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Filling the industrial landscape

Peter Davidson, Information Age

24/02/2004 14:28:14

Few among those who moulded ICT in Australia from its beginnings have dedicated so much energy and understanding to nurturing the industrial, political and social issues which have underpinned its evolution, as Phil Singleton.

His career of more than 40 years, dedicated not only to the technology which has given backbone to the country’s growth, but to its wider surrounds in education and research, ICT’s transformation of government and private sectors, and a concern for the societal impact of the pervasiveness of computing and communications.

Pearcey Hall of Fame luminary and industrial figurehead, the landscape of his experience stretches to all horizons.

Quietly self-effacing, his modesty belies the depth of his contribution to these issues, but in the opinion of contemporary and industry identity Max Burnet, “he’s probably the most powerful person in ICT in Australia through what he knows and who he knows. But he’s such an absolute gentleman, you’d never pick that when first meeting him”.

Others agree: Barry de Ferranti describes him as “most uncharacteristic of an IBM salesperson” and is in a position to know having joined IBM not long before Singleton’s burgeoning career path took him there in 1957.

Into town from Taree High and out of Sydney University to work as a sales engineer at 21 for Safe Appliance, and later Electric Control, offering their electrical switchgear to mines and refineries, he found he had “aspirations for earning which appeared outside the possibilities” of his current job.

Living with a bunch of blokes in Neutral Bay, one of them a punch card manager for a swimwear manufacturer, he found an ad for sales people to join IBM and asked “who’s IBM, and does this computer business have a future?” The card-puncher thought so.

Encouraged by the fashion of the time to join a strong company and stay there for life, three of them applied and after a typically lengthy interview process, all joined an intake of 12 in 1957 to start a career with the fledgling giant.

First at its facility in Lidcombe (“next to the cemetery”) and later in its NSW sales office in Palmer Street, not far from King’s Cross and in an area notorious for customer service of a different kind, Singleton joined a group learning to program and install a 650, IBM’s first commercial mainframe, sold to insurer MLC.

de Ferranti had been hired to bring the machine to Australia and to oversee its installation and support and quickly joined forces with Singleton to get the job done and to forge a valued relationship which has lasted ever since.

The 650 had a drum memory and just 2000 words of storage in its basic form, but it opened a new era for commerce, and more systems were soon sitting on their false floors at AMP and elsewhere.

Governments and utilities at all levels meanwhile were busily totting up ROI sums on applying these rapidly emerging technologies. At the same time Singleton was leaning more and more towards technical marketing to take advantage of these opportunities by specialising in large systems such as the high-end /360 systems that he, along with Vance Gledhill and Fred Hall, sold to the Bureau of Meteorology.

IBM sent Singleton to its Systems Research Institute in New York City, a freewheeling academy where students were encouraged to develop their own curriculum by choosing the lectures they attended.

Among its faculty was Jerry Weinberg who worked on the world’s first operating system and is a prolific trainer and author.

Weinberg lectured in “Human Factors in Systems Design” and had Singleton and his classmates roaming the streets of Manhattan conducting crazy social experiments to illustrate the gulf that often separates the systems analyst’s logical approach from the natural instincts that operate in the workplace.

One assignment involved going into tobacconists to check whether there really were 20 cigarettes in each pack, driving store keepers to distraction.

Singleton returned after three months of pragmatism with two ambitions: to awaken interest in the business of processing text rather than numbers, and to pursue the potential of database technology and management, neither of which were getting much attention in Australia in 1966.

Both ambitions would serve him well as he pursued his career among the text factories of Canberra

Gathering momentum, he moved through IBM’s ranks to advisory systems engineer, account manager, industry marketing manager by 1968 and eventually, Canberra branch manager in 1970 to be at the centre of government activity as agencies like Defence, Australian Bureau of Statistics, the PMG and Social Security had embraced computing.

Up against competitive heavyweights like Control Data and Honeywell, IBM did not have the field entirely to itself and there were lean times, but with the election of the Whitlam Government in December 1972 major changes were soon afoot as industrial, education and welfare policies that had simmered in Opposition for years were loosed on the country.

Medibank, Veterans’ Affairs, Treasury, the new National Library and other departments and agencies became IBM sites under Singleton’s tenure.

Like many whose careers take them into the epicentre of government, understanding the dynamics of its processes, and politics, can be a Siren’s call. The machinations of Canberra’s bureaucracy pervaded his working days by the time his sales responsibilities extended to the entire national public sector in 1976.

In his case, it meant a conscious diversion into political science as a personal interest, as much as a necessity to gain fluency in complex administration. Typically by almost total immersion, he addressed the task with enough energy to become a director for six years of the Australian Institute of Political Science from 1980, and its chair for three of those years.

The same single-mindedness has attended all his many forays into peripheral industrial issues and activities, including his connection with the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA).

