|
|
Workshop B
|
|
Workshop A |
Workshop B |
Workshop C |
Workshop D
Workshop B - Session 3
By way of introduction I should say that I have been in Industry all my life and in ICL for over twenty years. My last four roles have been: Managing Director of Local Government Business, Managing Director of International Operations, Group Marketing Director and Mnaging Director of High Performance Systems, and this is my current role All this experience has given me a broad view of Government and the Education Service, and an international perspective. I have responsibility for policy and in my current role I am aware of a desperate a desperate need for adult learning if our business is to be successful. So what's new? The answer may be, not a lot, but there again, everything. We have been aware of the natuire of information and the way we could use machines to process it for fifty years if not more. But our capacities, our communication facilities are far larger than they were in the time of Baird and Bell. And moreover, we have the recent recent and continuing proliferation of low cost access devices (PCs or NCs) and cheap bandwidth with global reach. This means that that the Information Age or Society, as some people call it, started several years ago. Land and industrial capacity were the assets of the Agricultural Age and the Industrial Age. The assets of the Information Age are knowledge and learning. Mindset Gap I am responsible for 800 highly skilled people. Most of them are engineers and designers operating at the edge of knowledge and some are specialists in other fields like finance, legal matters, HR and Marketing. In 1998, I will increase training spend to £1.2m from the 1997 figure of £800k. Significant number of people will receive in excess of 10 weeks training per head and that is to receive Microsoft system designer accreditation (and Microsoft is not even our product). In the meantime, our customers are also struggling with huge mindset shifts. The internet will bring Home Shopping. Banks move to Internet Banking, newspapers to Cyber news. didactic services will move to to Citizen Centre Governance They have the same problem. Every mindset gap is a knowledge gap and every knowledge gap is a learning opportunity and every learning opportunity grasped is an increase in an individual's personal assets and their companies' assets. At least 50% of every sale in cost terms is to help customers exploit their new system and it is probably 100% of the value to them. The Learning Business It is not difficult to see that in a few years, learning will be our business. Learning systems, knowledge sharing and management, network infrastructure and systems will represent all the value on offer with hardware devices and even software becoming commodity 'IT for All' is a reality that must happen and is happening. Do not dismiss it as a Government slogan or a marketing pitch from the IT industry. It can be the catalyst for raising skills, the enemy of social exclusion and the key to self esteem for 16 - 25 year olds who under achieved at school. Let me explain the last point. Our overwhelming experience is that if they failed at school, they didn't fail at IT. Initially, they are technophobic. When they succeed, 'they didn't think they could do it'. So it can be a mechanism for breaking the vicious circle of failure and for awakening confidence and starting motivation.There are many examples where skills development, IT familiarity and social exclusion have been tackled together in a powerful force of regeneration and development. National Grid for Learning ICL supports the National Grid for Learning concept. It is an innovative and bold way to kick start an effective and substantial reform. The UK cannot afford not to do it and it may be a blueprint for other countries. Our experience is that both bottom up and top down approaches are needed. Governments need to set policies and invest but this becomes disconnected from reality on its own. Trafalgar 2000, Cyberskills at MANCAT W1 project, Broadnet and Worldgate engage real communities, but become disjointed and costly if operated outside a framework of policy investment and replication. If we could do one thing to make a difference, it would be to train the teachers. Work has started to define the training needs for this 500,000 strong important group. Our experience tells us that nothing happens until the people are engaged. Nothing can result without the technology, but nothing will start until people commit.
|
