Think Tanks Grease The Skids

(MoneyWatch)  Policy papers rarely break new ground, but they often help policy-makers justify their actions. The technology trade group IEEE just published one of those, 'Ten Ideas for Policymakers to Drive Digital Progress," that reads very much like a wish list the Obama Administration might have drawn up.

The authors make the non-controversial point that new technology can often have unexpected benefits:

Investing in digital progress pays significant dividends to individuals and society because most of this technology has multiple uses. Governments in particular should invest -- the private sector often tends to underinvest in IT because it can't always capture the full benefit of its investment.

Most of its recommendations are fairly obvious: invest in infrastructure, invest in digital literacy, help create reusable digital content and applications. But two ideas caught my eye:

• "collaborate and partner with private and non-profit sectors:" in my mind, this means "find ways to spend money that immediately puts it in the pockets of companies participating in the so-called real economy."

That is precisely what Bill Clinton proposed at the outset of his presidency, and it did a world of good in Silicon Valley. It seemed like a necessary step in competing with the Japanese conglomerates, and created a lot of wealth in the process.

But in the long run, this kind of collaboration can be complicated to unwind unless an exit mechanism for the government is put in place at the outset. That's something to think about so we can avoid enabling poor business habits that could lead to new and potentially costlier "too-big-to-fail" situations.

• "lead by example:" put quite simply, that means buy tons of information technology and be a reference customer for private enterprise.

Again, this seems entirely appropriate in the current environment, but in the long term, government may "lead by example" in ways that vendors don't like. Implementing open source software, for instance, as Massachusetts is attempting to do, is something many software vendors would not like to see become an "example."