Top 10 IT priorities for Obama

Top 10 IT priorities for Obama

The bunting is going up, the crowds are flocking to Washington for the inauguration on Tuesday and the Secret Service is working overtime to make sure Obama's first presidential command isn't 'Duck!'

Tuesday's swearing-in will be a landmark not only for its cultural and social implications, but for its impact on technology. Obama has promised to be more in touch with the cutting edge of the internet and tech worlds than any previous president.

John McCain may not have known how to use a computer, but Obama used the internet to raise millions in small donations and has big plans.

He has already said that the nation will get its first chief technology officer, and has started making appointments that put people with technological knowledge in the driving seat rather than politically reliable hacks.

As the US gets ready for the end of the Bush era and the beginning of the Obama one, we thought it right to suggest a few IT priorities that the new president might like to consider. No honourable mentions this week, as the new president has quite enough on his plate already.

10. Webcasting
Iain Thomson: For the past decade we've been hearing about how the internet is going to outpace television, but there's been precious little movement by the US government in this direction.

We're hoping to see a lot more use of the internet in broadcasting government business. It's not enough to make sure the TV stations get to publicise government initiatives; the web needs addressing too.

The fact is that people don't want to wait and watch the TV at a particular time of day in order to find out what their government is doing. We all work harder and at different hours, and putting more government business on the web makes it accessible to more people.

Democracy relies on an informed population, and it's about time government turned to the internet to make more folks aware of what's going on.

Shaun Nichols: If Obama wants to live up to the promise his campaign made on the internet, he'll need to put an unprecedented amount of information up on the web.

While posting sound and video clips on YouTube doesn't seem like a big deal for most young people, it could prove very difficult for the White House. The new president will not only have to deal with the traditional media, he will be faced with managing his image on the web as well.

9. Update the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
Shaun Nichols: If one thing can be said about the pace of technology, it's that what was new today will be old and busted within 12 months. As the tech world moves at a speed roughly twice that of dog years, the 1998 DMCA is badly in need of an overhaul.

Web 2.0 has created an entirely new crop of problems for the act originally written to cover copyright issues in the AOL-era internet. Anyone who has followed YouTube over the past few years has seen just how tedious and frustrating the law is.

Furthermore, the rise of smartphones and handset jail-breaking has raised new questions about how far copyright law extends to the rights of those who want to tinker with their own gadgets.

Iain Thomson: The DMCA was a flawed piece of legislation when it was introduced and badly needs an update. I'm willing to bet that, when it was conceived, half of the people voting on it had barely even heard of the internet, let alone considered the repercussions of their actions 10 years down the line.

Some companies love the DMCA, because it gives them strong powers to protect their markets to the detriment of competition. Many of those same companies are even now advising on the global DMCA-style economic ACTA treaty. I'm hoping we're going to see a fundamental rethink of both.

8. A Federal Communications Commission with power
Iain Thomson: Regulation has been a dirty word for the past eight years, and this has to change. True, there have been some attempts to regulate the telecoms industry. The FCC smack-down on Comcast was a particular, if toothless, high point, but it also exposed the myth of self-regulation. Comcast lied about its policies of bandwidth throttling, and others are sure to be doing the same.

Competition relies on a level playing field with companies obeying the rules and providing an honest service. The FCC needs to grow a pair and get on with its job of ensuring that this happens.

Shaun Nichols: Iain, your European upbringing is showing. American culture these days is such that any sort of major regulation will be a hard sell.

That said, the FCC could definitely assert more of its power over business practices now that the notoriously prudish Bush administration is out. Hopefully the new commissioner will spend more time looking at the overall health of the industry, and less time fretting over dirty words and wardrobe malfunctions.

7. Immigration
Iain Thomson: This is one of the issues that the technology industry is most keen for the new president to address.

The H1B visa scheme was a great idea for allowing companies to bring in much-needed talent from overseas. Yes, it would be better if the US was producing enough of its own computer programmers, but the fact remains that it isn't and countries like India, China and Brazil are.

