-year deal with EDS in favour of multi-sourced services managed by an in-house team (Insurance firm cancels £160m EDS contract) can be viewed in the same light.

As can EMI turning to the financial services industry to learn how to handle the revolutionary change affecting the music business (EMI tunes up digital strategy).

Just as business is increasingly geographically dispersed, so the business of business is becoming more universal.

The result is that lessons can be learned, expertise shared and problems innovatively managed on a piecemeal basis ­ one solution from another supplier, one from a different industry, and one from another country.

There is an untold wealth of opportunities, both in terms of new markets to be exploited and of new routes around old obstacles. But the skills required are subtly different.

Some may complain that memory recall is suffering: phone numbers are all kept in mobile phones, and schoolchildren no longer rote-learn poetry.

But to access those phone numbers requires an understanding of structured menu systems. And children need to develop advanced search skills to find what they want amid the morass of available information.

Similarly, IT managers no longer need to know all the answers. What they do need is to be adept at looking out across Thomas Friedman’s “flat world” and seeing where a creative solution might be found.