Damien Mulley

A packed Government Press Room, full of suits slapping each other on the back on how wonderful they all are, interspersed with some people from the media. So 94 pages of words were released today in the form of a report called “Technology Actions to Support the Smart Economy”. Get it here.

Already we’re in PR overdrive with 300 jobs announced today and Minister Ryan saying they might even have been conservative with the 10s of 10,000s of jobs to be created around this. If we honestly counted all the numbers of jobs meant to be created there’d probably be about a million more than the population can sign up to. And these Jobs he stated, would include builders building offices for companies. Right, despite there 1000s of buildings in Dublin alone newly built or renovated and being idle. Straw, grasp.

We could all do without the bullshit and inflated job numbers. That we are addressing digital issues is great, let’s do that without point scoring or headline grabbing. We need to move from dying manufacturing to an economy where we process and create digital goods.

So what was the announced?

The Exemplar Smart Communications Network
A new high speed next generation network. They actually said it was an NGN. In actuality it’s no more than a test track for networking technologies. Ryan makes it sound like this will allow Ireland to have digital hubs everywhere and suggests it’ll be great for industry. I don’t see how as this is not a network going around the country, it’s not even going from point A to B, it reads like it’s just going to be a test network in a college. Pages and pages of guff talking about this. And then could and would are brought in. There are no definites, the report just says the tech from the test network could be used on Government networks. it could be expanded into population centres. How exactly when the Government said they’re not investing in NGN?

Data Centres that are green and cloud computing
The report then goes on to tell us that the future ins in cloud computing Web 3.0 (semantic web) and virtualisation. Handy that the DCENR official that was in charge of this said Microsoft had a very heavy influence in putting this together. Microsoft get a few pages of praise on their new datacentre in Ireland as do CIX who helped campaign for the Green Party in the local and European elections (see them in the Green Party election ad). There’s talk about some green data centre standard too. Just talk mind.

International Content Services Centre
Now this is where it gets murky. They want to set up the equivalent of the IFSC but for content. I don’t think they know exactly how that works. Store your content in Ireland and have people work on it. They mentioned there are issues with copyright though. Really? No! Dublin based too. One would think with a country where every inch is covered by broadband according to the Minister, that geography don’t get in the way of digital. Lawyers and IP experts were mentioned a lot. It really felt like Ireland will be digital shylocks or debt collectors with such a Government policy of supporting DRM. From the report

Offices of legal firms with particular specialisation in global digital right management and intellectual property.

If done right, we can make the Pirate Bay and the movie companies become best buds.

Yet, here we go again. Where’s the API for Government data? Where’s the access to the vast RTE archive with good licensing deals for outside companies to make something new with this material? That’s real life data right there, not wishes and this apparently was not considered by the brain trust who put this report together.

Smart Electrical Grid
Not my area, no commentary. Smart grid = efficient grid, surely that should always be the aim. If you think about it, this is merely an upgrade anyway as progress marches forward, yet here it’s a big thing. The ESB upgrade their network and use the tech that’s being used elsewhere.

Traffic Flow
Traffic management systems. Uhm. Pie in the sky stuff about consumers routed around congestion spots.

Smart Bay
A research project on Galway Bay. Ok…

This whole initiative is manipulation of numbers and ideas. There’s a long list of people in public and private industry who put this report together. I hope they’re happy that they got their agendas in while making it sound like this is meant to be good for Ireland. The usual “people talk this stuff down to much” was uttered. Stop lying to us and we’ll talk up the good stuff.

John’s take.