I'd be the first to say that computer education is needed in America's high schools, but that's a long-term issue. In the short term, the best programmers are largely coming out of the developing world, and we need them here.

The H1B visa system needs a big expansion in the short term. Long term we need to be raising Americans to write code but, since the current crop of youth seems more interested in appearing on American Idol or videoing themselves doing Jackass-style foolishness, it's time to do what America does best: opening its doors to talent and introducing a new generation to the American dream.

Shaun Nichols: Managing the H1B system is going to be a very delicate balancing act. On one hand, rising unemployment rates are such that you'll have a hard time convincing people that there aren't qualified candidates within the US. On the other hand, an MBA doesn't exactly prepare you for a career in software development.

We hear all the time how fewer students are electing to go into computer science. If the skill set being sought is not one that students are being taught here, the right person for the job will often be someone from another country.

6. Invest in broadband infrastructure
Shaun Nichols: The US is one of the largest and most sparsely populated of all developed nations. As such, we still have large patches of the country where running cables or building towers for broadband just isn't economically feasible for many telcos.

Given that a web-based business can theoretically be set up anywhere that has a decent internet connection, expanding the reach of broadband could open the possibility of new business development to rural areas where property is cheap and jobs are hard to come by.

Iain Thomson: Shaun raises a good point about the economic feasibility of companies wiring the nation. He's right, this is a job for government.

In the 1950s the US government set about building the nation's interstate highway system. It was a job of such scale that it had to be done on a national rather than state basis, and the end result changed the nation for the better. It's time for a 21st century version of this.

5. Fund university programmes
Shaun Nichols: For just a minute, consider the everyday technologies that were incubated in places like MIT, Stanford, Cal Poly and Illinois Urbana-Champaign. So much of the innovation that drives the tech industry comes from university research programmes. So what better way to spur economic growth than to invest in these programmes?

Budgets have been cut across the board for universities nationwide, and committing more funding would offer a sorely needed shot in the arm to the labs that have helped to build the tech world as we know it.

Iain Thomson: Without government-funded research we'd have no internet, so this one is a no-brainer. True, in the case of the internet it was military funding that provided the seed capital, and Darpa continues to play an important role in funding key research today. But why leave the choice of research to the military?

Universities aren't all full of stoned slackers and firebrand leftist professors. There are good minds out there and, with a little bit of cash to do some research, the results could be quite unexpected. And, instead of insisting on strict goals, let's cast our bread upon the waters a little bit.

We seem to have forgotten the value of pure research for its own sake. When my namesake J J Thomson discovered the electron in 1897 it had no practical use whatsoever; it was being researched purely to find out how things worked. Today we have an entire world that could not function properly without electronics.

4. Privacy laws
Iain Thomson: In the 1950s and 1960s it was civil rights. In the 1970s and 1980s it was sexual equality. But in the 1990s and 2000s it is privacy.

Technology has moved to a point where our every action in the physical and online world can be recorded, and often is without us realising it. Personal data is being recorded and analysed at a phenomenal rate, and I sometimes wonder that we might have riots on the streets if people knew exactly what was being collected.

On one level it's not all bad. Computer evidence has played a valuable role in solving many crimes. In more than one case a list of search topics that include 'murder' and 'disposal of bodies' have given evidence of premeditation and ensured that some prisoners haven't even met their parole officer's father yet.

But we all still want privacy; it's a basic human need. I always say to people that they should never put something in an email that they wouldn't be happy seeing printed in their local paper. It's a good base mark to decide whether that oh-so-funny idea should be put down in print.

The new president needs to enact laws to make sure that, where privacy is desired, it is respected. If people are willing to hand over their personal data for money or gifts then fine, that's their choice. But for those who want the right to go about their affairs without looking over their shoulder, that right needs to be enshrined in law.

