Note the URL (sorry, uniform resource locator): www. techweb.com/encyclopedia/home. It is absolutely invaluable when you are confronted by an unfamilar term or one you should know but can't bring the definition to mind. (The nugget ends here.)

Interestingly enough, however, TechWeb has compiled a list of the 10 most requested definitions. Nine of the 10 are, inevitably, the aforementioned three letter acronyms such as DSL and XML. They are, for the most part and as you would expect, associated with the newer technological developments. DSL is the technology which squeezes broadband content down a narrowband copper wire, for example.

But among these sparky new terms on the list there are some surprisingly elderly examples - Ram, for example, random access memory, the basic building block of the microchip revolution. Or CPU for central processing unit, a term hardly used since mainframe computers gave way to PCs and servers.

Since no IT specialists would be ignorant of these terms, the answer may be that lay people - managers, executives, or even politicians, are seeking to bring themselves up to scratch in computing matters.

And not before time, one might argue. Computer projects still fail or are completed over time and over budget on a scale which suggests that neither the industry nor its customers have learned very much over the past 30 years.

It is all very well for Tony Blair, the UK Prime Minister, to pay lip service to the concept of an e-aware UK, but the sorry saga of failed or delayed government computer projects suggests that nothing very much has changed.

The apparent slowdown in the purchase of IT products in the US is being blamed to some extent on disillusionment with the consequences of further computerisation. Well, what else is new?

What is not new, in the UK at any rate, is that the government seems ill-equipped to act as customer on the big IT projects planned to underpin many aspects of our society.

To give just four examples, it seems incredible that the £53m project to upgrade the country's air traffic control system, the £1bn-plus tax office modernisation scheme, the £35m national insurance recording system and - as revealed last week - a £77m system to deal with the increase in asylum-seekers, should all have been dogged by problems, cost over-runs, delays, or in the case of the Prestwick air traffic control scheme and the asylum-seekers project, axed.

Well, not that incredible to those who have studied the chequered history of computer systems implementation who would immediately recognise the warning signs. Poorly defined objectives, changes of mind during implementation, inadequate change management conditions.

If these projects had been part of the new e-economy, the fiascos would have been more understandable. E-systems tend to be built in different ways to traditional projects, substituting speed for quality as time-to-market becomes critical.

But nobody would argue that an air traffic control system should be rushed into service, warts and all, as if it were an online auction room. The same goes for tax and national insurance systems. These systems should have been created using the best-in-class methodologies that have been developed over the years.

If they were, the rules were not properly applied. If not, they should have been and the government, as a supposedly intelligent customer, bears much of the responsibility for the delays and failures.

The fact is that the UK government of whatever political colour, seems to have little understanding of how the IT industry works. The row over the Treasury's tax crackdown on self-employed contractors, and the Department of Trade and Industry's proposals to reduce the 'quarantine' period which must elapse before a temporary worker can be offered a permanent job illustrate how it lumps IT professionals in the same category as catering and secretarial staff.

E-awareness must begin at the top. Let us hope it is Westminster and Whitehall with their fingers of the keys of TechWeb's online encyclopaedia.