Amidst the furore over Channel 4's Big Brother 'racism row', Tom Wills-Sandford, deputy director general of Intellect represented the UK technology industry on a UK Trade and Investment-sponsored mission to India, led by Secretary of State for Trade and Industry Alistair Darling and supported by Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown. 

While dodging questions about Jade Goody and the role of reality TV in Britain, five key areas of Indian IT that the UK cannot afford to ignore emerged, as Tom writes here:

Indian IT steps up a gear

Many of the people I met are international IT leaders who have moved to India to be involved in its IT industry. For example the head of marketing for a large IT outsourcer is a US citizen with a PhD from Berkeley, who until recently worked for Bain & Co in the US. Many highly skilled overseas-based Indians are returning to India and some non- Asians are attracted by the fantastic opportunities. Even the head chef at the Infosys Bangalore campus is French! Non-resident Indians are bringing Western approaches to social networking, business management and, of course, remuneration to India. Innovation is now coming from their networks, coupled with local institutes of technology.  India is firmly at the leading edge of global economy.

‘India is IT’

The IT industry in the UK often asks itself ‘Is India a threat or an opportunity?’  That really is the wrong question.  Seeing the size of facilities that companies like LogicaCMG or Xansa have Bangalore and Chennai hammered home the huge scale of IT-enabled services in India.  The strap line for Nasscom -The Indian IT trade association - is ‘India is IT’. We cannot afford to delude ourselves that techno-nationalism is the answer. It must be seen as an opportunity for the UK IT industry or we will fail. 

Wading in to the skills mire

However, the Indian IT sector does have its issues, foremost of which are the triumvirate of skills, recruitment and retention.  The Indian industry takes the skills issue very seriously and is addressing the problem aggressively – possibly more so than we are.  For instance they have ‘finishing schools’ to reduce the time graduates take to become productive, they recruit students part way through their courses and they appear to work very closely with local colleges to shape the courses. Maybe it is time for us to take a leaf out of India’s book.

Value not cost

Inflation in India is running at six per cent per annum and IT wage inflation is nearly 15 per cent.  Annual employee attrition is around 13 per cent. It does not take a genius to work out that if these trends continue Indian IT will become uncompetitive on cost. The industry is well aware of this and is now beginning to push ‘value not cost’. As this removes one of our differentiators it seems more important than ever before that we work together with India and not against it.

Take your partner by the hand

Out of a population of 1.1 billion there are one million people employed in the IT-enabled services sector in India. Whether or not ‘India is IT’ is debatable, but it is a huge and enormously influential force that can help us grow our economy if we partner with it in the right way. For its part, India’s approach is one of interdependency on the West. Therefore we both need to collaborate to make the most of our technology industries.

As a result of this trip Intellect and Nasscom are planning to work together in several ways. One early initiative will be to link up small businesses in both countries with common interests to ensure that the opportunities are not just there for the large companies, but are available to all. It is partnerships like this that will help our respective industries and economies and will transform the sector into a more formidable force in the global economy.

The adoption of grid computing rose considerably during 2006 in science, manufacturing and healthcare.  In these sectors grids are being used for numerous applications, from speeding up aircraft design, to managing vast amounts of health data and attempts to crack protons and locate the ‘God particle’.  Although the ability of grid computing to collate and process vast amounts of data would prove useful in other sectors, businesses have been slow to capitalise on grid and its potential benefits.

However, 2007 looks set to become the year in which grid, in particular virtualisation, is widely seen as part of the answer to reducing IT’s carbon footprint while at the same time offering more advanced and efficient hardware design. There is rich potential to improve efficiency, reduce the need to add more power in the data centre and keep the cooling bill down while adding new levels of flexibility and resilience for business applications.

Grid computing offers tangible advantages for businesses.  Instead of investing in processing capacity which is rarely used, companies could look to purchase capacity on a pay-per-use basis.  This would make increased capability available to businesses only when they need, removing the need for costly initial outlay.  Also smaller companies would no longer have to concern themselves with the management of large networks.  For example, companies such as Sun Microsystems and Amazon allow customers to run on the larger company’s computing environment, paying only for the capacity they use. 

