Beyond Blinking Lights and Acronyms

What IT Needs To Give Up Wed 24 Jun 09

The best IT governance in tough times involves giving up some control--and a lot of information

Balancing requests for more services has always been a challenge but it is especially tough during tough economic times when adding more resource is no longer an option. It is in situations like this when the word "no" can be very powerful.

This may seem contradictory to my previous suggestions that IT should put more effort into saying yes but it really isn't.  The concept of saying yes is about finding ways to help rather than looking for reasons why you can't help, why something can't be done or why something won't work. I still think we should look for ways to say yes in that context.

Identity Protection Goes Beyond Technology Mon 01 Jun 09

We need to include the "human element" in our identity protection schemes

Identity theft and security is always in the spotlight through the constant stream of news stories about companies losing confidential customer or client data, such as social security numbers, credit card numbers, health histories and so forth. These "breaking news" stories now seem to happen so frequently that we scarcely pay attention to them unless, of course, we are directly impacted by them. They have, however, heightened the public awareness and have even spawned new identity protection businesses.

IT companies rightly react to this by developing new technologies to improve security and eagerly market these to CIOs as a way to protect the personal information of their customers and clients. While we should use these appropriately we can't rely just on technology for identity protection.

Interesting and Useful Links Mon 25 May 09

An Expectation of Online Privacy on Schneier On Security blog presents an interesting discussion about online privacy.

The Ten Commandments of Egoless Programming on Coding Horror presents some excellent "commandments" to remember when programming projects.

Chrome 2 announced, 30 percent faster - on FierceCIO's Tech Watch.  I like Chrome,  It's my default browser and now even faster - fantastic.

Gulags, Nukes and a Water Slide: Citizen Spies Lift North Korea's Veil on the Wall Street Journal.  This article demonstrates the power of the internet both in finding information and in the collaborative potential of the internet.

Shell and Chevron plan storm Tweets from the Houston Chronicle outlining how some oil and gas companies are starting to experiment with Twitter for getting out communications.  It's a start.  It's especially interesting in light of the ExxonMobil Twitter hoax.

Fellow Twitterati @DougGtheBA has a guest post Making it Work Between Business and IT: Why and How to Reach Across Boundaries to Dissipate Potential Attitude Issues on Laura Brandau's Bridging the Gap between Business and IT Blog.

Road Trip Tech Lessons Tue 19 May 09

Even problems can be a learning opportunity

I just got back from a 1,300 mile road trip from Houston to Cleveland.  I drove my daughter up there and left her a car for her summer internship.  It was 2 days of hard driving and then working to set her up in her apartment.  Those of you the follow me on Twitter know that all did not go well from a technology standpoint.  In the end all turned out well but since I like to see every experience as a learning opportunity I thought I'd look at what happened and what I as an IT person can learn from it.

Guiding Principles For IT Wed 06 May 09

If you need me I'll be there.

While going through some old papers the other day I came across something I'd written about 15 years ago in my first IT role.  It was a statement of Guiding Principles for IT that I used to let my employees and the users of IT how we intended to perform our role.  I patterned it off of what I had seen at a non-IT service provider and I was impressed by its simplicity, clarity and straightforward approach.

I re-read this very carefully and it still rings true for me now just as it did 15 years ago.  Even though I have not posted this in my new role (now that I've found it again I just might), it is still the way I like to operate.  It has many of the elements of a mission statement but it is more about how we do our business, truly guiding principles.  Take a look at it.  I'd love to hear what you think of it.

Analyzing The Cloud Wed 29 Apr 09

A recent report says cloud computing may not be cost effective for big companies. But that's not the whole story.

A few weeks ago, I had lunch with an old friend and his associate, who happened to be an analyst at one of the major information technology research firms, and our conversation drifted to cloud computing.

During this conversation, we agreed that cloud computing would make inroads with small- to medium-enterprises (SMEs) but not with large enterprises. Our conclusion wasn't based on economics but on IT culture. As my new friend stated, "The No. 1 barrier to the use of the cloud is IT culture."

Oracle and Sun - An Interesting Combination Wed 22 Apr 09

Oracle's Purchase of Sun Opens Up Some New Possibilities and Presents New Issues for CIOs

With Oracle's purchase of Sun Microsystems , Oracle has in a major way shaken up the ERP world by merging the hardware and software components into one company.  It will be interesting to see how both Oracle and their customers react to this.  This provides a powerful combination of an ERP provider, major database provider, major programming technology (Java), and a significant hardware provider all within one package.

There is some speculation that Oracle bought Sun to get Java and that they will eventually spin-off the hardware business.  There is some logic to this as Oracle's software products have traditionally been hardware and operating system neutral.  In the past the Oracle ERP system did have a "primary" operating system on which Oracle rolled out enhancements first but they always followed up and supported other operating system.  Likewise the famed Oracle database was always platform neutral.

Turning Scandal Into Success Wed 01 Apr 09

How federal CIO Vivek Kundra can recover from an FBI raid at his former office.

During the presidential campaign, then candidate Barack Obama created a great deal of excitement within the IT world by promising to appoint a federal chief technology officer. Excitement was further heightened when Vivek Kundra was named to the federal chief information officer role.

The excitement, however, was limited to the IT community. Although it was reported in the IT media and tech-related media such as  Forbes.com's CIO Network, the appointment never made the mainstream news. CNN.com for example, found "Tattoo Barbie" more newsworthy than Kundra's appointment.

Trainers or Knowledge Facilitators? Wed 25 Mar 09

Changing Our Approach Can Make A Big Difference

Last week I was listening to a story on NPR and it caught my attention.  It was about the Washington, DC school district and the things they are doing to improve things.  What caught my attention was a quote for a principal about the attitude toward teaching, specifically, "I taught it, they didn't learn it, it's on them." 

I made a quick post on this and didn't think much more about it.  As sometimes happens I was surprised to find this little post got more attention than I expected.  And as also sometimes happens I received a comment that is better than the post itself.  The post was via Facebook from blog designer, Dave Weiss and that's what I'd like to discuss in this post.

First, it would be good if you read the post in question that generated the comment to put things in context.  Go ahead, it's a short post, it won't take long.  I'll wait here until you get back.

'I taught it, they didn't learn it, it's on them' Thu 19 Mar 09

IT's attitude towards helping our users learn may need some re-thinking

I heard a great story on NPR yesterday, "D.C. Schools Chief Turns To Rookie Teacher Corps".  It's about Michelle Rhee, chancellor of the District of Columbia public schools and what she is doing to improve the schools there.  It's a great story and worth listening to.

What really caught my attention was a section where they talked about the attitude displayed by some teachers: