“Politicians feel more at home with steel than technology. That must change.” Mike Norris, Computacenter

“Politicians feel more at home with steel than technology. That must change”: Mike Norris, Computacenter

How upgrading technology literacy and reprioritisation at the top of government could boost skills and power UK economic growth. 

“We close Port Talbot Steelworks losing 2,500 jobs and it is front page news. I'm not belittling the community impact in any way, but meanwhile major banks are offshoring tens of thousands of tech jobs overseas, and nobody's mentioned it,” says Mike Norris, CEO of Computacenter. “Politicians feel more at home with steel than technology. That must change.”

Norris has been Computacenter’s CEO since 1994 and has seen the UK technology industry change dramatically in that time. But he believes the sector needs greater support and recognition if it is to fulfil the profound potential it has to drive economic growth for the UK. Norris says that potential is being held back by a lack of tech literacy and effective public policy. Fixing this problem requires a focus on the big picture, not individual moving parts.

“The Government claims those jobs going to offshore locations such as Bangalore are low-end call centre roles so it does not matter. They are kidding themselves,” he says. "So many people that work for me started life in our call centre.”

Norris admits Computacenter has offshored roles in the name of competitiveness but says this is why the solution needs to not sit just with organisations tending their own short-term profit and loss. It requires concerted collaboration between businesses, education and government, to create the conditions needed to support and maintain a thriving UK technology industry.

Tech without boundaries

“Tech moves across all geographical and global boundaries, but the Government is too traditional in its approach to UK industry,” says Norris.

“They feel much more comfortable working with steel and cars, and even when they do engage with technology they go to consumer tech, which is trivial compared to corporate tech. It has been a 30-year tragedy of flawed focus, and billions in missed tax revenue. Not to mention their inability to support UK tech firms with their own procurement contracts.”

As a FTSE 250 listed company operating in 70 countries and employing over 20,000 people, Computacenter is a leading provider of IT infrastructure and services to corporate and government bodies. The biggest area of customer demand currently is infrastructure around large data centres and while the organisation is building units in multiple countries such as Iceland and Albania, its fastest growing market by far is the US.

“Elon Musk is building the largest data centre in the world in Memphis, to take on ChatGPT, and we’ve got 250 people on the ground there. Of all the other things he's doing, this one doesn't get mentioned that much. He has raised $8 billion to build this data centre and he's still pre-revenue.”

Such is the extent of Computacenter’s involvement in US projects, North America accounted for nearly 25% its profit in the first half of 2024.

Offload GenAI concerns

For all the fascination and intensity of activity around GenAI, Norris feels most organisations should not let themselves be distracted by the complexity of building their own path through the technology.

“You haven’t got to worry about GenAI,” he says. "Let the software companies deal with it, because it will be embedded in the technology you use.”

99% of the people in the world that will use GenAI won’t really know they are using it when they are. You will get benefit, but you won’t really know you are using it, and that’s OK.”

GenAI is far from the only area of growth. More traditional services remain important to Computacenter’s business, such as high-speed processing as businesses target every competitive edge technology can provide. 

“High frequency trading companies buy a significant amount of compute power from us. We had one company spend $100m in December alone on processing, so they can high-frequency trade faster.”

From UK industry to UK tech

The innate cross-border nature of technology has created challenges at a domestic level says Norris. In his view, that’s due to attempts to retrofit the rapidly developing technology sector around the UK’s existing economic model and priorities, and it’s this focus which must shift. 

“Why is the levelling up agenda aimed primarily at traditional industry? This is a tech world we live in. What we are seeing is an attrition of tech skills at both ends of the age spectrum. At one end, you have a 58-year-old systems engineer who is often more interested in retirement and less interested in upskilling, then at the other end we have lost the crucial entry-level jobs that have gone overseas.”

He adds: “We need to rebuild how we support tech from the ground up. We still have some of the best universities in the world, but we must use them as the enormous assets they are. They must do a better job at staying closer to their alumni — they do this brilliantly in the US, and it forms a major funding stream for the college system there.”

Ultimately facilitating growth in the UK technology sector can only happen if the expertise and drive comes from the top, and galvanises all parties.

“The IT department of the UK sits overseas,” says Norris. “We need to re-engineer our tax systems and economic priorities to make it practical and profitable to employ people to do those jobs in the UK instead. That needs to be the Government's priority.”

Norris has a suggested starting point that he feels will serve multiple issues: tax wealth, not productivity. 

“The trickle-down economic model does not work with billionaires, but it does with middle earners. Tax them less and they will spend more money, they will generate more wealth for the economy. It will create the dynamism needed as opposed to the current plan. Making it more expensive to employ people just feeds the overseas push.”

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Marco Amitrano

Marco Amitrano

Alliance Senior Partner, PwC UK & Middle East, PwC United Kingdom

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