2007 could well see the increasing adoption of computing as a service, paid for only when it is necessary.

The Government Connect (GC) programme run by the Department for Communities and Local Government is aimed at providing a common infrastructure for secure electronic interaction between local government, central government and citizens and should bring great benefits to all these groups.

However, as you may have seen reported recently in Computing, the procurement process it is undertaking via the current development of GC Register undermines its ability to achieve its objectives, does not represent value for money for the taxpayer and risks alienating both suppliers and customers from future projects.

It has become such an issue that the director general of Intellect, John Higgins, recently wrote to the project owners emphasising that recent actions represent a prescriptive narrowing of the market, restricting choice for customers and effectively handing one company an unfair advantage in other related technologies.

Specific concerns exist in the IT industry and the customer community over the effective mandation of one supplier’s product for the entire local authority market. Many companies of all sizes in our industry believe that the Government Connect team disregarded the reservations expressed by suppliers and local authorities by choosing to undertake an evaluation of one product and endorse it as a preferred solution without adequate consideration of the other options available. 

The resulting market uncertainty is damaging not just to Government Connect but also to the wider public sector and has seriously undermined confidence and trust in both current and future procurements.  As a step towards rebuilding this trust, GC project owners should make the following information public:

• Which GC Register requirements were present in the original document and which have since been added, including dates;
• The proposed product’s specification, including both self assessments and the demonstration provided to project owners;
• Details of how the proposed product meets the project requirements as originally stated, and how it complies with existing Government Gateway identity management;
• Whether local authorities be compelled to install the full product (including elements which would supercede authorities’ existing solutions in other areas) or whether it will be available in a version which solely delivers the GC Register component;
• Clarification on the current and planned versions of the proposed product, including each one’s status in terms of Crown IPR, licence fees and support fees;
• When all of the above information was provided to the sponsoring group and GC’s Supplier Advisory group.

Providing this information is just a first step, but a very important one, on the road to restoring confidence in a project whose goals industry still supports. Let’s hope that we see some positive action from Government Connect in the very near future.

The IT industry knows more about how government works than any other – indeed in many areas the industry delivers government business, and in almost all others we underpin the work of government through the provision and support of key information and the systems and networks across which the business of government flows.

Overall, government has had a reasonable record for delivering change. Industry also can take some credit for those successes.  But the challenges that have emerged recently and the complexity of the required business and technology systems have substantially raised the bar for government and our industry.  The track record of government in delivering real transformation and in achieving critical business benefits is not so impressive.  It seems that government has yet to move beyond a silo mentality and address the cultural barriers that have hindered the implementation of true transformation. 

The recent report by the National Audit Office (NAO) on successful public sector IT projects rightly highlighted successful IT projects, but also demonstrated the challenges of disseminating best practice, which too often hinders the development of even more successful projects.  It is time for a fundamental change in the way in which we as an industry work with government and with each other. 

The IT industry has been fundamental to the successful transformation of a number of rapidly changing industries such as financial services, travel and telecoms.  We are similarly committed to the development of a long-term partnership with key government stakeholders, where an atmosphere of openness and honesty can help to drive highly successful transformational solutions and showcase best practice in government IT projects.

It is time for the industry to truly embrace collaboration.  Many of the ideas around which we compete create no value, stimulate little innovation, establish no real differentiation and simply divert scarce resources away from more difficult problems where we really need competitive stimulus.

The industry has a good track record of solving simple problems. However, the really big challenges - fairness, productivity, inclusion, safety and the environment - lie ahead of us and we need to focus our best people in these areas.

We want to build upon the progress that has already been made and once again rise to the challenge we have before us.  On several occasions we have been challenged to raise our game and each time we have responded. 

The Intellect IT Supplier Code of Best Practice, a clear differentiator for those companies who wish to achieve higher levels of performance, needs to be more widely adopted by the public sector.  Twenty-six public sector projects have used Intellect’s Concept Viability Service since it’s inception in 2004 and most have acknowledged the benefits it has brought.  This needs to continue. The recently formed Intellect Public Sector Council will also help us respond to this challenge. 

Although progress has been made the public sector needs to do more to ensure that best practice produced by ourselves, government and the NAO, is communicated and embedded across departments.  This can only be achieved through joint communications. 

