We can all believe in Obama’s use of IT

Computing would feel it was missing out if we did not add to the millions of words being written during the past week about US president-elect Barack Obama.

While his success is a historic moment for many reasons, the election of a new US president will have an effect on every aspect of industry, and IT in particular.

Obama’s campaign was the most spectacular example of the role IT can play in the political process. He raised many millions of dollars online, using what we in IT might call Web 2.0 techniques to gather funds from individuals and small groups, rather than the typical large-scale corporate and political contributors.

He reached out to voters through the web, with email and text messaging, running the most internet-enabled campaign in history.

His success has been based on making citizens feel that they are part of the process, not simply a disenfranchised majority on the edge of politics. In that alone, there is a huge lesson for our own government and the way in which it uses technology.

But more broadly, there have been concerns voiced that Obama’s instincts are protectionist; that in such troubled financial times he might take the US economy inwards – as many past presidents have done. He has already talked about restricting offshore outsourcing to protect US jobs, for example.

It is clearly too early to judge, but any such protectionism would have a devastating effect on the IT industry because it is perhaps the most globalised sector in existence, arguably even more so than financial services. If non-US IT suppliers were restricted from doing business in the largest IT market in the world, or if US suppliers were given unfair advantages in competing overseas, it would distort the industry at a critical time in its evolution.

It would be churlish of us to do anything but welcome Obama’s presidency – for so many reasons he promises great improvements over his immediate predecessor. But it is vital to our industry that his instincts for the good that technology and the internet can do are stronger than any to protect the US IT sector at others’ expense.