New Trades Practices legislation in the late 70s prompted a drive for industry cohesion to meet emerging challenges with some unity, and as Max Burnet recalls, “I can remember in 1978 watching Phil Singleton writing in longhand the charter for a new industry association, along with Bill Wells from Sperry-Univac and Neil Lamming from ICL.”

First called the Australian Computer Equipment Suppliers’ Association, it later changed its name to AIIA. Singleton was alternate director and deputy chair of its industry policy committee from 1978 through the 1980s.

Expanded roles within IBM took him further into the public arena, first as government programs manager, then external programs manager, director of public affairs in 1984 and having also been appointed to IBM’s board, director of corporate and external relations until 1990.

During this period, politicians and bureaucrats faced a series of new social issues as technology spread its influence ever wider across the public service landscape: data processing operators were complaining of disabling soreness in hands and arms and Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) entered the medical and workers’ compensation lexicons. Also, beginning in the early 1980s, new attention was given to the effects of ICT on employment and the potential for computers to displace workers.

Barry Jones, having entered parliament as the Member for Lalor in 1977, became Minister for Science on Labor achieving government and frequently joined Singleton at the public rostrum to debate and examine these and other issues to balance the alarmist voices that were gaining strength.

Meanwhile, Sen John Button was quietly but effectively reforming Australia’s industry and commerce, bringing strategic planning to our automotive industry and clearing tariff hurdles elsewhere.

His Partnerships for Development (PFD) initiative in 1987 was widely accepted by a computer industry looking for some shelter from increasing chilly winds blowing off the recession that was supposed to be good for us all.

The PFD program encouraged 21 IT companies to invest in R&D, develop new manufacturing, software and services and grow exports, and it fell to Singleton in his role as director of external relations to work with CEO Brian Finn and others to set new strategic approaches to services and software development to meet PFD’s terms.

This included working with Tony Bowra and others to re-engineer IBM’s fabrication plant at Wangaratta to expand PC production, creating the company’s export leadership.

Not all PFD signatories stayed the distance, but IBM, Digital and a handful of others met their goals to give Australian ICT a much-needed fillip.

Elsewhere, things were stirring in the telco market as IT companies turned their networking technology resources towards new opportunities to enable improvements in service and supply, and while the pendulum has swung these days to communications driving IT, the 80s at least brought the two sectors to understand their interdependency.

An established player in the sector, Singleton’s representing IBM on the Australian Telecommunications Users’ Group (ATUG) as a director and chair of its policy group from 1986 not only strengthened the company’s connection with it, but set a path for later in his life.

He doesn’t see information technology and communications yet fully converged, largely at the human level, but admits to being passionate about the topic. Telco people, in his view, see themselves as telco people, and IT people likewise, even though underlying technologies have melded.

“The technology goes first, acceptance by the consumer second, and then workplace attitudes, education and training, and regulations stumble along behind.”

As the public face of IBM, along with Finn, he was as ubiquitous as the company itself, carrying its flag into the scores of social and industrial labyrinths where it had interests and ambitions.

He become involved in extending IBM’s already massive commitment to education and training by building bridges with academia and parallel agencies within government, and generating initiatives to secure a supply of qualified graduates to fuel growth.

It’s reflected in a bio, filling half a page reduced to its bare essentials, that is dotted with abbreviations and acronyms relating to state and federal government agencies, institutions and companies, volunteer organisations – without even starting on career summaries.

But after 33 years of it, he took early “retirement” in 1990 aged 56 to form his own research company.

There was nowhere else in the company that he wanted to go; he decided it was time to travel with wife Patti rather than alone – and there were a few matters like the provision of broadband services, the drafting of post-1997 telecommunications legislation and the establishment of a national network of high-performance computing centres, claiming his early attention.

Helping to create the Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing (APAC) and as foundation chair of the (NSW) Australian Centre for Advanced Computing and Communications (ac3), he was delighted to see ac3 install the fastest high-performance computer in the country.

Funded by the Australian Research Council, the $850,000 cluster of 155 Dell Xeon nodes running on Linux runs at 1.1 teraflops to add muscle to ac3’s resources for academics and business.

His six-year stint as chairman of the Service Providers’ Industry Association (SPAN) and work with the Broadband Advisory Group continued his drive to see pervasive broadband connections drive renewed ICT industry growth.

But as 2004 beckons, he is shedding some (but not all) of his consultancies and advisory roles to seek “new challenges”, play some golf, continue to network with just about everybody in this business and governments present and past – and nurture an affinity for Italy and things Italian.

Last year, he and wife Patti took off for Italy again, this time in a small group hosted by master chef and TV host Stefano de Pieri, to delve into the culture and cuisine, and pursue an interest in mid-20th century Italian history.

When someone comes to delve into the history of Phil Singleton’s peregrinations through the Australian ICT landscape, it will be a far more daunting task.