Random reactions

Where do you stand?

Andrew Sullivan calls this blogging out loud, where you try to develop a thought during a post. I present these as thoughts that are surfacing and seem to be connected, but I confess I haven't developed this as much as I should have.

Let's start with the obvious: Britain did not allow mass immigration because it wanted diversity. Immigrants did not come to Britain because they wanted to make Britain a multi-coloured rainbow of diversity. If diversity is a benefit of immigration, it is clearly unintended. I think it is a benefit, but I think the case is more difficult to make than the Guardianistas would seem to believe.

Let's move to some related thoughts: Immigrants tend to demonstrate stronger social cohesion than the English. England finished the Second World War broke, shortly thereafter lost an empire, and subsequently abandoned its religion. Immigrants tend to stick together and consciously reinforce cultural elements from their homeland. They also are quick to perceive discrimination, and use the sense of their own 'otherness' to band together.

Immigrants have the capability to move policy and opinion in England disproportionate to their numbers, because of their ability to move in concert. They have not done so yet, which puzzles me. I'm surprised that Indians have had little more than a culinary effect on Brit culture, for example.

The question I'm trying to get to is one for Muslims in Britain: Where do you stand? Currently, the Muslim voice is one of self-appointed imams and whomever the BBC decides to place in front of a camera, usually on Newsnight. Do they speak for you? Is what they say an accurate reflection of what you believe? Do you believe you have the right and the freedom to voice your own opinion?

I ask because if the imams and public voices do not represent Muslims, it would be very prudent to find a channel for other voices. If I were Exec Producer for Al Jazeera, I would definitely be running a Vox Pop exercise. Because the implications are huge. If the majority of Muslims in Britain do not agree with what is being said, there is a good possibility that current tensions can be diffused quickly. All it would really take is a medium sized parade under the banner 'Not in My Name.' But if the voices that blame the West for all of Islam's problems are indeed representative, a much larger problem exists.

I find it odd that we are now receiving monthly opinion polls from Iraq, but we never see the segmentation of Brit polls to identify a Muslim meta-voice. It would be in the public interest to know.

So, how does thinking in blog format work? Critiques are welcome.

The Day After in London

Traffic on the Tube was a little light coming in, but the buses were full. In my office, a lot of people decided to work from home, but given the state of our offices, that's not surprising. More of us seem to have taken the opportunity to arrive a bit late. That extra half hour of sleep means a lot.

I think part of me wanted to see hordes of people marching to work under a Union Jack, clutching a cigar in one hand and using two fingers to give one sort of message or another. But that's not the way London works. That would be dignifying the terrorist message with a response, I guess.

Nonetheless, I can report with confidence that panic has not seized the north and the south of Britain, if central London is taken as representative. This pleases me.

I do have to say that I heard two people whistling the tune to an advert that was running a year ago, where a popular DJ from Capital radio station sang a song with the chorus, 'Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner, that I choose Capital.' Pity I can't whistle.

The Impact of Technology on the Government Market

From approximately 1972 to 2003, technology has been hugely disruptive for business decision makers in government. Elected politicians might be for or against new technology, but business decision makers felt threatened by the consequences of improvements in the ease of communications and were unable to see short term advantage in reduced cycle times or collaborative work processes. What was perceived as an opportunity to improve productivity by the private sector was seen as a threat to organisational control in the public sector.

Organisation leaders were not thrilled to see new job titles at Director level—CIOs and CTOs took some of their power, told leaders they should do different things in different ways, and generally asked embarrassing questions.

Almost immediately, governmental business decision makers began fighting to protect their sphere of influence. They enlisted technology to help them, and through the aid of mechanisms starting with enterprise resource planning and continuing to today’s integrated performance management systems, business decision makers have succeeded in limiting the threat to their role in the organisation and pushing technology issues back down below board level, where they feel technology in general and ICT in particular, belongs. They have clawed back their decision making powers.

This situation will last about as long as it takes to drink a cup of coffee. The technology explosion that started in the ‘70s radiated in many different directions, as a thousand flowers bloomed. A generation later, many of these flowers are uniting and producing combined solutions. The urge to merge is strong. Kable has written about the combination of RFID and GIS as an example of two different strands of technology coming together in a way that will surprise everybody. There are many others.

Business decision makers will be dismayed and obstructive regarding these new technologies. This is not because they are Luddites. It is because it will bring a range of issues onto their plate that were seemingly unalterable facts of life previously. These issues will cry out for solutions. All of the solutions available to business decision makers will be even more disruptive and offer fewer opportunities for success for these leaders and their organisations.

The easiest—and technologically, the simplest—example of this is identity cards. Two technologies re-invented in the ‘70s, very large databases and digitally transmitted biometric markers, have combined to give government organisations the capability of holding pertinent (and impertinent) data about every citizen in the land.

The existence of this new capability forces a political decision to be made: either to adopt and use it, or to say ‘we don’t want it.’ But it also introduces a business decision: Whether to reach for more organisational power that comes with a large budget and a larger remit, or to lose relevance and importance while another department reaches for the stars.

It should be emphasized that as a case study, ID cards are not sufficient to describe the decisions facing government organisations in future. This is because ID cards are too simple and the costs and opportunities are too easy to quantify to be highly relevant to future combinations of existing technology. How long will it be before every government field worker is deputised as a Community Service Officer, authorised to issue ASBOs and make family custody or even medical care decisions, using mobile working technology for communications, authorisation, access to appropriate paperwork and virtual attendance by officials from appropriate departments?