by Malcolm Hyde, regional director of the CBI South East

Government ministers are often keen to evoke the Victorian age of ambition and discovery when talking about infrastructure, to demonstrate that anything is possible if our ideas are big enough. The development of wide-scale electrification programmes in the late 19th and early 20th centuries took our rail networks to a new level, opening up new possibilities in terms of speed, connections and technology. Electrification transformed the way we did business, bringing people and markets closer together.

Today, the boom in digital networks is having a similar, if not a greater transformational impact. Even modest investment in digital technologies can revolutionise a business,communicating with customers in new ways, and opening the door to markets across the world in an instant.

In the global race for capital and customers,connectivity is key. Building the right connections with the right investors and at the right time can transform a business, enabling that firm to expand and compete in the global marketplace. For government, this means working to ensure that these connections can take place, creating an environment in which the right infrastructure can be built, in the right place, to the right specification.

Yet it is rare to see people in government talking with the same passion and verve about the “digital age”.

To me, this seems a missed opportunity. We know that our digital networks are vital to fuelling business investment and exports – the twin engines for growth.

We need to reinvigorate the debate about how we can continue to strengthen the digital economy

Across Kent businesses talk to me about their plans for growing their operations, the technology they want to utilise and the digital infrastructure they need. These businesses see the quality and cost of the UK’s digital networks as important to future investment decisions.

We need to reinvigorate the debate about how we can continue to strengthen the digital economy. It is time that we saw political vision match the ambition of business, and put in place long-term strategies to achieve goals over the course of the next decade.

If we are serious about seizing the opportunities that investment in our digital networks presents, let’s get excited about today’s possibilities and start thinking about just what we can achieve in the future. In short, let’s get digital.