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Videotex in France — Government systems — transatlantic cable
Governmentsystems criticized Government computing systems in the UK are antiquated and inadequate, and only a major change in attitude, or even a complete restructuring of government, will improve this situation.
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This was the feeling of speakers at a recent seminar, held by Sperry UK, on the future of government. Participants included a UK Member of Parliament, an ex-member of the ‘Think Tank’, computing and communications specialists, and an economic adviser. David Howell, MP, predicted that the power of government will disappear as information becomes more widely available to the public through computerization, leaving government in the role of providing social services. Howell sees government’s power resting on ‘superior access to superior information’. Now that other people
] are getting that information
by their own computerized methods, they can cope with the volumes of data available better than government. That government, at least in the UK, cannot already cope with the data available is borne out by the experiences of other speakers at the seminiar. John Kay, from the Institute of Fiscal Studies, pointed out how attempts to computerize various aspects of its work have been less than successful. Rather than using new technologies to improve its systems, it has simply computerized its manual systems. The problem here, he said, is the lack of competition which made banks, for example, introduce new technology and ensure that it works.
data processing
Donald Davies, inventor of parketswitched systems for data, underlined the antiquity of government computer systems, which he said are designed around batch systems. Databases and Contents Addressable Filestore Systerns, for example, have hard& been impIement~d. The systems in existence are not compatible, and there is no highly interconnected information system. According to David Howell, the answer to the inability of the government to handle its information is to decentralize into the private sector. Norman Strauss, a one-time member of the Prime Minister’s Think Tank: believes total revolution is the only answer, with ‘a computeracy’, independent of the government system, set up alongside the current governing bodies.
a home After months of agonizing over the new ownership of fnmos, the UK’s foremost chip c~~rn~any. a hctme has been found for it with a British company. Thorn-EhlI, an cntertainments and clectromcs company, has taken over 76% of the Inmos shares from the &r&h Technologp Group (BTC). i The deal cost Thorn-EM1 f95M, ’ which it is raising by a rights issue on 1 , a five-tu-one basis. This move is j expected to raise a total of d;I36M. ’ After the announcenl~~t~ Sir Mafcalm Wilcox, chairman of Inmos, expressed his pleasure at joining a group which has no semiconductor element, but has experience in handling entrepreneurial growth. He said, ‘Innos is at the leading edge of VLSI technology and that is where we intend to stay’. Inmos’ sales for 1983 were &37.8M, more than double the 1982 figure. Its trading moved into ~ro~tab~lity in the last quarter of 1983.
!
This was the feeling of speakers at a recent seminar, held by Sperry UK, on the future of government. Participants included a UK Member of Parliament, an ex-member of the ‘Think Tank’, computing and communications specialists, and an economic adviser. David Howell, MP, predicted that the power of government will disappear as information becomes more widely available to the public through computerization, leaving government in the role of providing social services. Howell sees government’s power resting on ‘superior access to superior information’. Now that other people
] are getting that information
by their own computerized methods, they can cope with the volumes of data available better than government. That government, at least in the UK, cannot already cope with the data available is borne out by the experiences of other speakers at the seminiar. John Kay, from the Institute of Fiscal Studies, pointed out how attempts to computerize various aspects of its work have been less than successful. Rather than using new technologies to improve its systems, it has simply computerized its manual systems. The problem here, he said, is the lack of competition which made banks, for example, introduce new technology and ensure that it works.
data processing
Donald Davies, inventor of parketswitched systems for data, underlined the antiquity of government computer systems, which he said are designed around batch systems. Databases and Contents Addressable Filestore Systerns, for example, have hard& been impIement~d. The systems in existence are not compatible, and there is no highly interconnected information system. According to David Howell, the answer to the inability of the government to handle its information is to decentralize into the private sector. Norman Strauss, a one-time member of the Prime Minister’s Think Tank: believes total revolution is the only answer, with ‘a computeracy’, independent of the government system, set up alongside the current governing bodies.
a home After months of agonizing over the new ownership of fnmos, the UK’s foremost chip c~~rn~any. a hctme has been found for it with a British company. Thorn-EhlI, an cntertainments and clectromcs company, has taken over 76% of the Inmos shares from the &r&h Technologp Group (BTC). i The deal cost Thorn-EM1 f95M, ’ which it is raising by a rights issue on 1 , a five-tu-one basis. This move is j expected to raise a total of d;I36M. ’ After the announcenl~~t~ Sir Mafcalm Wilcox, chairman of Inmos, expressed his pleasure at joining a group which has no semiconductor element, but has experience in handling entrepreneurial growth. He said, ‘Innos is at the leading edge of VLSI technology and that is where we intend to stay’. Inmos’ sales for 1983 were &37.8M, more than double the 1982 figure. Its trading moved into ~ro~tab~lity in the last quarter of 1983.