Have your say on computerweekly.com
On how no employee can be
indispensable
With regard to the Strategy Clinic "No one has the skills to be
my replacement" (Computer Weekly, 29 June), where an IT manager was
having trouble finding a competent replacement for when he
retired
I would like to say the following to the person who asked the
question:
- Don't delude yourself. Nobody is that critical to any
organisation that they cannot be replaced
- If you feel no one is good enough, perhaps that shows bad
planning on your part not to have invested in your staff
- If you really want to know how important you are, place your
hand in a bucket of water and then remove it. The hole left behind
is how much you will be missed.
Komal Karir
Applications development manager
On realising the costs of IT before the
savings
In response to a book profile of "What business really wants
from IT" (Computer Weekly, 6 July), where the author explained how
to automate a staff leave request form to save admin and staff
time
I have not actually read "What business really wants from IT" but I
hope the brief article did not do it justice.
The example only gave half the argument - namely the benefits - and
failed to address any of the costs. You cannot propose an IT
solution without considering both sides of the equation.
Also, the metrics employed in the example were very dubious: the
savings were so marginal (21 minutes per employee per year), that
if the employee has to log on to the intranet specifically to use
the application, I would not be surprised if all the theoretical
savings were consumed in log-on waiting time.
If that is really what the book is offering to teach me, I will
save my money (and my time).
Keith Appleyard
On how information will change a blame
culture
In response to Lindsay Clark's article, where he reported on a
survey that found that one third of IT managers were working an
extra two days a week without pay (Computer Weekly, 6
July)
With regard to "Top IT staff 'exploited'", the enormous stress
levels IT managers are under reflects the ever-increasing
complexity of the technology infrastructure in many
organisations.
One of the main causes of this stress is an unproductive blame
culture when things go wrong. Our research has indicated that IT
managers and a large proportion of their team are often required to
solve an issue that could have been prevented if they had complete
visibility of how the systems worked and the issues that were
developing.
For this problem to be resolved it is essential the finger pointing
stops and that IT staff take a more constructive approach to
problem solving. Proper processes along with technology which
allows them to identify a problem and its source before it becomes
critical will give IT managers the ability to control and reduce
stress levels caused by issues with their IT systems.
Matt Price
Director, marketing and alliances,Wily Technology
On who has the first managed VoIP service?
In response to Cliff Saran's report on Cable &
Wireless' claim that it has introduced the first fully managed
voice over IP service in the UKfor business users (Computer Weekly,
6 July)
I read with interest, and some incredulity, the claims by Cable
& Wireless.
We have been successfully rolling out Voice+, our own fully managed
VoIP service for some months to customers including the English
National Opera and Endemol.
For the record, Simon Croyden, Endemol's head of IT, told me just
the other day that he is "delighted to see that Voice+ is living up
to all of your (hSo's) claims. We are seeing improved service
levels and saving money". Proof of the pudding and all that.
Chris Evans
Managing director, hSo
Gateway reviews and freedom of
information
Tony Collins' report on Gateway reviews pressed for all parties to
include provision in their manifestos for Gateway reviews to be
published (Computer Weekly, 13 July).
It may well be that government departments have decided to keep
these reviews secret, but surely, under the provisions of the
Freedom of Information Act which comes into force in January 2005,
they will have no choice but to reveal the information if requested
to do so?
Exemptions from cover of the Act are very limited indeed and,
outside the security and defence area, it is difficult to see how
ministers will resist the requirements of the Act to provide
information on request.
Mike Angove
I T manager, Wales Tourist Board
Privatising public sector IT is the only
hope
I certainly agree with Chris Britton (Letters, 13 July) that a
systematic problem with public sector IT projects is a reliance on
outdated waterfall development methods that induce analysis
paralysis.
Shielded as it is from economic reality, the public sector
inherently breeds the illusion that risk, productivity and urgency
are not issues that concern them. Consequently, the modern agile
programming methods Britton mentioned that embrace change and risk
are quite foreign to the way the public sector thinks.
This underlines a more fundamental problem, that public sector
projects fail because they are public sector projects. Because
public sector bodies do not face competition, they have no
incentive to be efficient. Nor, because they are not guided by the
need to make a profit by satisfying customers, do they have any
idea of how to measure efficiency. Furthermore, failure is not
punished by bankruptcy, as they cannot go bankrupt.
You cannot simply legislate success as the Treasury hopes. The only
hope is to introduce market forces by a wholesale outsourcing of
public sector IT. This need not be to foreign companies, but could
be to new British companies formed largely from present public
sector IT departments.
This will retain knowledge and confidentiality and introduce proper
organisation, motivation and a more open accountability.
Rene Cheront
IT ignorance sidelines compliance
projects
I am not surprised that the KPMG research into compliance projects
found that finance departments are not spending enough time and
money on IT (Computer Weekly, 6 July).
Many companies have contracted an army of auditors and believe they
can solve compliance purely with documentation.
There is a general ignorance as to the range of compliance products
and services and the importance of combining IT with financial
reporting. This lack of awareness could damage the important
progress we have made in corporate governance.
The ability to determine what constitutes risk and how to manage it
represents a form of corporate power. It is tantamount to gaining
control over a chunk of the corporate agenda. Any time one person
or a group attempts to measure and report on risk, it will cause
political infighting.
It is not reasonable to expect that such an important activity is
going to be managed by the IT department. However, it is very much
in the interest of certain parties to maintain an environment of
mis-information as to the role of IT in compliance, therefore, it
is essential that IT directors are brought to the decision-making
table.
Malcolm Skinner
Director of international marketing, TruSecure
Legal music downloads can clog the network
too
Frank Coggrave (Computer Weekly, 6 July) is right in warning IT
directors to watch out for illegal music downloads on corporate
networks. However, they should also beware of legal
downloads.
With the growing success of the legal online music industry,
corporate networks could be congested and even gridlocked if
bandwidth-hungry downloads are not monitored and managed.
Many people already find it quicker and more convenient to download
tracks on their iPod or other MP3 players over the corporate
network during lunch or coffee breaks.
Network managers must be warned that this additional hit on
corporate internet traffic will have an impact on the performance
of business-critical applications, whether the download is
legitimate or not.
If 50 staff download just 10 tracks a month, this would be enough
to completely fill a 512kbps line for 10 hours a month, effectively
putting a halt to all business applications during the download
process.
Not knowing how much recreational traffic there is on a network and
failing to control it is not an excuse when the board asks why key
business applications are not running properly.
Roger Hockaday
Director, Packeteer
Mobile use is driven by business, not
coders
After reading "I'm mobile, fly me" (Computer Weekly, 6 July), I had
to check the date on the front cover twice to make sure I hadn't
fallen backwards into a space-time continuum.
I am certainly not accusing the author of getting anything wrong -
on the contrary, there are some systems not geared to what the
modern user wants or needs - but I am suggesting that the
interviewees' industry experience may have been lacking somewhat
and did not reflect the real picture of today's mobile
market.
Mobile solutions facilitate the creation of the application running
on a personal digital assistant without recourse to coding. By
allowing designers to create applications based on job types and
business rules, systems can be up and running within weeks rather
than months. Most importantly, they can be driven by business needs
rather than the developers' workload.
The case studies also seemed to come from some other age - there
are numerous systems that more than adequately cope with many
thousands of live users.
Richard Brookes
Commercial director, Idesta