I presented at an IT industry day run by the department of Business Innovation and Skills, on technology innovation. It kicked off with a speech from Stephen Timms, who has a background in technology, reinforcing the importance and criticality of technology to the United Kingdom. I gave an overview of the way technology is used extensively within the public sector, and then we had IT industry innovators detailing how they see technology moving forward. Microsoft presented on how they see Citizen and consumer experience changing - new ways of interacting; BT presented on The "cloud" economy – new models for service delivery; Security and cybercrime – doing business in a dangerous world was presented by Martin Sadler of Hewlett Packard; Healthcare - how our lives will change was presented by Steve Battersby, Philips; Nigel Jefferies of Vodafone presented on how everything is going mobile and last but certainly not least Iain Gray, Technology Strategy Board detailed how they are investing in the IT industry research and supporting key developments.
As ever the best bit is always the Q&A. There were quite a few comments about how difficult it can be to do business with government given its size and complexity, a question on whether Government is structured right to get the best out of technology innovation as there is no one single department in charge of this and a lot of comment on skills.
I posed a question to the audience which was "do you believe that technology and innovation is continuing to increase at a pace?" – The vast majority of hands went up. I followed this question with a second "are you or your boards keeping up with this change and the consequence of this change" – only 4 hands went up. I have asked these two same questions to thousands of people now, and the answers are always the same.
Are you keeping up, take my survey...
If not what are the consequences, if any?
Comments