Economic Impact of Tech Understated, Study Says 87
narramissic writes "A report (available here) released this week by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a pro-technology think tank, claims that IT was responsible for nearly all of the US worker productivity growth between 1995 and 2002. But the creation of new jobs in IT will be modest, the study says. At a forum in Washington, D.C., the report's co-author and ITIF president Robert Atkinson warned lawmakers that there will be a 'significant cost to the economy if you hinder digital transformation' and called on the government to spur IT adoption in several industries, including health care, banking and transportation." The article also quotes an economist who is skeptical that this report's outsized claims for productivity gains have been proven.
Environmental impact (Score:1, Troll)
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Why is this modded troll? Electronics are very harmful to the environment. They're full of heavy metals and toxic chemicals, and there are toxic chemicals used in their production that aren't always disposed of properly. I guess pointing out uncomfortable truths is something most /. readers can't handle.
Tech companies and communities are starting to catch on, however. Several manufacturers will take your old computer when you buy a new one, and my county (Lancaster, PA) offers free electronics and househol
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I'm about 20 minutes from the border with Lancaster County, mind if I drop my old electronics at your place and you take care of them for me?
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I'm only a couple minutes from Lancaster county and I wasn't aware of this. In fact I know quite a few people who live in Lancaster County who also aren't aware of this.
Even funnier still, I live in Lebanon county where recycling is 'mandatory', yet I have to pay for the privilege of doing something mandatory. Waste Management hasn't said anything so far, and for the most part I just end up bringing recyclables to work but I'll be damned if I'm paying an extra $40 a quarter for them to pick up my mand
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Depends on how you define transplant. I'm born and raised in PA, but I've lived in Williamsport, Clearfield, Harrisburg, State College, Wilkes-Barre, Harrisburg again, and now Lancaster. (Near F&M)
And of all these places, Lancaster is the best by far.
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I pass through Lebanon County on my way to New York twice a year though I've been to LVC once or twice.
I thought that my township had an electronic recycling program once or twice a year but I didn't see it last year and so far haven't seen it this year. Right now all I have is a 10+ year old monitor (from my 95 days) so I can hang on to it for now and even when I move until
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They've never checked my ID when I've gone there, and I've dropped off a ton of stuff. As long as it's not a huge truckload, I'd say just bring it yourself. It's on Harrisburg Pike, right about halfway between the Park City Mall and F&M.
They also take old paint, motor oil, and batteries.
Patents (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Patents (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that you can build a smooth process internally to automate a great number of expensive processes (not to mention reduce the body count) tends to blow by the decision makers. They only think about it when they absolutely need something NOW. Which tends to result in a mess of Microsoft Access and Visual Basic "applications". Which they think is okay, because they don't realize the tremendous maintenece costs they're committing to.
There honestly needs to be a bit more focus on developing strategies for using technology in business. Those strategies should then be taught as part of the MBA programs. They may not really "get" it, but at least they'll understand that using X technology has Y consequences and that you need to rely on trustworthy staff to find the best tradeoff.
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Huh? (Score:3, Insightful)
The types of solutions you're talking about isn't just a matter of dropping in a box, and suddenly everything's more efficient. It requires analysing the business processes, and determine where the issues are (and sometimes more importantly, why they're there).
I can't remember who said it, but they made a statement to the effect of -- technology can only make things go faster; if you have a bad process
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First, they don't understand the capabilities of the systems that could be brought in. Access applications are a prime example of what happens when a bunch of amatures get involved, because, in their minds, moving to access is a big step, because they don't understand its l
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However, logically, the machines must create fewer jobs than they eliminate (otherwise their total cost of ownership will wind up being higher than keeping humans on staff, and they won't be adopted).
Unless expense was the barrier to increasing quantity supplied. For price elastic goods, dropping the price can *increase* the amount of money collected (because the increase in quantity sold outweighs the decrease in price). I.e. the machine may mean fewer jobs per item produced, but if the total number of items produced increases enough, it can offset the reduction. This is why the Fed is constantly increasing the money supply--to allow this additional production to be purchased. If they increase the
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Sure. There is a lot of work to be done to ensure stupid obvious patents related to software don't make it out of the world's patent offices...but, there is no evidence that software patents are currently having a real, deleterious effect on innovation in the software industry.
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Damn you, AC! You beat me to the punch!
