THE magazine Electronics celebrated its 35th anniversary in 1965 with predictions about the future. Gordon Moore, the cofounder of Intel Corp., forecast that the number of transistors on an integrated circuit would double every year for at least a decade. In 1975 he revised that prediction to doubling every 18 months.
The remarkable thing is that the trend of the exponential increase in computing power has lasted, not a decade, but for 50 years. The Cray-2 supercomputer from 1985, the fastest machine in the world for its time and costing $17 million, roughly measures up to an iPad 2 in “thinking” power.
Unfortunately, the government’s response to the technological age has not kept pace with the technological advancements.
The predecessor to our current the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) was the secretary of public welfare, which held the portfolio for transportation and communications. This position was established about the same time, as the forerunner to the modern computer, the Analytical Engine, was designed in the late 1800s. Back then, transportation was horse-drawn and the telephone had only recently been made available and the telegraph was the primary means of sending messages over long distances.
It is time to bring the structure and bureaucracy of the DOTC out of the 19th century and into the 21st century with the creation of the Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT).
The government has been talking about establishing this department for many years, even as technology has dramatically changed and the government has struggled to keep laws and regulations update with those changes.
It appears that this new department will finally become a reality. Sen. Ralph Recto has vowed to pass legislation that would create the DICT. Recto, who chairs the Senate’s Science and Technology panel, has authored Senate Bill 2686, consolidating five other bills, to create the DICT. As a result, the DOTC will concentrate on transportation, which is a huge job as it is, and leaving information and communications, another huge task, to the DICT.
The fact that it has taken so long for the DICT to come to light, especially in view of the fact that 80 percent of global governments already have a separate department for these concerns, does not say much about legislative priorities.
A major problem of our government is that it is terribly disorganized. Currently, information-technology matters fall under not only the DOTC but also the Department of Science and Technology and the National Telecommunications Commission.
We would hope that those in the government and, particularly the existing bureaucracy do not try to keep things as they are. Both the horse-drawn carriage and the telegraph are obsolete as is our current structure.
Image credits: Jimbo Albano