When culture secretary Ben Bradshaw finished his speech introducing the Digital Britain report to Parliament, his Tory shadow stood up and dismissed the report as a “disappointment”.

Over the next few days you will undoubtedly hear other vested interests proclaiming the faults of the wide-ranging plan, pointing out its deficiencies, omissions and flaws.

My advice would be to keep the well-worn phrase “you can’t please all of the people all of the time” in mind as you assess the responses.

If you put aside the inevitable quibbles about individual proposals and recommendations, this is a hugely ambitious programme and frankly the government deserves congratulation for attempting it. If there is one major criticism I would make, it is to ask why we waited so long for such a report.

If Digital Britain is implemented as planned, it will help the UK take a huge step forward in putting technology at the heart of our economy, our workplaces and our lives – something that Computing has called for more times than I can remember, and which can only benefit the IT profession.

The £6 per year “broadband tax” to fund rollout of next-generation networks will attract a lot of headlines and controversy, but if it helps deliver superfast connectivity, it will be worth it.

There will be cynicism – from me included – about a lot of the proposals, especially relating to skills development, that resemble too many past, failed initiatives.

And there will be those who question the commitment to online public services, universal broadband and digital inclusion after even Ofcom research has shown there is a significant minority of people in the UK who have no interest in going online whatsoever.

But as report author Lord Carter said: “Digital Britain is a statement of intent and ambition, a commitment to infrastructure and access, and an overdue recognition of the industrial importance of the creative industries."

The plan is best viewed as a whole, and indeed this may be judged greater than the sum of its parts, which will be pulled apart and scrutinised and in some cases no doubt discarded. It’s a first step and mistakes will inevitably be made along the way.

But come on – IT industry, digital industry, creative industries, ask yourselves: This is far, far better than the nothing we have been used to.

Click here for more Computing coverage of Digital Britain.

At last, a bunch of politicians have accepted the obvious – that one of the biggest causes of government IT disasters is, erm, politics.

A committee of MPs investigating the dearth of engineers in the UK has highlighted the fact that too many Whitehall IT projects are determined by political pressures, and don’t take enough input from experts – that is, the IT professionals who have to make it work.

I can’t say this represents is a Damascene revelation – Computing has been saying exactly this for years – but at least the turkeys have accepted that maybe Christmas has something to do with so many of them being eaten.

As is so often the case, IT is both the problem and the solution.

To its credit, the government is well aware that IT is central to public service reform and modernisation. Without new technology, it will simply be impossible to make the public sector more efficient, cheaper to run, more responsive to citizens’ needs, less bureaucratic or more productive.

But the days of simply automating the everyday “churn” processes of government are long gone. All the basic back-office functions are computerised – tax collection, benefits payments and so on – and they chug along in the background without many problems, barely noticed by anyone because they work.

But for several years, the focus of government IT has been on the front-line functions and on delivering change. You cannot criticise Labour for a lack of ambition with IT – it has enthusiastically tried to revolutionise service delivery, to change organisations, to re-engineer processes and all the other good things that are considered best practice by IT leaders in the private sector. These are the things that IT people should be doing, this is where they can excel.

But where the government has let itself down nearly every time is its inability to detach the reality of project delivery from the imperatives of political necessity. If Gordon Brown says a new policy will be introduced from such-and-such a date, the political implications of missing that date are too damaging to allow. So, IT has been expected to squeeze into whatever timescale it has been tasked with, often regardless of its achievability.

The best example of this was tax credits, Brown’s flagship policy when he was chancellor. The legislation was enacted on the day planned, then disaster followed as claimants were overpaid, underpaid or unable to complete the process. It later transpired that the immovable go-live date forced the system developer, EDS, to cut corners and reduce the amount of testing undertaken. Result: another government IT disaster, and in this case a long-running dispute over compensation from the supplier.

Whitehall has tried to mitigate this problem in several ways. The Gateway review process is meant to flag up such issues – but does it really have the power to force ministers to review policy if a project is in difficulty? The recruitment of CIOs from the private sector, the creation of the CIO Council, and the establishing of IT as a recognised profession for civil servants have and will continue to help. And through the IT trade body Intellect, there is now a process for government to market test its plans and the feasibility of projects (although of course few suppliers are going to say they cannot do it). But none of these measures has yet got to the root of the problem.

