So far this week I have had two stories come in that have taught me a lot about how the State sees IT. Firstly was a speech by CEO of Microsoft Ireland, Paul Rellis, who said that of the 200,000 or so computers expected to be junked by business this year, only 2,000 will get picked up by a second user.
Rellis has been talking, with no small amount of conviction, for a while about the state of IT in schools. The argument goes that if we want to live in a knowledge economy then we have to learn about the tools that will get us there. Simple yes?
Apparently not. This year saw not only the disappearance of €250 million ‘ringfenced’ for new computers in schools but the support teachers allocated for IT in the classtroom have been reassigned. So we have no funding, no teachers and no curriculum of skills students can comfortably expect to have mastered come the Leaving.
With the State now pre-occupied with propping up the banking system, it’s a safe bet Government will be talking lots about knowledge and doing very little about attaining it. This leaves it to industry to fill in the gaps the State can’t afford to. And the solution is quite ingenious.
According to Rellis, the simple answer to a lack of PCs in the classroom is to recondition a larger portion of the balance of 198,000 machines about to hit the recycle centre. It’s a great idea, why not do it?
You can argue about financial panic and systemic inertia all you like and you would be right. But here’s part two:
According to a report just issued this afternoon, only 3 out of 15 government departments have encrypted their compters to protect their data from theft. This is despite numeroud reports this yea rof data losses in the UK, and figures revealing that 900 laptops are lost in Heathrow airport every week, that thousands of Bank of Ireland customers had their banking details potentially exposed following the disappearance of four laptops. One would think the message is getting around to secure any and all data of a confidential nature. You would think.
What comes out of these storie, when put end on end, is that government has no handle on IT whatsoever. It doesn’t know how to get value for money, it doesn’t know how to protect itself and it doesn’t know how to direct its staff to do so.
It boils down to one fact: Technology moves fast, institutions don’t.
Incidently, one Irish voluntary organisation, Camara, is working to refurbish computers for sending on to Africa, where children are being taught how to use and upgrade their computers.
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