first day in DCU
back in 1984 like with only yesterday
and one of the reasons I remember it
because it was also the first day I ever
laid my eyes on a computer with one of
those Olivetti’s with black screens and
twinkling green font and the floppy disk
and the engineering students back there
used to say back in those days used to
say you always knew in the media guys
were in the computer lab because the big
chip X on the screens I told that to my
kids last night that story and they look
back at me blankly the point is that
we’re living in an age of unprecedented
technological change mobile broadband
which we’re all using is the fastest
growing technology in human history we
can hardly imagine our lives today
without access to the Internet with all
of the applications that we’re using be
it on financier transport or
entertainment yes for 57% of the world’s
population that’s not an issue
57% of the world’s population are not
online so for 3.9 billion people they
have no opportunity to participate in
the digital economy to network with
their friends and peers or to tell their
own stories and this global digital
divide can also be seen at the national
level even amongst different sectors if
you think for instance of all the hype
around the tech sector itself you just
have to see what’s going on in Lisbon at
the moment there is a real focus on and
an obsession almost with the startups
you open up the the media you go online
they’re talking about technology gurus
and the importance of technology
startups etc now it’s not to say that
this is not important an investment in
technology innovation is of course
important but not at the expense of the
non tech sectors we need to get to a
place beyond the hype beyond the dot-com
hype where non tech sectors can
visualize and imagine
technology can be transformative for
their worlds and their businesses that
they can be active participants in the
met my wife there at DCU and she’s from
Skibbereen in West Cork and that’s where
we got married and our first child took
his first steps there and there’s very
interesting things outside of Olympic
rowing that are going on in Skibbereen
these days there’s an initiative linked
to reimagining Skibbereen as a digital
town at the center of this is something
called the Ludgate hub which is
providing high speed broadband
connectivity digital skills and
stewardship innovative working spaces
showing people how they can work in more
collaborative ways for the digital
economy and they’re really pulling
together as a community to try and
reinvent reimagine themselves for the
digital future there’s one initiative
set up by a woman called three and a
McCarty now I don’t know tree and I’ve
never met her but I’ve been following
her story and she said of something
which I thought was really interesting
it’s called East Street cyi now if you
imagine yourself walking down the main
shopping street of Skibbereen or indeed
an e shopping street in any rural town
in Ireland and then imagine that online
so Trina has done is she’s brought
together all the retailers and service
providers and producers inste Berean
into a unified collaborative platform
called East Rita II so opening up
Skibbereen to the world
planting the seed in regular traders and
retailers on the street that they too
can be part of this digital economy that
they too can imagine themselves as
digital entrepreneurs and see a
sustainable future for them and their
families and importantly they’re
collaborating and not competing my wife
left shivering and moved to the north
west coast working with the IT in Sligo
where she’s working in online learning
and her colleague there is an amazing
man called Brian Mulligan who’s been
very passionate about online
since way back in the day when nobody
else was talking about it
and Brian’s head of the online education
program in Sligo IT and he started off
in 2002 with five students some
off-the-shelf software and most
importantly a passionate belief the
technology can make a difference for
people who want access to education who
maybe the barriers of entry are too much
are they
thoughts of a formal qualification is
too daunting but that they would like
bespoke education and apply the
technology to their lifestyles today
there’s more than two thousand students
in that program and they have ambitions
for much more I was sitting around our
kitchen table in Sligo last night
talking to Brian he might be one of our
great national resources in EE education
and I asked him you know how do we make
it work how do we make technology go
beyond the tools and the tricks where
can actually make a difference in
people’s lives such as in the
educational space and he said basically
you need numeracy and literacy and you
need basic digital skills this is no
surprise but then we need to move into a
space changing our mindsets a little bit
in terms of what education actually
means so for him it’s about people
knowing first of all what’s out there
the art of the possible and and wanting
to go and get that so encouraging a sort
of self-directed learning now today the
way the formal educational system is
structured it were not really quite
ready for this but Brian is convinced
that with time most likely driven by
employers that self-directed learning
people learning what they want and
getting credited for it will become the
norm rather than the more formalized
structured educational systems we have
today so putting a dead digital layer on
an analogue foundation down the road
from Sligo IT there’s a guy called
Charlie Kelly and you who like oysters
like I do he’s one of the finest oyster
producers in the country now Charlie and
his fellow producers on the northwest
coast these guys
we’ll drown and disappear without
internet connectivity they’re up at 4
a.m. in the morning tracking the
commodity markets in Taiwan their online
organizing highly complicated logistics
operations to get there very fragile
product fresh onto the tables of Asian
restaurants that evening they’re