Shaun Nichols: The explosion in data losses in recent years doesn't say much for the ability of private and government organisations to guard personal data.

An overhaul of compliance rules, as well as better enforcement of those rules, could go a long way to protect personal privacy. More openness from the government, and a willingness to share information with the general public, would also be very welcome.

3. Green technology development
Shaun Nichols: Green technology is not just an environmental issue, it's a business investment. From steel mills in Pittsburgh to car factories in Detroit to IT firms in Silicon Valley, the US economy has long been driven by the ability to innovate and develop new technologies.

For the foreseeable future, the ability to develop and operate with minimal energy use and environmental impact will dominate nearly every facet of industry. As such, green tech such as renewable energy and low-impact construction look to be huge cash cows.

Iain Thomson: Climate change might seem quite fun after the unseasonably warm weather we've been having here in California this week, but it's going to be no laughing matter for our children.

We need to invest in a whole range of new green technologies. It boggles the mind that we are bathed in enough energy from the sun to power a billion datacentres and more, yet we can't figure out a way to use it and are reduced to burning finite resources of coal and oil.

Countries like Germany and Denmark are leading the world in renewable power technology, and Japan is gaining ground fast. The one thing all these countries share is government support via tax breaks for green technologies.

2. Manage the new wireless spectrum
Shaun Nichols: Starting in February, over-the-air TV broadcasts will end in the US and a large portion of the spectrum will be opened up for a possible wireless broadband spectrum.

Outgoing FCC chairman Kevin Martin championed the idea of designating at least a portion of the new spectrum as a free network in which any device could access the internet wirelessly.

Advocates say that this system will bridge the digital divide and allow everyone to get on the internet. Opponents say that the system is industrial welfare, which will allow handset manufacturers to gain an unfair advantage over telcos that have invested in their own spectrum space.

Regardless of which side wins, the handling of this issue could have a profound impact on the industry.

Iain Thomson: As we discussed in the sixth point, internet access for all is essential. While you can't beat a fixed line for speed and reliability in my book, making wireless available for all would be a great step forward.

I've listened to both sides of the argument on this one and have to say that the telecoms companies are missing the point. Not surprising really, since their industry is being fundamentally changed by technology and they don't know what to do about it.

Now that we are finally starting to see WiMax deployments there are going to be no excuses for not allowing everyone the chance to go online.

1. Net Neutrality
Iain Thomson: Without doubt the biggest technological issue of the coming administration will be net neutrality.

When the internet was created the idea of net neutrality was key; there had to be a level playing field that let every web site compete with every other. Adam Smith would have been proud of the internet's creators.

If you want a good example of why net neutrality is a good thing, think of Google. When the Google team came up with a much better search algorithm than engines like Yahoo, MSN and Altavista, they simply put it online and people found it for themselves. No costly advertising or marketing campaigns were needed. People flocked to Google because it was better. It was pure competition in action.

But if Microsoft, Yahoo and the other search providers had been able to buy faster access it is unlikely that Google would have been able to compete. The majority of consumers want fast searching above all else and, if the established online media giants had been able to buy that, they would have preserved their market position and stifled innovation.

But net neutrality is a problem for telecoms companies. They want to sell faster access, not just to the internet - which is perfectly acceptable - but to web sites so that they load faster. This would be a great money spinner, but very harmful to online development.

Competition relies on a level playing field for all, so that the best ideas succeed on their merits and not on the spending power of their creators. Net neutrality needs to be enshrined in law as soon as possible.

Shaun Nichols: I know I chided Iain earlier on regulatory controls, but this is one sort of regulation that Americans in both red and blue states could definitely be sold on.

When you get down to it, net neutrality is about preventing big businesses from gaining preferential treatment, and inherently putting any sort of emerging online business at a disadvantage. That's the sort of market regulation that you can sell to both sides of the political aisle.

Although I'm sure certain companies will toss all of their lobbying might to fight it, ensuring net neutrality should be a no-brainer for just about every government on the planet.