Failings of British Mission into Cyberspace

Charles Ross in The Times is right when he says that the reason for our lack of IT megastars is the poor understanding by politicians and civil servants of computing. This probably also explains why there has never been a successful Government computer system. I would also add that there seems to be a distinct lack of computer standards in government departments and agencies like the NHS, which has several incompatible systems doing the same job at different locations.

But it wasn't all gloom in the 1970s and 1980s!

Richard Evans, Robin Lodge, Roy Brown and myself created a software revolution in project management and a system called Artemis, that for many years planned half the major projects in the world. Thirty years later, after several changes of ownership the software product that we created in attics, basements and on the back of fag packets, now has 600,000 users.

Returning to the early 1980s it is interesting to note, that although we dominated the market worldwide having made sales in upwards of fifty countries, we were unknown by the public in the UK, had only made one direct sale to the UK Government and had been awarded two Queens Awards for Export.

All of this had been achieved without any external shareholding and a design team that was significantly lacking in academic qualifications. But we did have guts by the bucketful and the world's best Bank Manager.