It is extremely unlikely we will see any IT companies following the example of financial services firms and carmakers in begging for state handouts. But it is nonetheless encouraging that Gordon Brown seems to be aware of the role technology can and must play in rescuing the economy.

The prime minister has taken to talking in depression-era terms as he continues his bid to save the world – ­ oops – ­ the banking industry.

Brown has on more than one occasion over the past month drawn parallels between last century’s investment in roads and railways and a 21st century priority for building digital infrastructure. His latest proposals highlight high-speed broadband networks and promoting jobs in technology industries.

This is all good to hear – ­ but forgive us a little cynicism while we wait for the proof. Only last year, the government as good as ruled out any state funding for next-generation broadband – ­ although there are rumours that technology minister Stephen Carter’s forthcoming Digital Britain review will look to find ways to better support private sector investment.

And just how many times have we been through government-backed initiatives to persuade young people to opt for a career in IT, with precious little success?

As Computing has pointed out repeatedly over the past year, history proves that companies which invest in IT are best positioned to survive a downturn. In what many predict will be the worst economic crisis for a generation, the same is surely true of countries.

Having the political will to promote our digital economy is undoubtedly a good thing, but we need fresh ideas and real momentum to make it happen.

So thanks, Gordon, for putting IT at the heart of your plans. Now let’s see some tangible actions to back up the politics.

Data privacy is without a doubt one of the defining challenges of the digital age. For too long, the issue has been wrapped up in clichés around Big Brother and the surveillance society that provoke much argument but no proper debate.

The government, it seems, is only too willing to allow others to shout at each other and avoid any meaningful solutions while it continues its database-creating frenzy.

The regularity of stories revealing further areas where Whitehall’s creeping influence has grown over people’s information only serves to foster the image of a government that wants to use our data how it can, while it can. Our story this week that central government workers will have to hand over their bank details – ­ joining their counterparts in local authorities – ­ is another example.

The government has genuine reasons to want all this information, and it is easy to build a justification around crime reduction, better public services and lower costs. Yet too often it shoots itself in the foot by losing data or over-reaching itself.

The European Court of Human Rights last week put the national DNA database firmly into the latter category, ruling that two British men who were arrested but not convicted of crimes should have their records removed from the system, stating that the UK government “had overstepped any acceptable margin”.

Next year a new Information Commissioner will be appointed, and he or she will take on the role in a very different environment from the one in which the present holder, Richard Thomas, started. More than ever, this increasingly high-profile position needs to be held by someone who will champion the privacy of the individual.

The only long-term solution is to give back control of data to the people who own it ­ – and that is us. Emerging privacy-enhancing technologies will help to make this happen.

With that firmly in mind, it is time for the government to lead the privacy debate, to make itself a beacon for responsible use of our information, and not to grab as much data as it can before more people resort to the law to prevent it.

For those unfamiliar with the UK and its pleasant pastures seen, the changes being introduced this week will pass unnoticed. Indeed, for the vast majority of Britons, the fact that foreign nationals who apply for residency will now be required to apply for identity cards may also pass unseen. But this is an important change, and one with which no Briton can be entirely comfortable.

For too long, this government has been wed to the idea of introducing identity cards, without elucidating a clear argument for so doing.

This paper has consistently argued that some form of standardised electronic personal identity management system would be invaluable to citizens, and their desire to safeguard online and physical transactions, without compromising their rights to privacy.

Yet the ham-fisted attempts to first impose an ID card on a sceptical public, followed by the latest ruse to sneak it through the back door, have undermined the project. The government’s lamentable record on looking after personal data has heightened public concerns about ID cards.

It could -­ and should -­ have been so different. Consumers are becoming more attuned to the importance of identity in this digital world. The technologies that may help protect individuals and provide a robust identity, such as biometrics, are gaining acceptance.

The use of biometric readers, such as fingerprint scanners, even iris readers, are no longer the preserve of James Bond movies. They have become a workaday part of many of our lives.

As is so often the case with government IT projects that go awry, it is not the technology that is to blame, but the quality of leadership. So even if the deployment of ID cards passes off without a hitch, the scheme is fundamentally flawed because of a lack of public support and the perverse decision to ignore the recommendations of the Treasury-commissioned Crosby study.

It is a shame that for some senior government figures it appears to be more important to dogmatically pursue this cause, rather than take the time to build a system in which we can all believe. It is not yet too late to introduce a workable system for identity management, but it is looking increasingly unlikely that it will happen.

Do politicians actually take the technology sector and the IT profession seriously?

Last week, new business secretary Peter Mandelson announced that ministerial responsibility for IT is to be split across three different people in his departmental team.

Communications, technology and broadcasting minister Stephen Carter, who is also a minister in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, has responsibility for “electronics and IT services” as well as “communications and content industries”, covering most IT companies as well as ISPs and web media companies.