AC is correct, this 'group' isn't exactly breaking new ground. Technology can improve productivity? Really? An
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OTOH, I was originally looking at this from an IT-centric point of view, in that I was left wondering "Well of course IT has been increasing worker productivity. What else *could* make people more efficient?" Completely forgetting that there are other industries besides those t
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Steam powered textile looms weren't much more productive than cottage-based home production through the spinning jenny, the latter was just legislated away. Spade cultivation is much more efficient than the plow or mechanization, it's just more labor intensive. Everyone would be better off growing their own vegetables at home. Joint-stock and investment bank funding of ventures has never lead to better inno
Hinder? They can't even keep up (Score:2, Interesting)
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Which is bad for us here in the USA. I can't think of one country thats catching up though. Has China even invented One-Click shopping yet?
Banking and medical need MORE IT? (Score:2, Insightful)
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A few years ago I contracted at a semiconductor manufacturing firm that kept equipment maintenance records ON PAPER, and later transferred them to Excel. I quickly remedied that situation.
Last month I visited a bank that had to have all cash transactions written into a ledger.
The work is out there, kids, you just have to find it.
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By using OpenOffice?
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Why does it take a check 7-10 days to be cleared? Is that the ping time between Bank of America and the issuing bank? No, but this system still works largely the same way it has for 1000 years. People, actual humans with eyes, check the numbers. I doubt this will change for a long time. Bank
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Not at all. People don't check the numbers, scanning equipment does that. Checks take 3-5 days to clear because your bank makes money off the float (the
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Under Check 21, banks (or intermediate handlers) truncate a check into an electronic image. Banks without the capability to handle checks fully electronically print an IRD (Image Replacement Document), a subsititute check, that they handle like the original check. This can then be truncated again by the next handler. What this means is that even though a small bank on the issuing side or the
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Which is extremely fast since Check 21 passed and was implemented -- did you miss the comments about electronic processing of checks? Check validation typically now takes less than an hour.
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Oh yeah they had free wifi access all over the place too... very cool.
This was a very progressive hospital I'm sure.
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Let's talk about health care IT (Score:3, Insightful)
Why does GE's health care division run ads bragging ab
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The single biggest evidence is how popular culture perceives hospitals. Very, very rarely are they sleek places full of computers. Mostly, it's a place with mounds and mounds of paperwork and reams of filing cabinets and an old green-on-black terminal at the receptionist's desk.
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What software that's out there is pretty dammned bad. I'm not sure why, but for smaller hospitals, we seem to be stuck in the late 1990's (And I'm looking at Y
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Probably because it sounds exactly like a secretary telling that all of the spyware got into her computer when the techs upgraded her monitor.
Bodies are complex system and doctors study for a decade. We all know how silly it sounds when people who use their computers everyday try to diagnose their computer problems. Patients probably sound a million times sillier.
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Health care is actually an interesting case. I've been on a couple of projects at health care firms. And, in both cases, the firms were heavily into technology. Many hospitals make large amounts of money in profit (even the 'non-profit' hospitals). So, they spend their money on technology. (At one of my projects, every single
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Right. Doctors here in New England - and I assume across the country - have about half of their staff's time, and several hours a day of their own, spent in straightening things out between their own records and the systems of the insurers they need to collect from. Many are leaving practice because this is such a distracting, unrewarding diversion away from their core competency at delivering medical care. So every doctor's visit, you (and your insurer) have to pay
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I think the greater crime is that this person spent four years in college and four years in medical school, plus a lot of residency time, and they're spending all that time doing what is essentially clerical work. How many more people could afford medical care, or could be seen by a doctor, if they weren't spending their time tracking down billing information.
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There's still too much paper in health care and banking.
When I go to the doctor, I've got to fill out forms containing information that I've already filled out for that doctor or information that should be available to my doctor from other places I've filled it out. And I've got to fill out those forms on paper, which are then entered by someone else, increasing the rate of error.
My wife works as a TSS and she still has about an hour of paperwork to fill out every week. To fulfill HIPA requirements, it ha
Digital Transformation? (Score:1)
I know one thing... (Score:1)
Alt+Tab (Score:1, Funny)
An old and silly argument (Score:5, Insightful)
Which we know is false. IT and computing is squandered everywhere. Huge ERP installations go tits up regularly. Large systems integrators waste gobs of company's cash by running projects with clueless hordes & over-assertive managers that somehow mask that something that should take 3 people x 3 months should take 90 people x 2 years.
