In an open letter to President Elect Donald Trump, IBM chief executive Ginni Rometty outlined several bi-partisan steps she thinks the new administration could employ to help create jobs.
Up to a third of the employees at some of IBM’s (IBM) corporate centers do not have college degrees, Rometty noted, adding the company needs to hire across developing areas, such as cybersecurity, data science, and artificial intelligence. These are what Rometty characterized as “new collar” jobs, roles that require defined skills but not necessarily two- or four-year college degrees. IBM, has cut thousands of jobs over all over the past few years, in what it has called a realignment around new opportunities.
Rometty suggested the federal government could improve health insurance programs by applying data analytics to cut Medicare fraud and easing secure data transfers of healthcare data between authorized providers. The government could also wield its purchasing power to lower the cost of prescription drugs and patient care, she added. (IBM is in the data analytics and security business.)
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Rometty also noted that Trump’s reform proposal could “free up capital that companies of all sizes can reinvest in their U.S. Operations, training and education programs for their employees, and research and development programs.’
She said IBM supported efforts of the new administration to pass tax reform early next year.
For more on Ginni Rometty, watch:
Rometty leads one of the country’s oldest and most legendary business giants—albeit one that has been challenged of late by younger tech companies in the cloud computing sector. But Rometty has IBM pushing hard in artificial intelligence, cloud, and mobile. With nearly 380,000 employees worldwide, IBM (IBM) remains the largest tech company in the United States.
Full text of the letter is below:
News of Rometty’s letter was first reported by CNBC. An IBM spokesperson said that nine years ago, Rometty’s predecessor Sam Palmisano reached out in a similar manner to then-President-elect Barack Obama.
Note: This story was updated to reflect that IBM has cut tens of thousands of jobs over the last few years.