tracking algae bloom which could
completely destroy their business and
Charlie says most importantly they’re
tracking the French because they’re the
biggest competition now in the maritime
and farming communities of Ireland I
believe we have some of the most
experienced innovators out there these
are the people who know what it’s like
to take risks they know what it’s like
to be resilient and survive in difficult
economic conditions and they certainly
know and appreciate the importance of
technology but are they getting what
they need a hundred and forty thousand
farmers in this country today don’t have
access to high-speed broadband now I
spoke with the chief technology officer
and the Irish Farmers Association Ethan
Cleary and for seven years he’s been
working on this trying to put root into
an Agrotech policy in this country and
yet at the moment things are moving
forward but much much too slow these
farmers are working in a hyper
competitive world and they really need
not just the infrastructure which is yet
to come at the quality and affordability
that they need but they also need the
skills and they need the sort of
stewardship that trian and McCarthy is
providing in Skibbereen and also Ethan
says in his seven years he’s never seen
different ministries working together
now I work on an international arena and
this inter-sectoral interdepartmental
inter-ministerial collaboration is
becoming very much the norm so we need
to see agriculture communications
education Enterprise working together
creating a strategic surge that provides
and propels the agricultural sector
forward so they can compete so they can
achieve their ambitions
be digitally existing in a digital
economy and digitally thriving in a
digital economy so why is all this
important well if we’re not going to
leave anybody behind if we’re to have
digital dividends rather than a digital
divide then we need a combination of
affordable quality access to
infrastructure this is like oxygen in
the current digital economy such as the
infrastructure desperately needed by the
Irish agricultural sector but we also
need stewards like Brian Mulligan and
Ethan Cleary and Trina McCarthy who can
help communities be the actual towns are
sectors like the farming community
visualize and understand how technology
can be a real ally and a real resource
and see what they can do with technology
and not just how they can use it another
important ingredient are common
narrative that goes through these
stories is the idea of collaboration
technology all the studies are showing
globally that technology is changing
business completely absent you just
brought out a report a couple of weeks
ago from competition to collaboration
technology encourages collaboration
it creates collaboration where
everybody’s working in a global market
so going it alone is simply not an
option very often anymore
so the whole the whole area of
collaboration if we zoom out to large
corporate companies like Microsoft
Amazon Facebook Google IBM you might be
interested to know that these guys
they’re no longer working as competitors
as we understand it they’re
collaborating they just set up for
instance those five companies that I
just named they just set up a
collaborative consortium around
artificial intelligence and data mining
because they understand that this is so
huge and will be so vastly important in
the future that they cannot go alone
that they need common standards common
language and a common understanding
of how to tap into the massive
reservoirs of data that will come from
the internet of things and artificial
intelligence and the whole area of data
they will say along with other companies
like Huawei and Alibaba is probably the
single most important issue in the
future of the technology revolution how
it will be managed how our privacy will
be transparent and accountable how we
will really reap value and good from the
data and here I think there’s a huge
opportunity for Ireland by virtue of the
fact that we have so many important
multinational companies based in this
country our privacy commissioner and his
team are dealing with new and
unprecedented challenges on the whole
area of data and privacy governance so
more by accident than by design you
might say we are developing a body of
knowledge on data governance that is
unlike any other country our privacy
commissioner and his team are making
rulings on landmark cases that will
influence international policy now I
would personally love to see Ireland
play a much greater role a more
assertive role on the international
stage to shape data governance for the
future so in reimagining Ireland for the
next 100 years and particularly an
inclusive Ireland and when we speak of
an inclusive Ireland for the next 100
years we’ll be speaking about a
digitally inclusive Ireland there are
three changes three developments I
really want to see I want to see the
type of collaboration that’s going on in
Skibbereen led by people like Trina
McCarthy become the norm I think it’s
important what’s happening at Seabury
and I wanted to work I want us to learn
from that I wanted to be applied to many
other different towns across Ireland and
these types of Technology champions and
stewards this role needs to be
formalized recognized cultivated to
bridge between the non-text
actors and the potential and power of
technology I also think we need to move
beyond the hype and look at how
technology can be applied to the non
tech sectors help these sectors
understand the technology is not
something alien aiding are daunting but
rather an ally and a resource that will
help you have a more sustainable
community and business into the future
and thirdly I want to see Ireland become
a real voice in data governance on the
international policy scene believe it
the data governance will become possibly
the most important issue which will
decide whether technology is something
that benefits society our divided
society thank you very much [Applause]