Our engagement should be underpinned with senior decision-makers, thus enabling the industry and government to have the ‘big picture’ debate at the earliest possible stage; to make the great innovative examples of transformation into a template for broader innovation across government;  to use success in one project to help shape future engagements, drive better understanding and reduce risk, and as a trade association, with the help of the government, to foster that learning.

We have an opportunity here to create something new – to create a coalition for change between the public and private sector which is unmatched anywhere in the world; a coalition which creates competitive advantage for UK PLC and public value for us all.

Now isn’t that a prize worth going after?

Several reports in 2006 highlighted both the lack of women in the UK IT industry and the industry’s image as a male career. But we should take comfort in the fact that the IT industry is not alone in its struggle to recruit and retain a diverse workforce.

Diversity is a global issue, with many countries tackling the lack of diversity in both public and private organisations through various initiatives and government policies.  For example, Spain is looking at the number of women on its public company boards and a proposal for compulsory quotas similar to Norway and Sweden has been suggested.

A diverse workforce is essential if UK plc wants to remain competitive in an increasingly global market.  This does not just mean ever-increasing competitors to UK products/suppliers but also an increasingly diverse customer base looking for innovative and exciting solutions.  Companies around the world are recognising the benefits a diverse team can bring.  With a range of different skills, outlooks, strengths and experiences diverse teams can not only relate to different customer objectives and provide a variety of innovative solutions, but also develop and strengthen the business as a whole.

While the IT industry may not be alone in struggling with diversity, its increasingly pervasive nature means a diverse workforce is essential.  A variety of skills, experience and consequently more innovative thinking is vital if the UK IT Industry is to remain competitive and able to deliver the services and solutions its ever growing customer base requires.

If businesses continue to only recruit from a small pool of traditional candidates they will miss out on these differentiating skills and opportunities, as well as some business opportunities where tenders require compliance with anti-discrimination law.   

Government and industry have both recognised this as an important issue and are set to address it through a range of initiatives, research, reviews and policies.  But companies continue to struggle to recruit women into a variety of roles and levels and when they do often fail to retain them across a broad range of roles and ages. Figures released by e-Skills UK and Intellect in November 2006 show more women are leaving the industry than joining. 

The most cited reasons given for women leaving the industry include lack of recognition, male dominated cultures, lack of flexible working opportunities and perceptions of unequal pay.  These are cultural and perception based issues, rather than practical ones, which makes them much harder to overcome.  Tackling them requires long-term commitment from the IT industry’s most senior figures cascading down through all organisations in the industry, coupled with an aggressive campaign to change the public’s views on many deeply embedded issues.

If the perception of the IT industry and technology is not addressed then businesses will be unable to recruit within the UK, leading to greater levels of offshoring, and society as a whole will not develop alongside its global competitors. With a smaller skilled IT workforce, the UK will become less attractive as a place to set up and do business.  This will not only impact the IT Industry but all other reliant industries like financial services, retail, aerospace and biotechnology. 

Although this is not altering the eternal image of the IT industry, and its internal culture, these are not easy problems to solve that could take generations to rectify; some companies are working hard to reduce the impact now and are taking steps to improve the situation.  For example, many companies have mentoring schemes, role model programmes and specific retention policies and strategies to help keep the women they employ and encourage others to join them. 

The impact this has on its relationships with customers and future employees is easy to see.  Intellect has recognised the impact culture has on the IT industry and is working with government and industry to address many of the barriers and issues it faces through benchmarking research and special focus groups designed to share best practice throughout the industry.  By working together and learning from other industries, the IT industry in the UK can continue to drive the economy and become a recognised world innovator.

The technology sector needs to convince some of the most talented members of its workforce that their contribution is needed, appreciated, and rewarded; that it can accommodate their desire for a successful career as well as a personal life.

The future development of our industry and of the UK economy is dependent on creating and retaining a diverse workforce, where employees feel supported, comfortable and able to succeed regardless of their background or gender.  The IT industry must continue to work towards a solution to the cultural barriers it faces and become the innovative and influential industry in the global marketplace that it should be.