In business, a chief executive may not be happy to delay a new initiative because of IT problems, but he or she can do so without fear of rivals across the boardroom telling the newspapers how they have failed the country. Pragmatism is a good quality to have in a senior business executive – but pragmatism is, ultimately, the enemy of dogmatic politicians.

So is there an answer to this seemingly intractable position? There is, but the chances of it coming to fruition are remote.

Whitehall IT leaders have to be involved in the policy-making process at an early stage, in exactly the same way as a private sector IT manager would (or should!) be consulted on business strategy and planning. If IT is to be the great enabler of public service reform as it can and should be, then IT has to have a seat at the table and an influential voice alongside the reformers.

It’s an obvious thing to say. But I can’t ever see it happening, not when there are votes at stake.

There are times when IT and the real world just don’t go together.

Barely six months after most of the 150 affected councils in the UK completed implementation of the latest phase of the Integrated Children’s System (ICS), the man whose recommendations led to the ICS project has said instead it should now be a single national system.

Lord Laming’s first review in 2003 of UK child care practices followed the tragic Victoria Climbie case, and identified the lack of shared information between child protection agencies as a contributory factor.

When the government asked Laming to take another look at child welfare after the awful death of Baby P, he said that ICS is not working, and needs to be a national application.

So, back to square one. No doubt there will be further suggestions made to protect as much of local authorities’ investment as possible, but if Laming’s latest recommendation is pursued, it represents a fundamental shift in the architecture of such a system.

At the root of this is the ultimate dichotomy for IT: Technology changes quickly, but the people who use it change slowly.

Any long-term IT project – which typically means almost every major government IT project – will make vital decisions at its inception which will be rendered invalid by technological change. Architectural decisions, technical choices, even remodelled processes – all seem like the right thing to do on day one, but by the time the project is completed stand out as the old way to do things.

Decision made at the start will nearly always differ from those you would make if starting on the day the project ends.

The NHS National Programme for IT is a prime example. Much of the problems and criticisms it has faced stem from the centralised model it adopted – one that made technological sense at the time, but has since proved to be a huge constraint. Gradually the programme is moving to more local control and local decision-making. But in 2003, the idea of local initiatives that would somehow be integrated together seemed like a technical challenge too far. Today, it would seem the obvious route.

This is a big reason why large IT projects fail. There is always scope included in any project for change management – but when that change involves rethinking the fundamentals of the project, it becomes almost impossible to achieve.

There are, of course, emerging trends that will help. Service-oriented architecture, business process management, web services and so on, all help to keep flexibility and agility (that awful buzzword) in a project to make sure that key technological changes over time can be better incorporated.

But we are a long way from a time when technology is capable of adapting to the real world and the nature of the people that use it. Until that time, there’s a sad inevitability that IT will always get the blame.

Computing has always been quick to attack the xenophobic mindset of those “little Englanders” that resent and reject the success that Indian IT service providers have had in the UK.

But our story that former Legal & General (L&G) IT staff may be replaced by Indian workers shipped into the UK is a very different case.

There is no getting away from the globalised business world that technology has created – even if its downsides have become dramatically apparent through the effect globalisation has had on decimating the financial services industry.

Nonetheless, the top Indian outsourcers have revolutionised IT service delivery, bringing high quality and low cost to the market and forcing their Western rivals to radically re-think their once-cosy dominance.

It is hard for many to accept that people in the UK will lose their job because someone can sit at a desk in India and do the same function more cheaply and often to the same or even higher levels of quality and service.

But that is the way of the world, and if India is able to provide such services, the UK’s challenge is to respond competitively, not to bleat about the consequences and engage in attempts to prevent offshoring that have at times in the past verged on borderline racism.

However, in the current economic climate, the Indian suppliers need to realise the sensitivities they face and the responsibilities they must accept.

It is one thing to provide a service from a desk in India that may cause someone in the UK to lose their job. It is entirely another for that UK worker to be replaced at his or her own desk by an Indian worker shipped to the UK on a work visa at a time when thousands of IT professionals are losing their jobs in a recession.

The merits or otherwise of Gordon Brown’s rather unfortunate use of the phrase “British jobs for British workers” aside, the reality is that we have already seen examples of industrial unrest caused by firms bringing foreign employees to work in UK sites. The wildcat strikes at Lindsey oil refinery may only be the first such example. The IT industry is not immune from this.

Former Legal & General (L&G) IT staff outsourced last year to TCS have told their union, Unite, that they fear they are being discriminated against and that the Indian firm plans to replace them with lower-cost staff on a working visa.

Ultimately, that is a business decision for TCS – no doubt the pricing of their contract with L&G was based on such an assumption.

But TCS and others need to be smarter than that and realise the climate they now compete within. They are treading a very fine and delicate line, one that could spill the wrong way if they are not sensitive to their newly outsourced employees’ concerns.

Indian IT rightly fought against discrimination for many years and proved itself capable of competing on a global stage as an equal player. It cannot allow itself to be perceived as discriminatory itself in such a difficult economic climate when UK staff they employ fear for their futures.

Just last week, I expressed my doubts about the true business value of Twitter, and planned to give the online micro-blogging service a try to see what I could learn.

Well, although I still have some way to go to find evidence of genuine opportunities for business IT managers, I have today experienced my first personal example of what Twitter can do for me as a journalist.

When Google Mail crashed earlier today, the first hint I had was from people Twittering that they couldn’t access the service.

The problems raised obvious concerns for IT leaders over the risks and challenges of cloud computing – what if Google Mail had been part of your corporate IT service, as such online applications increasingly are?

I wanted to get a quick response from analysts commenting on the implications of the story – so I asked my new-found Twitter friends.

Thanks to Peter Thomas, Clive Longbottom of Quocirca, and Jon Collins from Freeform Dynamics, I had a set of excellent expert comment within minutes. You can read the resulting article here.

So, I’m learning…

Attention all IT leaders - a whole new career path has opened up for you.

It has been announced today that the new chief executive of the Football Association is to be Ian Watmore, formerly the first holder of the post of UK government chief information officer (CIO).

For years Computing has bemoaned the difficulty that CIOs have had in being promoted to chief executive. We, and others in IT, have long predicted - perhaps "hoped" is a better word - that IT leadership experience will one day become a stepping stone to the very top of business, but alas it is yet to happen.

However, perhaps there is a way.

In 2005, Watmore won the Outstanding Contribution to UK IT prize at the Computing Awards for Excellence, in recognition of his creation of the first ever government IT strategy - now known as Transformational Government.

On one occasion that Computing interviewed Watmore, our reporter even gave him an extra prize - an Arsenal FC pen, which he wholeheartedly appreciated.

Now perhaps we can see what small role we played in making a former CIO into the most important administrator in our national game.

It's just a shame he supports Arsenal.

I am now a Twit. Or is that a Tweet? Or a Twitterer? The fact that I’ve decided to give the social network du jour a go is by no means newsworthy and if anything is a passive response to the suddenly widespread media urging to follow a trend.

It may, admittedly, bring a minor sense of shame in that, as the editor of a major technology publication, I’m coming to this particular party somewhat late (tactfully late, I like to think, and does the party have a kitchen to stand in?).

But I will defend my inability to get to this zeitgeist before it was even a geist, in that Computing is all about business technology and Twitter has yet to demonstrate its relevance or application for business IT users – or its ability to actually make money.

Nonetheless, in media circles it is starting to find its uses. Many of my contacts in the PR world swear by Twitter as a way of sourcing ideas and feedback, for example. One of my colleagues at sister-title VNUnet.com, Rosalie Marshall, has even managed to source an exclusive news story through her Twitter network. But I have to admit, I’m yet to be convinced, so it’s time to give it a go.