Employment relations and postal affairs minister Pat McFadden is now in charge of “transformational government” issues, although only as they relate to business. The transformational government strategy itself remains the responsibility of the Cabinet Office, under Tom Watson.

Economic and business minister Ian Pearson’s portfolio includes waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) issues, including compliance with the WEEE directive. However, these laws are policed by the Environment Agency, which reports through the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

Confused? You should be.

The IT sector is the second most productive in the UK economy, worth a huge £66.5bn in 2006.

And its contribution of 6.4 per cent of GDP is less than a single per cent behind the financial services industry ­ and given the current turmoil in that sector, IT might edge ahead soon.

But it is not just government. The rhetoric from the recent party conferences was all about scrapping IT projects and cutting spending. No one talked about the critical role technology can and must play in improving public services and making government more efficient and cost effective.

Is it any surprise that IT skills and resources are being offshored? Or that the IT profession is struggling to recruit the 140,000 new entrants it is forecast to need every year for the next five years? It is already past the time that IT is given the priority it deserves in government.

Watching the government grappling with the concept of social media is the online equivalent of dads dancing at a wedding reception: an embarrassment to all. And Whitehall mandarins do not even have the excuse of alcohol consumption.

That is not to decry the efforts of those such as MP Tom Watson, who is championing a Web 2.0 agenda. Nor is it to dismiss the government’s aim, which is to engage with the significant proportion of the UK who feel disenfranchised by the political system.

But current efforts look doomed to fail.

In future, the way citizens interact with the state will change and the internet will be an integral part of that. So it is absolutely right that government starts planning for those changes.

But the root of the problem is this: bureaucracies, particularly this government, have an uncontainable desire to centralise control. This is the antithesis of the social media movement, which engages people through empowering them to make their own decisions.

The success of Facebook, Bebo, MySpace - or Netmums and NHS Choices - has been predicated on building active communities around shared interests. This should be fertile ground for public services.

But social networking lets users decide how they wish to use the platforms. If they want to know the hottest widget, their peers advise them.

Similarly, if a parent wants to find a decent school in their neighbourhood, the state can provide guidance on facilities and even transport links. That could be extremely valuable. Allowing others to add their views would increase the value, but would bureaucrats allow it?

For an administration that has made a specialism out of funnelling money to consultants, it beggars belief that there is a shortage of advice. But therein lies a dilemma ­- if the government genuinely wants to engage with citizens, it is not consultants that can tell them how to do it, but the people themselves.

The chances of that happening are more remote than UK fathers suddenly discovering they really do know how to “bust a few moves”.

It is good to see so many vested interests discussing the prospects for next-generation broadband in the UK.

The announcement of Ofcom’s latest consultation is an important milestone, and will, hopefully, allow all parties involved to debate the way forward without much of the finger pointing and acrimony that characterised the early days of broadband Britain back in 2001-02.

But given the wider economic crisis, there has to be a question mark over the plans to put the UK at the forefront of high-speed communications.

With estimates of a capital cost of up to £28bn to roll out a UK-wide infrastructure supporting bandwidth up to 100Mbit/s, the likelihood of massive private sector investment is small, certainly in the short term.

With the cost of credit so high as the banking system struggles for liquidity, the payback period for such a major initiative starts to become prohibitive. And there is little chance of government funding to make it happen.

As the Broadband Stakeholder Group points out, this presents an opportunity for smaller-scale initiatives for local fibre networks, a model pursued with some success on the continent.

But even then, with venture capital markets turning away from early-stage technology startups, it’s not a great time for any IT entrepreneur looking for cash.

This is just another example of how the clogged financial arteries will have a knock-on affect in the technology world. It’s already apparent that major IT vendors are starting to talk about optimising IT and making the most of your estate, rather than trying to push costly new products.

It’s too early to say whether or not the attempts to bail out Wall Street will be enough to minimise the knock-on effects. And when we see Microsoft planning the biggest share buyback in history to boost its stock price, it’s clear that even the most successful players are bracing themselves for a difficult period.

There has rarely been a time when smart ideas and cost-effective innovations will be more important to the prospects for the IT sector and for broadband Britain.

It is impossible to separate the turmoil in the financial services sector from the prospects for IT professionals.

The finance industry is the biggest spender on technology, and the biggest private sector employer of IT experts, both full-time and contractors.

The personal concerns for those working for banks and other firms caught up in the crisis hitting the City and Wall Street are obvious ­- among the thousands expected to be laid off there will inevitably be IT staff affected.

But the unravelling of the financial markets threatens to have long-lasting implications.

The merger plans for Lloyds TSB and HBOS highlight IT consolidation - of systems and staff ­- as one of the key objectives. Lloyds TSB is a major user of offshore outsourcing -­ a move that is only likely to accelerate to ease the integration challenges it faces.

Even for those firms that are surviving the crisis, there will be pressure to cut budgets, and the lure of low-cost overseas resources will be hard to resist.

