Taskforce too big and top-heavy with vested interests

NET RESULTS:The sheer size and composition of the new Innovation Taskforce are cause for concern, writes KARLIN LILLINGTON

EXCUSE MY scepticism, but I have my doubts about how useful and effective the Government’s newly appointed (and sprawling) Innovation Taskforce will be.

This is the group appointed by the Taoiseach in late June, charged with coming up with a strategy for positioning Ireland as “an international innovation hub”.

My doubts have nothing to do with the idea of a task force per se. Quite the opposite: Government Ministers should definitely be taking a read from and giving a hearing to those in research and industry who have proven ability to lead and innovate.

It’s the sheer size and the composition of the group that leaves me doubtful – and the déjà vu element.

By my count there are 28 members of this group – 28! – and of those, virtually a third, including the chairman (secretary general of the Taoiseach’s department Dermot McCarthy), are Government appointees or representatives: the heads of Enterprise Ireland, IDA Ireland, Science Foundation Ireland, the Higher Education Authority and representatives from the Departments of Education and Science; Enterprise, Trade and Employment; and Finance.

A task force so heavy with the very people who have strong vested interests and territories to protect in the face of An Bord Snip Nua, who already are part of the, shall we say, problem, and who are supposed to be the ones being advised, doesn’t bode well for open and innovative discussion.

This is like appointing nine company managers to listen in as 20 employees try to discuss honestly what is restrictive and problematical with the workplace and how to open it outward and improve it.

Surely, the better approach would have been to have a real “advisory” group, comprising the industry and hands-on research people on the list, who could hammer out ideas and come up with a report that would not be under the scrutiny of four Government departments and four Government agencies even before it is produced?

Contrast the pithy approach taken by the State in the late 1990s when then minister Mary O’Rourke appointed an advisory committee on telecommunications.

What an extraordinary committee this was. Chaired by then head of Qwest, Richard Thompson, committee members included the visionary “father of the internet” Vint Cerf and Don Heath, president and CEO of the Internet Society, among others.

The membership totalled 13. The group produced an incisive, compact report that still reads as a blueprint for what the Government should be doing.

Indeed, the new taskforce could save time by reading that 1998 report – most of the issues raised remain relevant and either unresolved or only partially addressed. In particular, they should focus on the sections entitled entrepreneurship, future skills needs and information technology in schools.

I think this forgotten report from a group tasked with “advising on key strategic recommendations which would help to position Ireland as a major global centre in advanced telecommunications, the internet and electronic commerce”, can provide a good, concrete starting point for the new group.

It and background materials to the report are usefully archived at http://act.iol.ie/.

One might quibble that Government-appointed people made up about a third of that group also, but it was a tighter, leaner group; just the IDA, Forfas, and two department secretaries. And the group was chaired by an industry figure, not the head of a Government department.

Back in the 1980s, the Government also sought outside expert advice on how to steer a foundering, bleak economy forward. The man who would eventually become President Bill Clinton’s “internet czar”, Ira Magaziner, was in a consultancy company that was hired to produce a strongly worded, truly independent “outsider view” report widely credited with laying the groundwork for what became the Celtic Tiger economy.

Even President Barack Obama, running a massive country that is considered the home of research and innovation, seems to be able to get by with a far smaller national advisory committee on science and technology than we have for this task force.

His has 21 members and not one is a member of a government department. During his election campaign, he worked with a small, crack team, a handful of technology industry experts, to help formulate the technology and innovation policy that still remains at the heart of departmental strategy now that he is president.

My other concerns about the Taoiseach’s innovation taskforce are the dearth of women – surely a better gender representation than only two of 20 industry members could have been found? Obama has six out of his 21 – and the lack of biotech input. The latter is a sector that is increasingly important within the country and is broader than the pharma interest represented on the group.

So do I like anything at all about this group? Yes – it is an innovative, cross-sector group with a range of expertise, whose advice, hopefully, will be listened to. Also, the promise to make its deliberations inclusive to outside input via the internet is refreshing and exciting (member Dr Chris Horn, co-founder of Iona Technologies, is blogging on it already and gathering Twitter input under the search heading #itaskforce).

However, whether this unwieldy, Government-heavy task force can do more than lumber about – and more importantly, whether the Government will listen to it any more than it listened to the ACT – remains to be seen.

klillington@irishtimes.com

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