Emphasise creativity in drive to attract women
Robert Chapman, co-founder, The Training Camp
The news that British young women associate IT with secretarial
duties (Computer Weekly, 19 July) proves that the true nature of a
career in IT remains shrouded in mystery for many people.
While those involved in the sector are au fait with the
importance of programming and development, many outside it continue
to associate computing with filling in spreadsheets.
Addressing this miseducation is particularly important when it
comes to women, whose skills would undoubtedly enrich the IT
market. We need to reassure women that the skills for which they
are prized in so many other areas of employment - people
management, creativity and communication - will not go to waste in
IT.
Research carried out among female graduates earlier this year
found that 88% would not even consider a career in this field. An
overwhelming majority of this number believed that only technical
knowledge would be rewarded and sought careers demanding teamwork,
strategic thinking and creativity.
IT can offer all of these things, but to really tap into the
female market we need to see creativity and personal skills at the
forefront of the recruitment drive.
Compliance is normal - so why all the fuss?
Graeme Blundell, senior consultant , Altair
Technologies
The reaction of Callum McCarthy, chair of the Financial Services
Authority, in your article "EU slammed over IT cost of regulatory
compliance" (ComputerWeekly, 26 July) is also typical of IT
managers who suddenly have to work in a compliant framework.
Compliance in IT is not a new thing. It has been practised in
other areas such as the pharmaceutical industry for over 20 years.
If McCarthy would care to look up the EU and US legislation for IT
compliance in the pharmaceutical industry, he may be very surprised
to find that we have been using compliance to improve efficiency
and quality standards, which in itself has made the cost of IT far
more effective.
Why the fuss? The Market in Financial Instruments Directive is
there for a reason and follows the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the US. It
was inevitable and is simply making European financial
organisations more accountable.
The FSA would do well to look to its peers in other industries
to understand how to make compliance effective. It would also be
worth remembering that the impact is Europe-wide and not simply
within the UK.
IT leaders must act now to meet waste
deadline
Adrian Palmer, managing director, Ontrack Data
Recovery
Mark O'Conor is wise to flag an early warning for the Waste
Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directive becoming law
in August (Computer Weekly, 19 July). IT directors need to start
putting procedures in place now to avoid a rushed job to meet the
deadline.
The compliance issues of the WEEE Directive are too serious to
ignore and shortcuts for recovering and recycling expired PCs can
have devastating effects on an organisation.
Remember the unwiped corporate data that ended up on old PCs on
eBay and the MoD security plans recovered from hard drives sent to
the scrapheap?
With the WEEE Directive coming into force, PC recycling must be
regarded as a positive trend and one that IT directors should
embrace. Data erasure needs to be at the forefront of the process
to ensure private information remains private.
Real-time business intelligence challenge
Peter Lusty, Strategix
I read your article on operational business intelligence
(Computer Weekly, 26 July) with great interest. The real challenge
is how to marry real-time business intelligence reporting with
operational software applications without the need for constant
reprogramming.
By definition, operational applications process transactions in
a strictly procedural manner, whereas business intelligence
systems, by their nature, aggregate, sort and sift through data to
find information of relevance. The answer therefore would appear to
lie in having an architecture that facilitates the easy connection
of business intelligence data to operational applications, with the
result that business intelligence data is delivered in real-time
and in context with what the user is doing at any time within the
operational application.
In this way, the decision as to what data is provided to which
user in any particular context can be kept separate from the
operational application itself. As rules external to the
application determine these choices, a huge degree of flexibility
can be achieved in delivering real-time business intelligence in
context - without the need to reprogram the operational application
itself.
CISM is business oriented qualification
David Simpson, chair, CISM Certification Board,
Isaca
Isaca is glad Nick Langley included the CISM (certified
information security manager) certification in his article "A
security qualification is a must but make sure it fits your field"
(Computer Weekly, 22 July), but we would like to make a
clarification.
The article states that CISM is targeted to audit managers, but
that is not the case. CISM is a business-oriented designation for
professionals who manage an organisation's information security and
possess the knowledge to set up, implement and direct a security
structure to manage risk effectively.
The CISM certification, introduced in 2002, has already been
earned by more than 5,200 security professionals, and was
recognised in a recent study by Foote Partners LLC as a "hot
certification to watch for the next 12 months".
Registration for the June 2005 CISM exam reached a record 125%
increase from the previous year, prompting the first ever addition
of a second exam in one year.