Martin Banks, Personal Computer World 05/82 - checked

May 1982

To start at the beginning, it should first be observed that I have a healthy distrust of politicians. I tend to feel that by and large they are third-rate nonentities who have found a cute way of earning a living by exercising their vocal cords. There is, after all, ample evidence shown nightly on TV or heard on radio that this is SO.

You just have to listen to Prime Minister's Question Time to know that a chimpanzees' tea party is far better behaved. But, then again, Parliament is there to lead us and it becomes easy to see where football hooligans get their basic training. It becomes fascinating to watch how more than 600 scintillating intellects and dazzling egos become meek and obedient lemmings in the face of the Party 'Whips' (I've always been deeply suspicious about the significance of that word).

But - and it is only an occasional but - sometimes one of those Parliamentary-type people seems to say something that is not only relevant, topical and newsworthy but also approximately sensible.

It happened recently in London. It was at a seminar and exhibition organised by the British Microcomputer Manufacturers Group for senior civil servants and the like from Whitehall, just around the comer from where the event was staged. The speaker was one Kenneth Baker, our Minister of Information Technology. He had been invited along to make the 'official' opening address by David Broad, chairman of the recently formed and increasingly active BMMG. I say 'official', for Baker was actually second or third speaker of the day, having already 'officially opened' something else before arriving at the BMMG show.

As with so many of these occasions (like the one earlier in the morning) the Minister began by intoning the standard mantra of Information Technology, together with some optional anomalies. For those fortunate enough to have never have heard of it, the mantra follows the pattern of how important IT is; how the performance of microelectronics brings the benefits of IT everywhere; how the Government is doing all sorts of wonderful things for the industry, the user and its own ratings by sponsoring things like Information Technology Year, the IT and Micro Awareness programmes and the Micros in Schools scheme; how it is important that children leave school in the sublime state of keyboard literacy, how there are to be 100 IT centres based on the excellent model of Notting Dale in West London; and how there will be funds made available for a national network of microcomputer centres like the one being run by the National Computing Centre.

Sitting at the back of the hall, I started to feel that I could chant the mantra along with the Hon Ken, and began to muse on whether this was the shortest route to Nirvana. I began to wonder what it would be like if I got there.

And then the Minister was suddenly off on a new tack, one that was quite interesting. It was also one that was not without its irony, for he gave the distinct impression that he felt sure he was speaking to an audience of BMMG members and similar people 'from the Industry'. Instead, of course, he was talking to civil servants. The new tack he followed was to tell the audience about what his advice to the civil service on Government purchasing policy would do for them. Some of them seemed to wonder as well. The advice however, was interesting, not only for what was said but also for the fact that there was an underlying smidgen of understanding running through it; understanding of how the business works and what it is about. But, then again, the Minister used to work in the computer industry. Some Ministers have a live experience of their portfolios that extends to having fathers who were good on a push-bike.

Baker took as his thesis the fact that the public sector has a responsibility to harness its purchasing power to help the small but flourishing microcomputer industry in this country. That purchasing power should be used to help the industry come up with internationally competitive products. It was very important, he stressed, for both the industry and the public sector purchasers to think in international terms.

So far so good, though this was an expression of a view that hardly showed a true spark of originality, given the overall complexion of the current Government. He went on, however, to explain how he felt the civil service would be able to achieve this.

First, he felt that the message itself was beginning to get through. This, of course, had been shown last year when the CCTA selected some 'manufacturers' of microcomputer systems as the only ones Government departments could purchase with approval. Most of them were actually distributors or OEMs for US-manufactured kits - much to the chagrin of the many British companies already in business, who found themselves to all intents and purposes excluded from a lucrative marketplace. This led directly to the formation of the BMMG which Baker was addressing.

He obviously felt that things had progressed since then, for he said that the message that was getting through was 'think British'. This was not a Buy British policy, however, he said. What he wanted to see the public sectors doing was thinking in terms of involving the British manufacturers at the time they were actually formulating their requirements. This, he said, was the only way for the public sector to approach the introduction of new tech nology. Asking them to do two things at once is also the best way I know of giving civil servants a head crash, but no matter.

As a politician, it could have been justifiably argued that the Minister had said enough to satisfy honour and could retire to the sanctity of the H of P, just down the road from the event, but no - on he went.

The customers - in this case his real but unsuspected audience of civil servants - were now being urged to meet with the manufacturers as early as possible in any equipment design or purchasing cycle. In this way, he hoped that the customers would find out what the industry had available or was capable of producing, and the industry would be able to tell the customers why what they wanted was totally impractical as a viable product. He stressed that this would mean the customers (civil servants) would effectively have to change years of traditional assessment practices and look at a potential new product from a performance point of view, rather than detail design.

He sounded very much like a man from the computer industry who has seen things from the other side when he said that the public sector must avoid its usual practice of over-specifying a system. This was a tendency, he added, that produces equipment that is usually totally unsaleable anywhere else in the world.

The wounds of experience seemed to show through again when he said that the public sector was now being pushed into telling manufacturers why they didn't get the business. He is currently trying to establish a system for this. Though it might bruise a few egos to be told that a product is actually deficient in some respect, it should do the product and the company no harm to be told. It could do some good, especially for some systems.

Despite the irony of the mistaken audience, Baker's remarks struck at an important area for the short-term future of both the UK microcomputer industry and the public sector. It is an area that offers enormous sales potential and could be the making of many British companies which can't be said to have made it as yet. It could also be the making of the public sector, that oft-maligned group that is continually castigated for its inefficiency. Concerted and enlightened purchasing policies that brought in microcomputer systems that had been engineered to do the job, but not over-engineered and consequently emasculated, could do wonders for such a tarnished image. It could also do wonders with the work.

Maybe, if the public sector actually did get its act together, as the Hon Ken suggested, it could help other manufacturers join 'Uncle' Clive Sinclair in blowing high-growth raspberries at the world.

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