All the recent press about IE6 (Internet Explorer 6) and its frailties actually point to a far larger problem that large businesses and public sector bodies face with rapidly changing technologies and the ecosystems that surround them – how to stay up to date and relevant.

When Microsoft made its U-Turn and decided that the internet was important after all, they needed a quick response to compete with the market leading Netscape product. History tells the story much better than I, but we all know that Internet Explorer became that de facto browser for many (it was the one that came with the operating system!), and the attitude of IT departments everywhere was to adopt it as their standard – what could go wrong with banking on Microsoft?

As browser based business solutions proliferated (because of easier deployment and management), IT departments wired themselves into the way IE worked, which as we know was less than standard based, and meant that applications became ‘IE only’.

In itself this was not too much of a problem, as internet use at the office was fairly limited then, and people were just using IE to access their local company resources – but that has changed significantly over the last few years with the spread of social networking, email and things like Twitter.

IT departments have coded applications that work EXCLUSIVELY with IE6, meaning that employees MUST remain on a browser that was first released in 2001 – if there was no other access to the internet allowed, this would not actually be a problem – but people are using PCs for many other internet related tasks, and IE6 is fatally flawed in its security model – that is why Microsoft is now shipping IE8!

So why has this all become such a big issue now?

You may have read about the recent crisis between Google and China, and the alleged spying that has been occurring – it was a flaw in IE6 that opened the door to these activities. This in turn has lead to whole countries (like Germany and France) to actively advise their citizens NOT to use IE6 anymore. The NHS in the UK has asked for all PCs to be upgraded, and even Microsoft recommended that users to upgrade to more recent versions of IE, particularly IE 8, because of the "the improved security protection it offers”.

On our home PCs, we have probably all upgraded way beyond IE6, most of us would have willingly accepted the IE7 and IE8 upgrades that Microsoft pushed to us, some of us run Firefox or Google Chrome as we are even more aware about our personal information and security. However it is not that simple in large businesses and public sector bodies, as deploying new versions (or competing versions) of software is complex and time consuming.

The worrying aspect is that public sector organisations are one of the main problem areas, they are restricted in development resource to change away from IE6 centric applications, but they are also the ones with access to some of the most valuable data – our personal information!

The UK government seems to think there is no problem, with Lord West stating that "There is no evidence that moving from the latest fully patched versions of Internet Explorer 6 to other browsers will make users more secure" – a truly baffling statement. There is now on online petition for Number 10 asking for the removal of IE6 from UK Government locations – something I applaud.

Sadly, as a supplier to local government in the UK, the software we can offer to our customers still has to be coded to the lowest common denominator, which is IE6. This stops us from being able to take advantage of many of the great advances in web technology that have occurred over the last 9 years. Microsoft have made great strides in making the latest versions of IE (especially IE8) more standards compliant, and we could easily build full featured solutions that work on any browser, which is just as it should be – but the ball and chain of IE6 remains firmly attached to our ankles.

Surely given all of the security nightmares and acknowledged issues it is time for the UK Government to put a scheme in place to help get systems upgraded as soon as possible – anyone for a scrappage scheme for IE6?