Jackie is of course right to be disgusted with Alastair Campbell admitting that both he and the Prime Minister are clueless about computers. She is wrong to make any connection between this and their being employees of the state. Many senior managers in large UK organisations, both public and private sector, are incompetent because once their employers exceed a certain size their own performance becomes so uncoupled from the performance of their institutions that they might as well spend all day playing golf. Imagine someone at a large British company saying this sort of thing to one of its staff:
Yes, David, you and I both went to Durham together, you are as fluent in Managerese as Gavin in Personnel, you always pay your round when you get pissed with us on conference trips, and I very much appreciate the way you covered for me with my wife when the embarrassing business with Lesley blew up, so, normally, you’d be a shoo-in for a place on the board. Sadly, however, your IT skills aren’t up to snuff.
It is, as usual, about snobbery. Knowing how to use IT might result in the same kind of step up in personal productivity that learning to touch-type would, but typing’s for girls and computers are for nerds. Even hardcore, abstract, computational theory is narg* work. (“CompSci” is a still a term of abuse at Cambridge University.) Advancement is about “leadership”—and anything else we on the remuneration committee can think of that’s beyond objective measurement.
There’s also a connection between that kind of attitude and the most successful manufacturing centres in Britain being run by overseas management, but the US, for example, has its own problems. There’s a reason why anyone who’s worked in an American office recognizes the computer-illiterate Pointy-Haired Boss.
*[Not A Real Gentleman]
That reminds me of the joy of working for the CPS, where seniority was measurable as an inverse function of the technology available – secretaries had Win98 PCs, clerks and caseworkers dumb terminals on the 1982-vintage filetracker system, and lawyers clear desks and phones…
As if we needed Campbell to spell it out, given the government’s execrable record on IT projects.
They ought to give out an annual award for “Politician Most Dazzled By Lying, Cheating, Charlatan IT Consultants”
I don’t think – and never said – that Campbell’s and Blair’s incompetence was caused by their status as public sector employees. That would be very silly.
I do, however, think that this is just one of many pieces of evidence to be entered into the case against the “But we need the government to handle this stuff, it’s just too big and complicated to be done by private entities” crowd.
In my experience the inability of not being able to use a computer/email/the internet is worn as a badge of pride by senior managers, (I’m thinking board level of public quoted companies here.) Is says “I am too important and have been too busy to learn such ephemera, I let the little people deal with that.”