An IT Savvy President

When Obama was elected president, there was a slight kerfuffle about whether he would be allowed to continue to use his Blackberry. As you may or not know, BlackBerrys are the lifeblood of congressional communication, and during his tenure in the senate (and probably before that), he became addicted. As the story goes, he was able to keep his Blackberry with some additional encryption and even picked up an iPad along the way. But those are just gadgets. What I’m really waiting for is the nation’s first IT savvy president.


An IT savvy president would understand that the IT industry is more important to the daily functioning of the global economy than any other industry this side of the energy sector. I’ll allow that without energy, we have no IT – at least until we’re all running our own fusion-powered flux capacitors or something.


Having an IT savvy president means having someone in the White House who understands that wringing the benefits out of health IT and EMR isn’t about training medical personnel to be more IT capable; it’s about letting the knowledge of the industry and, in particular small solution providers, loose to do what they do – solve problems, remove complexity and maintain systems.


If we had an IT savvy president, they would recognize that companies like Facebook and Google, while tremendously innovative in their own sense, are not IT. The IT industry is an incredibly diverse and rich mix of companies and customers, and acting on issues impacting the industry without hearing from all shapes and sizes misses the point. IT is about a lot more than the Fortune 500.


An IT savvy president would know that the industry’s workforce has a higher proportion of skilled to low skilled workers than virtually any other industry. IT provides better career paths, does not require an individual to amass tens of thousands in debt to get educated and is incredibly dynamic. The president would recognize that in good economies or bad IT is a domestic job machine.


Finally, our IT savvy president would recognize that when it comes to IT and tech, the last thing the government should be in the business of doing is picking winners and losers by selectively pursuing regulatory and legal action against various players at odds with each other. Taking sides only delays the inevitable and distorts the market.


When I look out at the current potential future presidents, I don’t see the IT savvy president yet, but maybe some day. Just don’t hold your breath.