October 23, 2000

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Make Your Voice Heard

By Rusty Weston

Golden leaves were blowing across the Boston Common. Sunset capped a procession of meetings, and I would have stopped to enjoy the moment had I not been hustling to Logan Airport to catch a flight that was destined to be canceled. And despite my haste to fly to the Left Coast, the carrier in question recommended that I spend an hour or so at Dulles, outside the nation's capital, in the interest of balancing my travel karma. And perhaps that was right, in a surreal way: I caught a few minutes of the presidential debate blaring on a lounge TV.

Dulles Airport is a fine place for a holding pattern. And Al Gore and George W. Bush were kind of stuck, too, talking about events they had witnessed but not influenced. It's hard to see how this election is likely to accelerate the course of IT innovation. You never know--Bush might stack the Supreme Court with venture capitalists or oil men, but I doubt it. And Gore might reinvent the Internet. Both candidates claim to want to expand student access to the Net--but is there evidence the no-can-do Congress will get behind that?

Sometimes it's difficult to vote. You're busy. You're on the road. You think the real issues aren't being debated in prime time. But according to two recent InformationWeek Research studies, the majority of voting-age IT professionals are not only registered, but intend to exercise their right to vote. These study results help to counteract the media-fueled impression that technologists are too self-absorbed or apolitical to participate in politics.

It's also evident that many technologists care passionately about the influence of government agencies in setting policies in areas such as Internet taxes, privacy, and consumer protection. Overall, 37% of the respondents say the government wields too much influence in regulating technology issues, while 11% say it doesn't wield enough, and the majority are fine with the status quo.

Those who say government has too much influence are particularly worked up by the specter of Internet taxation and antitrust action. By contrast, those who say the government needs to do more to protect its citizens cite consumer-protection and privacy issues as their chief concerns.

So where do Bush and Gore stand on these issues? According to the sample of potential voters, the largest segment says Bush would decrease government's influence (41%) and Gore would increase its influence (63%).

No matter what you think about the government's role or the presidential candidates, it's important to voice your concerns. When you vote, it's your chance to effect change and to make your opinion count. I believe the same impulse that sends you to the polls ought to inform your decision about whether to participate in good IT industry surveys--even if the stakes are less acute than a presidential race and all that it implies.

For many IT and business professionals (and we survey thousands of you each year) the key question is this: Why participate in something that takes you away from your immediate tasks? Here's why:

• The vendors are listening. Consider InformationWeek Research's Analyzing the Vendors series, in which customers rate their leading IT providers on a range of strategic evaluative criteria. When Analyzing the Enterprise Storage Vendors was published Oct. 2, the vendors scrambled to tout or defend the results--Dell Computer even cited its mostly positive results in a Wall Street analyst call that week.
• The InformationWeek 500, published Sept. 11, not only allowed the winning companies to tout their IT innovation to customers, partners, and shareholders but also to use the results to help recruit IT talent. Yet the study actually benefits the entire IT community because it's the premier research tool for benchmarking IT performance and spending priorities.
• InformationWeek Research is committed to respecting your privacy and valuing your time. The vast majority of the research is published in the magazine or in InformationWeek reports (http://informationweek.com/reports) on a timely basis. Readers know the data fuels numerous InformationWeek cover stories and appears in Behind the Numbers each week.

Yes, the election draws near, and polling season is in full swing. Perhaps we'll call you or E-mail you soon. On behalf of the entire InformationWeek community, a heartfelt thanks! Your perspective makes us the most vibrant IT publication. True, you can always opt out. But where's the fun in that?

Rusty Weston is editor of InformationWeek.com and InformationWeek Research. You can reach him at rweston@cmp.com

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