Bill Gates: United States fails on data management

Microsoft titan Bill Gates criticized the U.S. government's policy on data privacy and predicted huge leaps in technology in the very near future.

"Over the next decade, the entire way we interact" with computers will change, Gates, Microsoft's chairman, said in a wide-ranging speech in New Delhi, according to the New York Times. Gates, who launched a technology revolution with Microsoft, predicted that cell phones could be used to test for diseases and an Internet will be created for much more than webpages.

Gates was in India to meet with officials and pitch a plan to work on India's national identity card project for 1.2 billion citizens starting in 2011. It's a big challenge because many records including births, deaths and driving violations, are kept on paper at local offices.

Gates used the appearance to criticize the U.S. government's unwillingness to adopt a national ID card or allow some businesses, such as health care, to centralize data-keeping on individuals. That is changing now as the Obama administration is pushing for e-health records as part of health reform but it is still a long and difficult road to make it work. He said the United States "got off to a bad start" when it comes to using computers to keep data about its citizens, reports the Times.

For more on Bill Gates in India:
- check out this New York Times article

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