Geeks Unite?
Mark Weller
Recently there has been some murmuring around the Department of Labor in the United States about how to regulate the Information Technology (IT) sector. These rumblings, no doubt spurred on by such writers as Jeremy Rifkin, focus on the people who make their livelihoods working with computers. Not content to regulate the Internet and computers themselves, the US seems poised to regulate the profession, with the government of Canada close behind.
The argument in favour of regulating IT has two main thrusts. The first is quite reasonable: to respond to the increasing demand for uniform technical standards in the computer industry. Frustrated by incompatibility problems in everything from web browsers to mother-boards, many consumer groups are advocating the adoption of a set of uniform computer standards as a solution. These would apply to hardware, software and to the technical certification of IT professionals themselves.
The second argument has much less validity. It revolves around a belief that IT is forcing the replacement of valuable workers with machinery and technicians. By regulating the computing field, the pursuit of "needless" change would be curtailed, and the cost of implementing IT solutions would finally reflect "real costs." This point of view suggests that computers have made our economy too competitive and have imposed too much change, which, so the argument goes, will ultimately result in fewer jobs. So the time has come to regulate, in order to slow the pace of change.
Although some of the trepidation in the face of the changing marketplace is understandable, fear of the unknown should not become the driving policy in the debate about computing. In reality, there is only one honest response to the question, "What will all the workers do now?" and that is to say, "I am not exactly sure, but they will do something else." No one can accurately predict the future shape of the economy, but what history does demonstrate is that every technological innovation, from the railway to the microchip, has displaced workers, but has also resulted in the creation of new sectors and new jobs. The service sector, for example, was not predicted to emerge, but now is one the most important segments of the Canadian economy. So we do not know where all this innovation will lead, but we can be certain that the transition brought to the economy by information technology will bring with it great prospects and new opportunities.
However, even if one agrees that labour markets in the IT field should not be artificially controlled, there is the further issue of certification. What is the best way to ensure standards amongst IT professionals? What alternatives are there?
One alternative often suggested is the creation of a union or guild of computer technicians. Unionization efforts, which have had limited success with IT workers, have been focused primarily on those who have entry-level computer skills. However, even with this group, unions have had difficulty. IT professionals generally recognize that the industry rewards those with the most up-to-date skill set, not those who have the greatest seniority. If an IT shop were to be unionized, the resulting emphasis on job security would effectively devalue those with the least seniority. Those who have the least seniority in a firm tend to be those who are younger and more recently out of school, and it is this group that is the motor behind the innovation and change that characterizes the IT sector.
Unionization, which arose in the industrial era, is decidedly incapable of responding to rapid change. As long as professional standards do not change rapidly over time, unionization can keep up (barely) with the demands of business for greater skills. However, IT changes so rapidly, that union credentials would be virtually out of date by the time they were established.
In fact, once a standard is created, there is no guarantee that it will remain the standard. For example, 5 years ago it was generally accepted that Novell Netware was the industry standard for client-server networks. Today, Novell has been eclipsed by Microsoft NT. Professional standards, to the extent that they can be defined, become quickly outmoded. So the key to effective certification is flexibility, and this flexibility is best generated in a competitive marketplace.
An alternative concept that is being considered by groups like the U.S. Department of Labor is the creation of government standards of certification, that is to say, certification through regulation. Again, this does not allow for the required flexibility. What we see in the computer industry is an accelerated economy where bad ideas and products are mercilessly tossed aside in a very short period, while other products, if well built, tend to be perpetuated even despite the raging competition (for example, the ongoing presence of DOS and UNIX). Although it may be tempting to envisage a world where government standards are set to make certain that, for example, all computers support the same audio cards, it should be understood that technical standards for computing have only worked in the past when competition has been allowed to function for sufficient enough time to produce a de facto standard.
The best alternative to bring some sanity to the computer industry is for the creation of self-regulated standards within the industry to ensure quality of work. Just as Microsoft has a standard which it requires of people who are certified Windows NT technicians, there should be a standard for programming skills and technical abilities as well. And, just as Novell and Microsoft compete to provide standards for different systems, competition could be maintained in this way to preserve innovation.
The creation of self-regulated technical standards for IT professionals would finally place a much needed tool in the hands of consumers and employers and provide them with a means to make better choices about who to hire. Government enforced standards, by contrast, would limit choice and artificially constrain the development of innovative solutions.
This article originally appeared in the June 1997 issue of Fraser Forum.
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