Articles and Speeches

I come to politics from an entrepreneurial background in IT and news services.

So I’m delighted to be opening Cloud Expo today.

Because I recognise that ‘cloud computing’ is more than just a catchy title.

It is as significant as the arrival of the personal computer in the 1980s.

By decoupling applications from infrastructure, people are free to access their data - from anywhere, at any time.

Cloud computing is transforming the IT industry I know and love.

It’s transforming the way we work.

And it has the potential to create more powerful citizens and a less powerful state.

Cloud computing challenges yesterday’s assumptions about corporate IT. And the conference today is a great opportunity to discover what that might means to all of us.

It strikes me that, when we’ve developed a lop-sided economy over reliant on housing, borrowing and financial services, we must now release innovation elsewhere.

We must develop high-value goods and services which generate jobs and prosperity.

Of course, it’s too early to predict the full impact of the cloud twenty years from now, but the latest trends are clear: virtualisation, software and infrastructure as a service, and the rising profile of open-source.

These kinds of disruptive technologies have underpinned some of the most productive innovations in the past.

When the information revolution first began, there was plenty of enthusiasm from government.

So New Labour responded.  They slapped an ‘e’ in front of just about anything that moved:  they had an e-envoy, an e-unit, and even an e-minister.

It was a government of, what Prensky[1] might call, ‘digital immigrants’...

People mesmerised by the transformative potential of technology, but unsure how ‘e-government’ would fit with their bureaucratic command and control vision for Whitehall.

But I’m optimistic for the future.

I expect ‘government’ and ‘e-government’ to fit together more naturally.

This will happen with time and political will.

The generation now entering the workforce has ‘grown up digital’.

Many of them already access ‘The Cloud’ on a daily basis. ‘Digital natives’ are comfortable with blogs, wikis and social networks. They access their photos on the move. And they refuse to be tied down to traditional office packages. If they can access a word-processor free-of-upfront-charge online, they’ll do it.

So the pace of technological change is breathtaking. The response from government is not.

So far as I can determine, ‘Cloud computing’ has never appeared in Hansard or a government press release.[2]

Politicians often just do not ‘get it’.

I want to change that.

We need to ask how we can reduce the cost of government IT on the one hand, whilst increasing citizens’ security and control of their data on the other.

I’ve already spoken about the power of freeing public sector data to kick-start digital enterprise.

Jeremy Hunt is looking at establishing the right regulatory environment to deliver of high-speed broadband nationwide.

David Cameron is a vocal advocate of standard data formats.

And George Osborne has spoken about improving IT procurement, by creating a level playing field for open-source alongside proprietary software.

When confidence in politics is close to an all time low, we also need to look at the ways in which IT can enhance openness, transparency and, ultimately, confidence in our democracy.

Take MPs expenses. This is one of the biggest scandals to hit Westminster in recent years. So I’m delighted to say that the Conservative Party has published the expenses of all Shadow Cabinet members.

But not only that, we’ve published in XML format. The data was prepared in Google Docs. It can be mashed-up easily by developers.

This response was decided and deployed within days. And it’s an indication of things to come.

So when you’re out and about in conference rooms and touring the exhibitions today please don’t forget about our tired old Whitehall IT systems.

You know, from your experience, it’s not about sticking an ‘e’ in front of ‘commerce’. The public sector can learn a lot from that experience.

So I’m delighted that your conference is being held today. The timing, politically and economically, could not be better.

Many MPs just don’t ‘get it’. But I’m determined that, in future, all politicians will ‘get it’.

And if they don’t, I feel confident that it’ll be published in the cloud immediately. 

Thank you.