InformationWeek

November 13, 2000

My Two Cents:
As Surreal As The Election

Neither presidential candidate gave sufficient wattage to technology growth and development

Brian Gillooly he most overused word of the past week had to be "surreal." If it wasn't such an apt characterization of the events surrounding this historic presidential race, I'd probably feel my abdomen tighten if I heard it used again. I was guilty of using it myself a half-dozen times. But it's the realism of the outcome that IT professionals should be watching.

I liked the way a Washington, D.C., financial analyst put things in perspective last week. Noting, as many have, that the brother of one of the candidates was the governor of the key state in question and--at the time--overseeing the voter recount: "If this was a book, I'd have put it down by now. Utterly surreal." But real it is, and eventually we'll have the official word on our president-elect. Or perhaps we can delay things long enough to select two new candidates in time for Campaign '04.

The IT industry has a lot riding on the outcome of the Florida recount, which as of this writing stands at a scant 327 votes in favor of George W. Bush. (Pretty soon they'll have the margin whittled so slim they'll be able to start identifying voters by name. "Marge Whipple, as Voter Zero, how does it feel to be the person in the Land of the Free who tipped the election in favor of our new president-elect?") While, surprisingly, similarities abound in the candidates' stances toward technology, there are differences worth pointing out. Two key issues are IT training and E-commerce privacy.

Both candidates promised to boost spending on IT training and education. In absolute dollars, Vice President Gore earmarked a higher amount--$2.3 billion over 10 years--though it's unclear with matching grants, tax credits, and the like just how much would actually be spent on training. Gov. Bush, meanwhile, pledged $80 million in matching grants for developing 2,000 community-based technology training centers, but further details about IT-specific training were hard to come by. More important, and what's truly unclear, is which candidate can be trusted to begin funding education the soonest. In a rapidly changing economy driven by technology, it's not how much money gets spent, but where, how, and how soon it's spent that matter.

On the issue of privacy, the candidates are pretty much polar opposites: Bush proposed letting the private sector regulate itself (though he also says companies should establish a standard opt-in procedure), while Gore says there should be further government regulation of consumer privacy over the Internet. Interestingly, in a recent InformationWeek.com survey of 500 business technology professionals, a majority favored government regulation. Take the monkey off our backs, they seemed to be saying.

The most regrettable aspect of the Gore and Bush campaigns is that neither candidate placed sufficient emphasis on the issue of technology growth and development. As was noted in the cover story of InformationWeek's Oct. 9 issue, from 1995 to 1998 at least one-third of real economic growth in the United States was driven by the IT private sector. Why, then, wasn't technology growth a hot-button campaign issue? Primarily because it's not an issue that could--as Gov. Bush was wont to say--"scare" people into the polling booths. Certainly there are political leaders that realize the importance of funding technology development through tax credits, education, and regulation (or deregulation, as the case may be). But on the federal level, technology still hasn't risen to the level of health care, Social Security, or energy costs as a front-of-mind issue.

As all this bizarre uncertainty swirled last week, I was having lunch in a D.C. suburb with Dave Bent, CIO of Acterna and InformationWeek's current Chief of the Year. After exchanging pleasantries and some witty remarks about who might be our newest neighbor at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., the talk turned to the lack of attention paid by the candidates to technology. Bent turned wistful. "I get the sense," said Bent, who's English-born and unable to vote in the United States, "that political leaders here don't understand the fragility of the United States' stronghold on information technology. It was born here in Silicon Valley. But with competition from Europe, China, and Japan, how long can we expect the United States to drive technology? Do we risk losing dominance soon to these other areas, where governments understand the opportunities that await them?"

Now that would truly would be surreal.

Brian Gillooly is editor-in-chief of InformationWeek Events. You can reach him at bgillool@cmp.com.

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