As this election approaches and we engage in dialogue about how to govern our country, let’s not forget that, as IT managers, we have learned something very important about governance. Inside our corporations, we know that poor choices get made when technology expertise is not represented at the table. Some things may be more important than technology, but it is hard to imagine any area that is more strategic. It is the “how things get done” side of the picture.

Any cost savings, any collaboration between departments, any transfer of information, period, is a based on a technology infrastructure that is practically a moving target. Whatever changes you may decide to vote for in November, this country needs a wake-up call about the importance of the Internet and our network infrastructure to national security and global commerce. We need to legitimize the role of technology in our governing bodies. Many of us have fought our way into the boardrooms of our publicly traded corporations and we have done so by leveraging politics, not bits and bites.

Vint Cerf, DARPA member and visionary who helped architect the Internet and who was recently an evangelist for Google, discussed national technology policy in a series of online interviews that are worth reading. He has been actively involved in government technology advisory panels and has always been able to see the big picture. Cerf points out that the downside of having a Technology Czar or a cabinet level CTO for our country is that we would be applying a centralizing solution for a government that principally works in a decentralized fashion.

Be that as it may, there has to be a place for technology governance at the highest level of our government. Perhaps Vint Cerf could take a page from the IT manager’s playbook. We know that corporate governance swings like a pendulum from centralizing strategies to decentralizing strategies. The technology dial, however, seems to always be set on high. In Big Business, the critical role technology plays in risk assessment and risk management is recognized and is being incorporated into governing methodologies. It is a shame that our big country does not a have a technology strategy at all. You can’t talk about change without building the technology engine to drive it. Hello, this is the 21st century and something is wrong with this picture.