Technology in a Cold Climate

Technology in a Cold Climate aims to engender a greater understanding among the technology sector and policy makers about the role that technologies could play in meeting the UK’s ambitions and challenges.

To contribute towards this aim, through a short period of research and validation we have identified some measures that could help the UK make more of technology in an economic climate of relative scarcity, uncertainty and adversity.

Findings from our report

Central government must dramatically improve its use of technology if it is to cut the public sector deficit.

The government could use the internet to much greater effect by, for example:

• delivering more public services online to reduce costs and environmental impact
• learning from low-cost websites built by both third sector organisations and private companies
• using well-designed platforms to harness the knowledge and experience of large populations to democratically improve service provision.

Towards transparency and innovation in procurement

Government's procurement of technology has often resulted in expensive contracts and high failure rates. The government could minimise the effect of late and over-cost ICT projects by a number of measures including dividing these projects into incrementally smaller packages, by retaining more in-house expertise on ICT and by publishing data on ICT projects and their targets transparently.

We found that the UK's businesses and government must innovate in radically different ways to generate growth that will off-set debt, and to bring down the cost of government.

This report highlights the important role that public sector procurement can play in supporting the technologies that will be required in a period of economic uncertainty.

Digital connectivity offers significant social, commercial and economic benefits

Technology in a Cold Climate calls on ministers to ensure that everyone across the UK will benefit from the next generation of high-speed broadband as a platform for future growth and innovation. We conclude that digital connectivity offers significant social, commercial and economic benefits and that the government should intervene if the market fails to provide access to all.

With a reliable ICT infrastructure, technology could also make dramatic cuts to the amount of natural resources consumed by displacing carbon intensive activities such as daily commuting with high definition video-conferencing.

There is not a sufficiently strong discourse between policy makers and business regarding the nature of the society we are aiming towards and the role that technology could play. We conclude that there is a need to establish a vision of the society we aspire to and the markets and technologies that will be required to support it.

The report is the conclusion of the RSA's Technology in a Cold Climate project. 

Download the Technology in a Cold Climate report (PDF, 737KB)