Government support for IT

We became aware during the Bombardier/Boeing dispute that, though Bombardier did receive support from the Canadian government (and to a lesser extent from Northern Ireland), Boeing also benefits from grants and subsidies from federal, state and even local government. This is in addition to the virtually guaranteed contracts from the Department of Defense.

It was a pattern which is familiar to me from my time in government IT. In the 1960s, the US railed against European (including UK) government procurement policies which favoured native firms. The Americans eventually succeeded with Margaret Thatcher and Michael Heseltine abandoning home preference for government IT contracts. It was even received wisdom that a key contract had been reserved for a US firm. IBM (in particular) supported by huge US defence and administration contracts cleaned up, against the relatively poorly capitalised British IT companies.

Also emasculated in the Keith Joseph-inspired "reforms" was the National Computing Centre, set up under Harold Wilson (one of the few practical results of his call for a "technological revolution") to stimulate the application of IT to business and government and to set standards. (My one and only post-secondary paper qualification is a Certificate in Systems Analysis issued by the NCC.)

As an article in the New European points out,

Silicon Valley [would not] be what it is today without extensive Government support. According to a study by Brookings Institution, 18 of the 25 biggest breakthroughs in computing tech between 1946 and 1965 were funded by the federal government. The US government began schemes to encourage venture capital (ie risky) investing as early as 1958.

 Games programming is all very well, we are good at it and it requires few non-market incentives, but we also need strategic thinking. The ability to analyse, plan, make sensible forecasts and marry the right technology to schemes has been lacking from many public projects over the last generation, a recent example being Universal Credit. There is also a need to fund research which will have no direct commercial benefit but could pay off in the long run, as the Americans have done.

I would urge the Chancellor and BIS to go beyond the narrow remit of providing specialist computer science teachers for the National Centre for Computing which was announced in the budget speech. It needs to provide strategic IT support for industry, especially SMEs, and for government as the former NCC did.