Economic Impact of Tech Understated, Study Says

narramissic writes "A report (available here) released this week by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a pro-technology think tank, claims that IT was responsible for nearly all of the US worker productivity growth between 1995 and 2002. But the creation of new jobs in IT will be modest, the study says. At a forum in Washington, D.C., the report's co-author and ITIF president Robert Atkinson warned lawmakers that there will be a 'significant cost to the economy if you hinder digital transformation' and called on the government to spur IT adoption in several industries, including health care, banking and transportation." The article also quotes an economist who is skeptical that this report's outsized claims for productivity gains have been proven.

Comments

Re:Banking and medical need MORE IT?

[stratjakt]

A great deal of modern health care and banking is completely conducted using paper transactions. Why do you think the whole of the state, country, or world operates exactly like the little part of it that you see?

Why does it take a check 7-10 days to be cleared? Is that the ping time between Bank of America and the issuing bank? No, but this system still works largely the same way it has for 1000 years. People, actual humans with eyes, check the numbers. I doubt this will change for a long time. Bank brass doesn't like the idea of removing that human "safeguard".

Health care is a fucking mess. Doctors aren't into computers, they have better things to do. Receptionists and clerical workers cobble around a mess of access databases and flat text files. Plenty of room to improve and streamline. This will change, but will have more to do with education. I have a friend who just completed a vocational cert in medical billing, and there was very little IT training involved. Some introductory word processing, and basic spreadsheet usage, and that was about it.

Transportation? All over the place again. For every company using high tech dispatching and tracking trucks with GPS and monitoring the engine wear in real time, there's a driver-owned rig tooling down the interstate with a big fucking paper map unfolded on the windshield.

Re:Banking and medical need MORE IT?

[Red Flayer]

Why does it take a check 7-10 days to be cleared? Is that the ping time between Bank of America and the issuing bank? No, but this system still works largely the same way it has for 1000 years. People, actual humans with eyes, check the numbers. I doubt this will change for a long time. Bank brass doesn't like the idea of removing that human "safeguard".

Not at all. People don't check the numbers, scanning equipment does that. Checks take 3-5 days to clear because your bank makes money off the float (the time between when they receive the money and they give it to you).

Re:Banking and medical need MORE IT?

[Paulrothrock]

There's still too much paper in health care and banking.

When I go to the doctor, I've got to fill out forms containing information that I've already filled out for that doctor or information that should be available to my doctor from other places I've filled it out. And I've got to fill out those forms on paper, which are then entered by someone else, increasing the rate of error.

My wife works as a TSS and she still has about an hour of paperwork to fill out every week. To fulfill HIPA requirements, it has to meet very strict requirements. She's been called in to correct things like lines not reaching to the edge of the form box or signing the paper in black ink instead of blue.

Restricting behavior to meet requirements is something that computer programs can do very well, but her company and the state haven't set up a system where she can log into a website, enter the information, digitally sign it, and submit it without using paper. And the worst part is that these forms she fills out must be retained even though they're digitized to be sent to

Finally, when I was getting my mortgage, they insisted that I fax information to them so they'd have a hard copy. Never mind that fax machines are almost negligible, never mind that fax machines are less secure than an encrypted email, and never mind that the functionality of the form could have been duplicated through a website. I was forced to take time out of my day to hunt down a fax machine and then pay to use it.

There's still too much paper in our society. And one of the main reasons for this is because the government hasn't stepped up to alter laws like HIPA that mandate paper copies of all information.

Re:An old and silly argument

[ranton]

FTA:

it is unlikely that the I.T. industry will be producing jobs gains out of line with its size.
Instead, the report contends, job gains will more and more come from industries that use information technology intelligently

This study does not claim that just spending money on IT will increase productivity. It quite plainly says that using IT intelligently will increase productivity. I find it very hard to find a problem in this logic. In fact, I find it so obvious that I am suprised someone needed to do a study to verify it.

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