Points of view

Information technology and employment: Opportunities not to be missed

200,000 job opportunities can be created In Italy introducing the new information technology in industries, government and in daily life. If we are able to innovate and accept changing, we will create in the coming years new companies with exporting potential, we will deeply renew our society and then turning in a competitive advantage the delay we have had in the IT sector. But under what conditions and in what direction? Italy has 20 billion euro of revenues coming from IT, less than the 2% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), while France, Germany and UK state 3.3% each and the United States of America are on the top with the 4.1% of GDP. Then we come after the leading group with a considerable gap, but this is not always an unbridgeable disadvantage: it could be whether the land is still flat and other competitors maintain their advantages. When the rules of the game change and for example plain raises to cliff, the same opportunity offered to the climbing cyclist who reaches and overcomes the "passisti" will be given to us.

Today the economic scenario is changing almost silently as well as the world of technology and the way of use it.

We are only at the beginning of a long process of correction and absorption of the financial excesses of the last decade. During these years new financial instruments called derivatives were created and placed, with a nominal amount estimated in 600,000 billion dollars, - 50 times the U.S. GDP- (and therefore 12 times the global GDP ...). The size of this phenomenon, which seems to have caught the authorities and experts by surprise, will severely test the budgets of nations, banks and investors for years to come. The consequent impact on companies, including the ITs, that now is starting to be perceived will be huge.

Changes in technology and in the way to use it are considerable: important standards have been established in communication networks, in service and transit computers and in personal computers and laptops - even the phone is now a multifunction device - as well as new individual and group communication patterns, new purchasing, promoting and advertising models, new information and entertainment services, have been tested. Communication is boosted by powerful fixed and mobile devices with high and increasing speed (the broadband). The video, in all its formats, has today important and innovative usages.

Nowadays the youngest are seizing with enthusiasm and extraordinary easiness new tools available at affordable prices while a growing number of older people, even if less comfortable and slower, is passing the threshold of "first computer literacy ".

This represents an opportunity for Italy to accelerate the spread of IT applications and create new ones, more consistent based on our cultural heritage, our native talent and our way of life and not merely built on U.S. models.

Italy can create, in all sectors, including government, ideas and applications that could be exported to promote "the Italian way of life" and its culture. In particular, I am referring to the big issues of health, art and antiques, entertainment and communications, but also to the "made in Italy” and “Italian style" companies, and ultimately to the millenary tradition in liberal professions, that offer unlimited possibilities of new technologies innovative applications, grafted on our unique and distinctive skills and experience.

What is the starting point for this deep and ambitious renewal? And what are the conditions making it feasible? An extended debate, with contributions from different approaches, can answer to these complex questions.
Two items should be mentioned as the cornerstones and the foundation of basic technologies: broadband and television. Accelerating programs implementation and the diffusion of communication technologies with the large and ultra-large bandwidth, to create significant opportunities for all competitive technologies. Accelerating the implementation of production and distribution programs of interactive, video and television technologies, by facilitating the interoperability of media and devices and the business of contents - which requires an adequate and far-sighted recognition of the intellectual property. At the same time, it is necessary to accelerate the informatization of our businesses and our government at all levels together with the simplification of the legislation and procedures that are prerequisites for any successful innovation process. Doing this and at the same time deregulating and reducing constraints, wherever this is possible, the extraordinary latent and innovative energies of our country will be set in motion even in the computer applications area, creating new exporting businesses.

Alvise Braga Illa
Chairman TXT e-solutions
Vice-President Assinform
Milan, 12 January, 2009

These are views expressed by the author.