To succeed in the new globalising economy, the UK must have a technology-skilled workforce at all levels. There are two challenges here.

First, is the need to grow truly excellent ‘techies’ and to develop business entrepreneurs that understand how to use technology to build businesses and change society.

Second, there are the general IT users, which include every school leaver, all of whom will need the skills to use systems at work and, increasingly in their interactions with government agencies as citizens.

Such a programme must include every business graduate – all of whom need to understand how to use technology in the private or public sectors. It should also include every chief executive in UK business – large, medium and small – all of whom need to understand IT as the fundamental element of modern business.

So the need for technology skills must not stop at the IT department. The use of IT should be integrated into every business studies course.

People need to know how to use IT as the basic tool of most trades, whether you are a lawyer, a journalist, an actuary, a music producer or indeed my fashion-industry struck daughters.

Using technology effectively is now increasingly essential for most jobs in the UK. In British Airways, our cabin crew can work on their rosters from a Singapore hotel, a Sydney internet café, or from home.

Our baggage handlers access their pay slips online and everyone in the company is being equipped with an email address. The world is connected, information is mobile – you need to be connected.

Using technology is a basic competency and the UK is well placed to be a leader of global change. So we must ensure that everyone in the workforce is skilled.

To develop our technology and consulting industry, we must produce the best pure computer scientists, the best business analysts and the best business change experts in the world.

They will be the creators of economic efficiency and advantage in the future. And our goal should be to design the world’s systems, to re-engineer the world's processes and business solutions.

We can continue to be a global player if we link UK IT and consulting to the lower-cost producers in India or elsewhere. There is no need for the UK to be niche – we can be mainstream.

Such a movement requires government, industry and education establishments to work together to deliver IT-savvy school-leavers, graduates, top-rate technologists and business-change experts.

I am privileged to chair the CIO Board of the sector skills council e-skills UK. And through the specialist body, employers, government, education and others work together to address the top priority IT-related skills issues that no one party is able to solve on its own.

In 2005, e-Skills UK published the Sector Skills Agreement for IT, a 10-year vision supported by a three-year action plan to meet future IT skills requirements, in an attempt to close the UK’s productivity gap with its major international competitors.

E-Skills UK is pursuing initiatives that address the needs of the UK workforce for IT user skills. Computer Clubs for Girls aims to transform the attitude of a generation of girls to technology, and a new IT Diploma for 14- to 19-year-olds aims to equip school leavers with business-recognised skills in practical use of technology.

E-skills UK is also addressing the need for top-rate IT skills with new technology-based degree courses, designed to produce people that can use IT to solve problems in society and business.

My manifesto for a connected, technologically skilled and prosperous country is to embrace globalisation enthusiastically and make it work for the UK’s economy and society.

We should welcome inward investment to the UK by the new technology giants of India, and soon others; and we should encourage UK-based technology and consulting companies to become truly global and to operate in places such as India and South Africa, leveraging top-rate but higher-cost UK skills with lower-cost expertise around the world.

We should think how we can leverage the massive multibillion-pound government investment in IT to develop the UK IT and consulting industry.

And most essential of all, get behind e-Skills UK in developing our educational system at all levels, so we produce school leavers, graduates, business people and academics who understand – each at the right level of depth and capability – how to use technology effectively in their jobs and lives.

Paul Coby is chief information officer (CIO) of British Airways, chairman of the Sita Group and chairman of the e-Skills UK CIO board.