Do many IT professionals use Twitter for anything other than personal reasons? We’ve recently started a Twitter feed from Computing.co.uk, where all our articles are posted as Tweets (getting into the lingo now, I hope…). We’ve not publicised it at all, and it’s slowly picked up a few followers, but primarily they are PRs or IT industry types – there’s little evidence of any of the readers of Computing online or in print turning to Twitter as an alternative way to digest our news, analysis and opinion.

I’ve also yet to come across any IT managers considering ways that Twitter can support their corporate technology plans – although I’d be happy for any that are doing so to prove me wrong.

The debate over the role of new social networking tools in business IT has been going on for a couple of years now, first after MySpace, then Facebook, and now Twitter. It feels like everyone knows it will have a use, but nobody has quite found it yet. There’s the obvious networking and collaboration potential – but that is more about an application of technology based upon the principles of such a site, rather than exposing potentially sensitive company conversations to a public web site.

For consumer-facing organisations – or even citizen-facing – there are obvious marketing and communication uses of social networks, but I’d wager that most such initiatives are originating from the marketing department, rather than from IT.

So I find myself in a quandary about Twitter that perhaps many business technology specialists will recognise. I can see there’s something there, I just don’t quite get it yet.

But I’m going to give it a try. Tweet tweet.

When Barack Obama emerged from his limo at Washington’s Reagan National Airport last Friday, photos of him dropping his Blackberry onto the tarmac flashed around the world.

A Google News search for “Barack Blackberry drop” shows up 403 articles inspired by that incident alone.

OK, now make that 404 – a significant number for anyone working in IT.

There are probably even more stories discussing what IT-related policies the new president will introduce, and lobby groups left, right and centre are telling him what to do about security, the web, net neutrality, offshore outsourcing, education and skills, and more.

Let’s be honest, none of these are exactly going to be a top priority – frankly he has more important things to worry about.

But for the IT community, the greater significance of Obama’s presidency came in that moment and with that dropped smartphone.

This is the first US president truly of the internet age; the first to be comfortable with technology and even to take its value in his everyday life for granted.

That doesn’t mean he will give the IT industry any great preference, nor that he is going to promote technology in any way. It just means that he expects it to be there.

His election campaign has been praised for the way it used the web to engage voters like no other politician has before – a real lesson for others (particularly in the UK) about the power of Web 2.0 and social media.

But I very much doubt he ever sat down with his advisors and said: “Hey – we’ve got to do more with this internet thing.” It was just assumed – part of the mix.

Clearly, the IT world will be looking to President Obama for favourable policies and appropriate backing, just as every industry will be. Those decisions will be taken in committee rooms by faceless bureaucrats putting the priorities in place.

The importance of the Blackberry President will be far greater – simply by showing the world that technology is essential, that it’s in his pocket (well, his secret service agent’s pocket, at least), that it is just another everyday part of life.

That example will be Obama’s most significant contribution to the IT community.

Here's my personal take on the nine IT priorities for 2009, as first published in Computing this week.

The economy

Like it or not, the state of the economy will overshadow everything else this year. Ignore all the predictions ­ the only thing anyone can say with certainty is that nobody really knows what will happen. But cost control and efficiency will be the watchwords for IT decision-makers nonetheless. For IT professionals, job security will be a concern. But hopefully far-sighted businesses will look after their valuable IT experts ­ after all, they will need you once the recession is over.

Privacy

After a year of endless data-loss stories, the privacy of our personal information has become a top priority. Tackling privacy concerns and reassuring the public is one of the defining challenges of the digital age. Without confidence in the integrity and confidentiality of our data, there could be a backlash against the “database state” that would set back the role of technology for years. The worries are genuine and justified ­ and the government has to respond.

Collaboration

If there is one potentially game-changing technology for companies, it is collaboration. Businesses have yet to fully exploit the techniques exemplified by social networking sites such as Facebook and tools such as blogs and wikis, but many look enviously at the potential for improving interaction and information sharing between staff and with customers, suppliers and partners. The technology will rarely be a limiting factor ­ this is more of a cultural challenge. But in tough times, firms that collaborate most effectively will thrive.

