| | By Mick James
You can’t move in the
papers these days
without reading about
alleged threats to our
civilization, from
terrorism to teenage
pregnancy. But one thing
never gets mentioned –
our profound, wilful
ignorance of the basics
of information
technology.
I wonder whether
other civilizations were
as turned off as we are
by the foundations of
their society. Did the
Romans at dinner parties
say things like “Roads,
sorry, don’t know
anything about them, not
really technical, you
know”?
I was struck by this
while reading about the
latest “controversy”
that’s sprung up around
the NHS’ Connecting for
Health programme.
Actually, what happened
doesn’t seem to be that
controversial at all.
The servers went down.
The back-up servers
didn’t back up. Slapped
wrists all round.
Now, I’m not trying
to play down the
seriousness of this
failure. Not getting
disaster recovery right
for a system that
involves sick people is
about as bad as you can
get without crashing a
plane into something.
But what struck me was
the failure of people to
grasp the nature of the
disaster. Predictably,
the opposition parties | |
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| | wireless network you
could expect senior
politicians to grasp
fundamental distinctions
between hardware and
software, between
infrastructure and
solutions.
I may be a bit bitter
at the moment because
I’m suffering from the
apocalyptic worldview
that only the discomfort
associated with a minor
injury can bring about.
I do know that when I
was staggering through
the doors of A&E a week
ago with my patient
notes clutched in my
teeth I wasn’t thinking
“Stop the
computerization of
patient records—end this
futile digitization of
X-rays!” .
But even when the
painkillers kicked in, I
couldn’t escape the
conclusion that this
gulf in understanding
has become a serious
threat to our progress
as a civilization.
Of course, gulfs in
understanding when it
comes to IT are nothing
new to the consultancy
industry. You could
argue that if business
understood IT better
(and vice versa) then
there wouldn’t be a need
for a lot of the
consulting work that
goes on. But we can’t
keep pouring consultancy
like Polyfilla into
cracks that are the
result of serious
structural problems.
It’s a serious waste of | |
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| | talent, for a start.
It’s also a missed
opportunity when
consultancy stands in
this pivotal role
between IT and the
people who pay for it
and use it – whether in
the public or private
sector. But the nature
of the consultancy
industry tends to
undermine its ability to
exploit this position.
Firstly, consultancy
is essentially a
reactive,
problem-solving
discipline, to the
extent that the issues
I’ve outlined tend to be
seen as challenges to be
relished rather than
symptoms of a deeper
malaise.
Secondly, consultancy
is something of a
non-conductive medium
when it comes to
information. There’s a
lot of lip-service (and
money) paid to concepts
like knowledge
management, but we all
know that getting
consultants to
meaningfully record
their actions is harder
than getting children to
write thank-you letters
after Christmas.
You do occasionally
see instances where
consultants partner with
IT providers to combine,
at least on paper,
business and technical
expertise to create
solutions which work on
both fronts. But these
tend to be both highly
sporadic and | |
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| | opportunistic in nature
– the process needs to
be systematic.
In recent months I’ve
been debating the issues
involved where
consultancies are part
of broader
organisations. There’s
much to be said on both
sides, but the
increasing demand for
talent has brought into
question the sheer
practicality of
maintaining these
consultancy arms as much
as the underlying
validity of the concept.
Yet within those
companies there is an
enormous opportunity for
the consultancy arm to
push information and
change expertise back
into the organisation
and fundamentally change
the way it operates and
the products it
delivers. So that the
alignment, of which we
all dream, takes place
not painfully and in
public but within the
supplier organisation.
This would entail
those suppliers handing
over unprecedented
amounts of control over
their destiny to their
consultants. It might
look like the tail
wagging the dog, but I
think there’s a better
anatomical analogy:
Don’t have a consultancy
arm – get a consultancy
brain.
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