The Hindu Business Line : Don't we need a broader definition of IT?

THERE used to be a time when the computer guys and gals were the high priests in organisations. They were the know-alls and do-alls. For almost any problem, they had a solution, or so it seemed, and work, it did. For them, information technology was the multipurpose tool and it could work on any nut and bolt.

Nutty thought, in current context, because most IT staff that you come across seem to have so little appreciation of business processes.

Earlier, it used to be joked that when a software team arrived to develop a financial accounting system, you had to explain debit and credit and all the rules. Now, it is worse; you have to tell them even things they are supposed to know.

That may sound harsh, but the truth is that we have been drumming up the IT song too much. At a recent interaction with a Yale professor, a point that was raised related to the status of our IT-enabled services, the ITES.

Much of the work that goes in the name of IT in our country is ultimately enriching foreign enterprises, was the observation. Won't it be sad if our IT has not integrated itself with our manufacturing and productivity? That would be like being too good as a nanny but miserable as a mother.

It is with some smugness that one notices the sudden interest of IT personnel in communication skills. Something similar is happening in the premises of the Institute of Chartered Accountants too, where they round up those who are about to enter the profession and din into them inputs on being articulate.

So, if you find software engineers undergoing sessions in how to greet or dance, don't be surprised. Perhaps, there is a realisation that, to be understood, they would have to communicate better, rather than the non-computer person having to undergo a transformation to decipher the mumbo-jumbo of the techies.

It is argued that much of the narrowness in the skill-sets of the new breed of knowledge workers is because of increased specialisation. So, the one who is good at Java doesn't know ERP, and another who is attending to embedded programs can't read ASP even in bed.

But it makes no sense if the code or solution that they work up is a marvel and state of the art, except that it won't gel with the whole system. A case of missing the woods for the trees.

Weeks ago, the PM flagged off the Vigyan Rail, because 2004 is going to be `Science Awareness Year'. The 12-coach train would travel the length and breadth of the country, stopping at over 50 places and make the common man aware of the `great strides' India has made `in fields ranging from space and atomic energy to medical science, information technology and biotechnology'.

That's fine, but it is also necessary to ensure that the not-so-common man in the IT field is able to look at himself or herself in the big picture.

There is that old story of how at a construction site the simple question, "What do you do?" elicited responses varying from - "Are you blind, I am breaking stones!" to "The stone that I am polishing would become a step in the most artistic cathedral that has ever been built around here."

You tell this story to the computer chaps and they are going to ask you if you needed a CAD solution, or where that temple is.

It is not uncommon to find those in IT ignorant even about the history of their own field, let alone an allied one. Rarely can you get them being inquisitive beyond error codes and mouse clicks, product versions and bug patches. It is a parody of scientific temper when those who claim to be part of neo-technology are too reluctant to comprehend enterprise and societal needs to identify the gaps where they can plug themselves in and make a difference.

EeAndOhEe@hotmail.com

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