Next-generation broadband

Most experts agree that building a high-speed broadband infrastructure is an important part of the UK’s future economic wellbeing ­ but with a price of up to £28bn, it won’t come cheap. The government will not pay, and BT needs reassurances that the benefits of investment will not be curtailed by regulations. But decisions need to be made on the structure, funding and rollout of next-generation broadband ­ both as an economic stimulus and for the sake of international competitiveness.

Cloud computing

The term “cloud computing” already sounds very 2008, but the buzzword is becoming widely used so we should get used to it for a while. However, the technologies and trends that the phrase encompasses are here to stay. Software as a service, virtualisation, utility computing, Web 2.0 ­ these are all different aspects of the move to software and hardware hosted on the internet. Large firms are some way off moving critical infrastructure to the cloud ­ but growth is likely to come from smaller organisations. Cloud will be this year’s green in vendor marketing.

Big government IT projects

With vast sums being spent on major projects such as ID cards and the NHS National Programme for IT, opposition politicians sniff an opportunity to make mischief for a government that is borrowing more than ever and needs to show prudence in other areas. There will be further calls to scrap, delay or review big IT initiatives ­ but the government must resist. IT is central to modernising public services ­ it is hard to seriously imagine an NHS without electronic patient records in 10 years’ time, for example ­ but these big programmes must do better.

Mobile

The future of technology is, without doubt, mobile. The big network operators and handset manufacturers are already focusing on the mobile web. Ofcom will start to auction vast amounts of radio spectrum this year, leading to new services and better, faster coverage. The growth of mobile technology will be driven by consumers but increasingly sets expectations for business users. Low-price laptops and powerful netbooks will make computing on the move
a standard.

The environment

Most IT managers have been thoroughly greenwashed by vendor marketing in the past 18 months, and a certain cynicism has inevitably developed about green computing. Nonetheless, it is acknowledged that IT has an energy-efficiency problem. Best practice is emerging from early adopters that will show the way for others to reduce the energy consumption of their IT, and since this is an effective way to cut costs too, there is little reason not to proceed. Clean technology will be one of the best-funded areas of research and development this year.

Innovation

Any IT leader who does not have innovation as a priority is failing their organisation. The role of IT is increasingly that of the innovator, driving change through the understanding of how technology can improve operations, create new ways of working and develop additional revenue streams. In a recession, innovation only grows in importance. IT leaders who demonstrate the benefits of IT-enabled innovation will be the success stories of the year.

Last night I was privileged to speak to a gathering of the UK IT security elite, at a dinner event organised by BT. Gathered in the exclusive Westbury Hotel in Mayfair were the great and the good of information security and risk management from the private sector, government and academia.

Putting aside the debates and discussion on the challenges these individuals face – among the toughest and higest-profile tasks in technology management – there was one particularly notable facet of the evening. This wasn’t just a get-together of like-minded professionals of the type you find at any conference or seminar – this was a bunch of mates, albeit with a common professional cause, but meeting on a regular basis to see old friends, have a laugh, and even raise money for charity (congratulations to the organiser, BT’s Ray Stanton, for collecting £1600 for Childline on the night).

In my job, I get to spend a lot of time at events such as this where IT leaders network, meet their peers, make contacts and share experiences – but rarely have I come across a group whose connections go beyond merely the collection of business cards.

Security is the great taboo of IT. Understandably, most organisations are wary of discussing their security and risk management strategies for fear of attracting unwanted attention from potential threats. There is no greater challenge to a hacker than an IT security manager proclaiming his network is hack-proof.

But put these normally reticent individuals together and they recognise their common cause. There are few areas in IT where sharing information and experiences is more likely to produce wider benefits, and the openness that these experts show to each other in private is a lesson for every discipline in IT.

The only area I have come across with similar knowledge sharing is among the most senior IT leaders in the country, who come together through user groups such as CIO Connect, The Corporate IT Forum and the BCS to learn from each other.

But there is a lesson in such sharing that would benefit many more working in IT – it is a sign of a mature profession. Compare with accountants or lawyers, for whom professional knowledge sharing is a key part of their job.

The message to everyone in business technology is clear – you should be talking to each other.