It also implies that IT vendors are responsible for the appropriate channeling of IT investment. This is like suggesting that weapons, communication, and transportation manufacturers should have been given credit for the Allied victory in WW2.
Investing - in anything - requires thought and management. It is good management that leads to an increase in productivity. Technology and computing capacity are just a means.
The paper is correct that technology can transform industries and markets, and that is a good source of productivity. But the catch is that there is no correlation between IT spending and transformation. Technology & computing capacity is "necessary but not sufficient" for transformation. Thus, it strikes me as a propaganda piece to squander billions with hardware & global services outsourcing.
A great source is Paul Strassmann's [strassmann.com] profitability & productivity studies, which he has conducted since the 1980's. He has plotted spending vs. productivity or profitability, in what is the now famous "scatter plot": there is *NO* correlation between IT spending and productivity & profitability. Yes, one CAN gain increases in both of these in concert with IT (witness the work of Toyota's lean approach, or Wal-Mart's data warehouse), but I'd attribute that gain to smart management plus technology over just IT.
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it is unlikely that the I.T. industry will be producing jobs gains out of line with its size.
Instead, the report contends, job gains will more and more come from industries that use information technology intelligently
This study does not claim that just spending money on IT will increase productivity. It quite plainly says that using IT intelligently will increase productivity. I find it very hard to find a problem in this logic. In fact, I find it so obvious that I am suprised someone needed to do a
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The problem is that too many executives don't care about the obvious, or even what their own good people tell them. Instead, they believe what they're told by expensive consultants and the studies those consultants produce.
This isn't to say that consultants can't be valuable. Some consultants really do bring broad experience of things that work, deep thinking about what else could help, and an aptitude for identifying how to match those things up with the company hiring them. Such experience is hard to fi
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But wait, there's more! (Score:5, Interesting)
Case in point- Using almost exclusively freeware and extremely cheap hardware, I've been able to create and build a company that needs only TWO employees to run ( http://www.rlt.com/ [rlt.com] ). And it makes a good income for both of us. Both of us are IT capable. Both of us know how to use digital technologies to our advantage.
Digital technology is the TOOL. Henry Ford said that if you need a tool, and you don't buy it, you end up paying for it anyway but you don't get to use it. Do tools make us more productive? Ask any carpenter to give up power tools and see what he says. By the same token, give a hopeless amateur a world-class workshop and the best materials to work with, and any chair he makes will still wobble. But give a master craftsman a hammer, a chisel and some scrap wood, and he'll make you a chair that will be sturdy, strong and will last a lifetime. It's all about the people, their skills, and their tools. I'd like to see any modern company try to compete without any computers in today's world.
Want to be more productive? Make more money? YOU are the master carpenter! And mostly, your employers are the hopeless amateurs who are using you as the tool! When I finally figured that out, I started my own business and I've never looked back.
As programmers and sysadmins, you have some incredible advantages over most MBAs. You have LOGIC. You are CREATIVE. You have a propensity for PROBLEM SOLVING. You can think through and visualize a plan of action from beginning to end. You can change course and re-program the system when requirements change. You know that very few, if any, projects are ever really finished. You're a hacker who knows how to shoot from the hip to get a job done on deadline, even if it isn't "elegant". You know that "Done" usually only means "it works at the moment and when it breaks, we'll fix it". Guess what, these qualities plus a willingness to try and fail then try again are what make entrepreneurs successful. Another advantage you have is that you won't have to hire some expensive tech guy to do your programming/sysadmin/DBA stuff for you. I can't count how many people have asked me who does my web sites. It's fun to watch the blank stare on their faces when I tell them "I did".
In short, don't BE the tool, USE the tool. Skills first, equipment second.
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It shows...hehe, but seriously is there any reason why I should feel like I've taken a trip back to 1994 when I look at your website? How many potential sales are lost due to the amateurish website? If I were you I would invest a few bucks in a redesign or perhaps partner with a bigger retail outfit like Amazon. The business may be profi
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First rule of small business- know your market! Your market IS your business. Great ser
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That book was almost entirely fiction. It's highly likely that comment and retort never even took place.
Not to mention, the contents of the book are almost entirely complete and utter nonsense....
