Computer Weekly readers give their views on the week's
news
The root of boardroom bafflement lies within
IT
Having spent 30 years in the IT industry, and now some six years
outside it, I read the article "Banish bafflement in the boardroom"
(Computer Weekly, 4 July) with interest and some amazement at how
little has actually changed within the industry over all those
years. In particular the subject of IT representation in the
boardroom keeps raising its head.
How many column inches over the years have been devoted to this
sacred cow of the IT department? And how much progress has been
made in that time frame?
The underlying problem is not the lack of IT representation in
the boardroom; it is the IT department's lack of understanding of
its place within the business. It is not that the boardroom does
not understand IT; it is that IT does not fully appreciate the
business.
IT is a functional department of a business, along with multiple
others - it is a tool to help the business, it is not the
business.
An over-inflated opinion of its own importance brought the
centralised mainframe-dominated IT department into disrepute with
the business functions in the 1980s and early 1990s, and yet the
same posturing of departmental over-importance is still being
presented.
Surveys continue to highlight the problems of aligning the
business and IT. Most of these surveys, however, are conducted
among IT people and therefore can be interpreted as the IT
department's lack of understanding of its true function within the
business.
OK, probably not a point of view that many IT professionals
would agree with, but look at the reality. Large scale IT
representation in the boardroom has not happened after years of
self-promotion by the IT industry. The probability is that it is
unlikely to happen (and rightly so). Get over it, time to move
on.
Chris Bee
Better council services should boost
efficiency
I was interested in your report on local authorities' relatively
low IT spend (Computer Weekly, 4 July). With an increasingly
challenging financial environment, tight funding from central
government and the pressure to keep council tax rises to a minimum,
maintaining the delivery of efficiency savings will become more
difficult.
But as well as achieving cost reductions through more efficient
procurement, for example, it is essential that councils continue to
invest for the longer term efficiencies that require more
fundamental change.
Achieving efficiency goes hand in hand with one of the key
priorities of all local councils - improving customer experience
and satisfaction. If executed correctly, efficiency should be
achieved as a by-product of improving services to customers and
back-office processes.
James Thompson,Local government strategist,CAPS Solutions
NHS IT needs a healthy dose of end-user
support
Following your encouraging case studies in praise of public
sector IT projects (Computer Weekly, 13 June), I was disappointed
to see the National Audit Office report on the NHS national IT
programme.
In particular the Choose and Book hospital appointments system
is destined to remain unproductive simply because the very people
it was designed for are not using it.
Usability has a massive effect on the take-up of any IT system
and is essential in generating user confidence. The knock-on effect
of a poor usability experience in this case has resulted in only
15% of 9.5 million outpatient bookings being made through Choose
and Book.
The project seems to have been technology led, rather than
concentrating on the needs of the end-users, ie, the doctors and
nurses who were supposed to welcome the system. Project managers
need to wake up to the fact that unless end-users are consulted
throughout, then the initiative is quite likely set to fail.
The target market should be embraced, consulted and tested from
the outset. If you want people to buy into a product or service
then give them what they want, how they want it - rather than what
you think they want.
Catriona Campbell,Foviance
PSUs are hot property, so let's make them
work
Les Oswald's letter about the heat generated by power supply
units such as phone chargers (Computer Weekly, 4 July) actually
contains the logical solution in its last sentence, where he
describes a PSU as "gently warming the room".
We should stop thinking of this as wasted heat and simply
incorporate it into the ways we meet our overall heating needs. My
studio/office contains several PCs with CRT displays and numerous
PSU-powered peripherals. I only need to heat this room in the
absolute depths of winter.
Roger Thomas
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