So, who's accountable? - Editorial - industry self-regualtion - Brief Article

Technos: Quarterly for Education and Technology, Spring, 2002 by Michael F. Sullivan

I'm a big believer in the accountability movement. Maybe schools should be expected to guarantee learning. Certainly other fields are accountable. When my new car has a problem, I take it back to the dealer and expect him to fix it for free. When my new house has a problem, I call the builder and expect him to fix it for free. However, when my child doesn't learn, I pay Sylvan $200. When my medical procedure is botched, I pay for a new one. When my computer has a problem, I take it to a shop and pay $75 an hour for someone to look at it. Education, healthcare, and computers appear to be the three industries with little accountability.

Healthcare and education are not accountable for historical and logical reasons. Frankly, we know that neither industry really has the capability to deliver specific results most of the time. People differ so much from one another that we can never be sure that any intercession will have the desired results. Medicine and teaching are arts striving to be sciences.

Computer science is an art claiming to be a science and yet refusing to accept accountability. Faults and flaws are expected, especially in the software and netware worlds, and a cottage industry has sprung up based on finding holes in commercial products. There are no penalties for such flaws because society accepts the fact that there is no science in computer science and no accountability in the industry. If your computer states that it will be shut down for performing an illegal act, you do not get an apology and an offer to fix the problem; you get a chance to run scan disc.

I am not upset at being a lackey of the computer industry. I am concerned because education (and healthcare) will become real sciences only when the computer industry is able to provide enough reliability to take the guesswork out of the decision-making process. One cannot let the computer assume responsibility for instruction if a random error message is likely to appear and make the system inoperable. Teachers can't be expected to tap dance for an entire period.

Real progress in society will be slowed until the computer industry reaches the same level of performance and accountability that exist in other industries. Greed and self-interest argue against this happening voluntarily, so the obvious answer is a form of legislation for that industry comparable to that drafted for education. The computer industry is as critical to the nation's well-being as oil or education and it must be brought to task.