We’re bracing ourselves for an effort by a newly-activist federal government to start playing again at central planning for industry—particularly the technology industry.
There is an army of fresh, eager new Obama advisors flocking out of their ivory towers in academia for shiny new positions in the Obama administration, and they have all sorts of pet ideas for running the American economy that they’ve been just dying to try out. And the tech sector is one of their prime targets.
We have a suggestion: Perhaps, instead of trying to run the tech economy from Washington, you should focus on deploying technology to make government better?
Health care reform—instead of undermining the parts of the U.S. healthcare system that are working best, government should be using technology to reap huge savings and better care. The U.S. health care system should be encouraged to adopt standards-based interoperable electronic health information systems, including electronic health records. Processing paper medical records costs almost twice as much as processing electronic claims according to estimates. The federal government estimates that the proper use of IT in our health care system would save $140 billion a year.
Communications—Instead of having government busybodies constantly trying to reengineer an already successful communications marketplace, government should be looking to ways to use communications technologies to deliver government services. Improved government services delivered, for example, via the Internet would drive demand for Internet access services, creating a market, driving greater competition in those lesser served areas.
Energy—some of the greatest possible improvements in energy conservation are in the promise of better management of the energy network. Technology could lead to decreased energy use to perform the same functions and to more efficient allocation of power across the electrical grid—saving money and energy consumption.
Instead of playing at central planning of the technology industry, government should be aggressively looking for ways to deploy technology to reduce the cost of government services—saving money and better serving the taxpayer. Since the party that most strongly believes in government is now in control of government, is it too optimistic to think that they might actually make government better?