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ry 19, 2011, 2:54pm PST

As federal CIO Vivek Kundra assesses the need to streamline government IT, he may want to look at the lack of progress in legacy modernization. A new study, based on a survey of 166 senior IT managers in US federal agencies, estimates that agencies spend almost half of the annual federal IT budget, $35.7 billion, maintaining and supporting legacy applications.  In addition, nearly half (47%) of all existing IT applications are based on legacy technology in need of modernization. Agencies’ systems are aging, but only one out of three is doing something about it Four out of five government executives say this is dangerous, and that mission-critical government capabilities could be at risk if agencies do not modernize legacy applications

Online education is best known for serving older, nontraditional students who can not travel to colleges because of jobs and family. But the same technologies of “distance learning” are now finding their way onto brick-and-mortar campuses, especially public institutions hit hard by declining state funds. At the University of Florida, for example, resident students are earning 12 percent of their credit hours online this semester, a figure expected to grow to 25 percent in five years. This may delight undergraduates who do not have to change out of pajamas to “attend” class. But it also raises questions that go to the core of a college’s mission: Is it possible to learn as much when your professor is a mass of pixels whom you never meet? How much of a student’s education and growth — academic and personal — depends on face-to-face contact with instructors and fellow students?

Scientists insist the technology is designed to assist, rather than replace, human teachers. It could help to reduce the amount of time teachers spend on grading essays and help them avoid inconsistencies caused by human errors such as lapses in attention or unconscious bias. It could also help more students, especially those in remote areas with limited access to resources, improve their writing skills more quickly. The machine is similar to the e-rater, an automated system used by the Education Testing Service in the US to grade prospective postgraduate students’ essays. But unlike the e-rater, it can read both Chinese and English. China looks to school kids to win the global AI race Artificial intelligence is developing rapidly in China with strong support from the government and the technology is used in many areas of everyday life. But the extensive tests of the essay grading machine – built by some of the leading language processing teams involved in the government and military’s internet surveillance programme – were carried out with unusual security measures in place. In most of the schools taking part in the programme, parents were not informed, access to the system terminals was limited to authorised staff, test results were strictly classified, and in some classes even the pupils were unaware that their work had been read and scored by a machine.