Lehman Brothers, meanwhile, spent $1.14bn (£624m) on IT last year ­- then last week sold two US-based datacentres to Barclays for $1.45bn.

There will be quite a bit of used kit turning up on eBay ­- or its business equivalent ­at this rate.

A look back at what happened to Sun Microsystems after the dot com crash earlier in the decade offers an example. All those failed e-commerce businesses that bought Sun servers sold them off as nearly new on the second-hand market, and the vendor’s sales plummeted.

IT suppliers that rely heavily on financial services customers will closely review their sales forecasts ­- some sort of hiccup seems inevitable.

But in difficult economic times it is important to remember ­- and to remind senior business executives -­ that the evidence of past downturns shows that those who make smart use of innovative technology will be the ones who come out strongest.

It is not an easy time for anyone in the finance sector, but IT leaders must step up and demonstrate that their teams are central to survival.

It is the government’s favourite response to any inquest into the failure of a major IT project:­ “We have learned the lessons”.

Not surprisingly, such a response elicits cynicism from those who have heard it all before. And when the IT failure in question is the Child Support Agency (CSA) ­ arguably the most catastrophic example of its kind in recent years ­ it is difficult to disagree.

Nevertheless, as we have charted in the pages of Computing for some time, there are plenty of examples of how Whitehall has gone out of its way to learn from its mistakes ­ and is still doing so.

The creation of the Office of Government Commerce and its Gateway review process has helped bring a high degree of rigour to the monitoring of IT projects and negotiations with suppliers ­ although it is not infallible, and there have still been examples of red lights left ignored.

The recruitment of experienced private-sector IT leaders into the top chief information officer roles in government has succeeded in bringing greater professionalism to IT management across the public sector. And better career paths, training and skills development are helping to improve the quality of the work delivered by civil service IT staff.

So if there was ever a project that should serve as a model for how such practices have successfully been put in place, it has to be the impending CSA replacement.
The Department for Work and Pensions has listened to criticism from the National Audit Office and others and is taking much closer control of system development.

But it will be little consolation to the single-parent families that have suffered as a result of the appalling service provided by the CSA in the past. The memory of the genuine hardship caused to so many must act as a motivation to get it right this time.

Public-sector IT cannot be distanced from the citizens it exists to serve, and a dose of realism should help to eliminate the threat of bureaucratic complacency.

Some things, unfortunately, never seem to change.

Yet again, the number of UK schoolchildren studying IT or for computing exams fell this year, even though we have undoubtedly the most technology-friendly teenage generation ever.

But we are not alone ­ Intel chairman Craig Barrett last week bemoaned the state of technology education in the US. Barrett pointed out that in fast-emerging economies such as China and India, there is a premium on engineering and technology teaching, and a student enthusiasm unmatched in the West.

Many in the IT industry say the problem comes from a lack of computing teachers, rather than the attitudes of children. For any subject, the enthusiasm and motivation of the teacher is key to students’ success ­- and there is a widely held perception that there are simply not enough IT teachers with the ability to enthuse their class.

In how many schools is the computing teacher an expert in another subject, such as maths, corralled into taking the IT class?

The difficulty is that this is a tomorrow problem for a today-obsessed government. The knock-on effect of a lack of technology education now will not hit home for another decade at least. In the short term, there is little chance that the target of 140,000 new entrants into the IT profession every year for the next five years will be met ­- and the UK’s technological capability will suffer.

There are, unfortunately, no immediate solutions ­ but we need a concerted effort from government and the IT profession to reverse the continuing decline in student numbers.

For the advocates of the NHS National Programme for IT, working on the project must feel rather like being part of an unfinished Rolf Harris painting: “Can you see what it is yet?”

Amid all the criticisms of the ambitious £12.7bn scheme, the one defence that has for so long been unavailable is real-life experience.

So it must be with great relief that Connecting for Health, the agency delivering the programme, is starting to see some live working examples of the technology in action.

Computing’s behind-the-scenes tour of Homerton hospital in London shows what a difference IT is beginning to make for the health service.

Rapid access to information at the fingertips of medical staff, improved communications and digital imaging are all contributing to better patient care.

Of course, this doesn’t take away from the many challenges that remain ­ not least the use of electronic patient records that sits at the heart of the programme and is suffering from the worst over-runs.

There will be more mistakes made. There will be further delays, and some hospitals will inevitably encounter problems as they go live on new applications.

The goal must be to get it right first time every time -­ but don’t be surprised if that is not always the case. The test will be whether the contingency measures are in place when needed.

Do not forget the scale of the challenge -­ this is the largest non-military IT project in the world.

There have been, and will continue to be, judgement calls made along the way that some will not agree with, and those critics will be vocal and undoubtedly louder than the advocates.

The final result may not even be the same as it is currently envisaged; there may well be further changes needed to ensure success, some of which will be pragmatic, some enforced.

But the vision of a technology-enabled NHS fit for the 21st century is worth the wait.