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So, the quote holds true whether it really happened or not. His book may have been terrible literature, the grammar was atrocious, an
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So, the quote holds true whether it really happened or not. His book may have been terrible literature, the grammar was atrocious, and he tended to be redundant, but the important thing to remember is that it SOLD well! Very well.
I'm sure it did. "There's a sucker born every minute."
So, to summarize, when starting your business use freeware, cheap hardware, develop or retail important skills, concentrate on what your market is/wants/expects, satisfy that, and ignore the naysayers and critics.
Please know that I'm not criticizing your suggestions for starting a small business. I'm just criticizing "Rich Dad, Poor Dad". Nobody should waste their money on that nonsense.
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I forget who said that, but they're obviously doing all right!
Here's my personal favorite set of toys (that I sell) - http://www.exexeq.com/ [exexeq.com]
How I love doing product evaluations!
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Case in point- Using almost exclusively freeware and extremely cheap hardware, I've been able to create and build a company that needs only TWO employees to run ( http://www.rlt.com/ [rlt.com] [rlt.com] ). And it makes a good income for both of us. Both of us are IT capable. Both of us know how to use digital technologies to our advantage.
Hear here!
I've managed to build a company (as the CTO) that manages some 70 schools and school districts - grades, attendance, massive quantities of paperwork, etc.
Our hardware is
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The main idea is that IT has been the key driver of growth in productivity rates around the world (despite some stupid IT investment by companies/governments). However, his conclusion is not that the world should just spend indiscriminately on IT. Instead, companies and governments should take their investments in IT more seriously because of the value of intelligent IT inv
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From the summary:
The article also quotes an economist who is skeptical that this report's outsized claims for productivity gains have been proven.
I only glanced at the report, but there's good reason to be skeptical. It cites a lot of literature but does scant empirical work - if you look at the graphs they basically just take a bunch of time series datasets and line them up with each other. There's no good reason to believe that they show a causal relationship between the IT figures and the economic figures. Although they pose many plausible qualitative explanations, I don't really see any original research that tests
Fairly obvious? (Score:3, Insightful)
Computer technology was basically the one thing that changed in the 90s to increase worker productivity. I cannot even think of a number 2 contender. Doing work on computers instead of on paper leads to vast increases in productivity. And we are constantly getting better, even with side tracks such as Vista.
I wonder if I could get money to do obvious studies. I am going to try to find out if having an active sex life makes people happier, or if eating more helps solve hunger.
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Something else changed... (Score:2)
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I guess that is possible, but I have generally only noticed the degredation of our education standards. Grade inflation and "teaching to the tests" is rising rapidly. All I see is more people getting degrees just because the quality of those degrees is diminishing.
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An MBA might think more about things like how industries are structured and how people are managed. An economist might think about fiscal policy, demographics, and the increasing numbers of women in the workplace over the last 50 years. A politician would probably think about unemployment numbers and maintaining consumer confidence so people will continue to spend (and keep pumping up the GDP on the treadmill
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how many IT personnel does it take to... (Score:2)
Can we increase that number and NOT take european length vacations, here in the states?
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Why wouldn't we want to take European length vacations? I'd gladly take a month off every year and only have to work 35 hours a week.
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You have to fill out a maintenance request, get supervisor approval, send the request to the maintenance department, just about when you forget about it somebody from maintenance finally comes in with the wrong light bulb, send request back through management to order the correct bulb, finally get the correct bulb, and just after you get used to working in the darker room the maintenance guy returns and actually changes the bulb.
Total time: about a mon
This gets back to a recent /. story (Score:2)
The argument is that since companies can buy most of the software they need "off the shelf", they don't need to hire CS grads to make new software for them.
CS is really only obsolete when companies stop innovating. A company that innovates will, very probably in today's business environment, require new software to help it produce its innovative services and products.
My opinion is that availability of CS talent is a limiting factor in innovation. Obviously it is possible for
It is even more than they say... (Score:2)
Not only did the productivity grow, the jobs are easier to do. Even a slacker armed with computer is more productive, than his/her hardworking predecessor with only a desk (and, perhaps, a typewriter).
We can visit /. for an hour a day and still be reasonably productive...
pardox of the "productivity paradox"? (Score:2)
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Silly (Score:1)
Seems kind of obvious. (Score:1)
pro-technology think tank (Score:1)
Oh, goodness. They've already got a think tank?
Next, the robots will be pushing for the right to vote!
We're doomed!
- RG>