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Leader: Why politicians can't ignore IT
It's about more than bits and soundbites

By silicon.com

Published: Wednesday 31 May 2006

It's nearly a month since Tony Blair's latest reshuffle and finally the last of the lucky ministers in charge of IT policies has been revealed.

It's unlikely the decision has been delayed by ministers fighting each other for the privilege of being responsible for IT. More likely there's been a long game of musical chairs with the losers being landed with technology.

To be honest, the achievements of the last group of politicians to fill these roles are hardly such stuff as begets statues on Whitehall.

It's not surprising - technology is usually the last thing to be tucked into their briefs. And most politicians know that IT in government does one thing: go wrong.

A reputation for presiding over IT disasters is hardly the sort of thing any politician keen to climb the greasy pole will want to have dragging them back down.

This is why most of the ministers try to avoid doing much with the high-tech bits of their beat, mostly only popping up when they have to because things have already gone wrong.

There are some exceptions of course - such as when the government really wants to persuade the public that they do know what they are doing with IT. Which usually ends up a bit like watching your dad dance - embarrassing.

For example, at the Home Office, ministers have spent a lot of time trying to persuade us that ID cards aren't a terrible idea, and that the IT will be a success, even though many people believe the opposite.

It makes one think that politicians keeping their noses out of IT projects is the best thing. There isn't much they need to do for IT at the moment, right?

Wrong. Reviving the Home Computing Initiative and improved tax breaks for companies investing in IT would be just a start.

There are actually lots of really important decisions - such as the introduction of ID cards, or satellite-based road pricing, or NHS modernisation - that are only achievable through the use of cutting-edge tech.

And some of these - ID cards in particular - raise serious civil liberties issues which only become visible when you look at what the systems can do. For instance, just because it becomes possible to link an ID card to digital CCTV, does that mean we should allow it?

We're not expecting ministers to start coding or building their own PCs. But they need at the very least to be able and willing to look at the broadest implications of the systems they introduce.