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Broadband
The private sector will not sort out broadband for the users in rural areas. It won't happen. BT was forced by Labour to drop the wholesale price for net access in 2001 and this caused a much bigger take up.
And why is it an emergency budget. Every government that comes into power has a budget so why is this different?
IR35
To many in the tech sector this is of far more interest, hidden in para 1.69 of the Red Book that accompanied the budget:
"The Government remains committed to a review of IR35 and small business tax and will release further details shortly"
I agree - IT has a huge amount to contribute to Public Sector co
Way back when the Tories were in power last time I did a lot of work under the Competiveness Fund and other government funded initiatives looking at the use of multimedia and "information superhighways" as they were called then, in Education. I co-authored a number of funded reports specifically looking at this area.... Frankly, though there are some shining exceptions to what I am about to say, the overall progress since then in the UK has been woeful.
Ultra high-speed broadband links (by this I mean around 200 megabits per second for high-speed two-way video-quality) were around back then - and being used in Education projects with enormously exciting results (like beaming live video of operations being performed to teaching hospitals across London!).... But the reality is that, 15 years later, we still aren't exploiting this technology in any kind of large-scale way.
If you want to cut the cost of Education without affecting the quality - then cut the cost of delivering Education. I studied Nuclear Physics at University and I learnt far more about Quantum Mechanics by watching the late Robert Feynman's lectures on videotape than I ever learnt from my own lecturers at University. Why can't Universities share and pool resources? - The best lecturers available over ultra high-speed broadband links allowing those less able communicators to concentrate on their research!
But even with currently widely available technologies - how many local authorities have a policy of using videoconferencing whenever possible? How many Colleges use virtual classrooms to provide outreach training to adults in their local community - let alone nationally?? How much investment is going in to developing 'games-like' simulations for education and training purposes? If you want to pump-prime the videogames industry then provide support in exchange for the industry providing open access to development tools for Education and training purposes....
No, I'm sorry, we just lack the imagination and the bold leadership necessary to be the future world-beaters in this area. Take a look at Singapore - or even developing nations in Africa - or in India - and you will see far more vision - albeit driven out of necessity - on how to cut costs of public services using technology.
We have some of the very best software engineers and designers in the world right here in the UK - yet we can't implement a large-scale government database project to save our lives - or our identities! Something's very wrong somewhere. I agree with Martin Ferguson - Much more should have been done in the budget to make something very different happen.