Dark Ages White House Tech has Lessons for Telework Programs When the Obama White House staff took over their offices, they were confronted with having to cope with almost rotary-dial past technologies, rather than the iPhone technology used to win the election. What lessons can Telework programs learn?
Washington, DC (January 26, 2009) - What Telework Program CIOs can Learn from the Bush era Legacy White House Systems.
An article in the WP on the 22nd: "Staff Finds White House in the Technological Dark Ages" by Anne Kornblut reports on the dismay and confusion that Obama's staff experienced when they arrived, on their 1st day at work, to find that the technology in place was more Atari-style than the Xbox-style they had used to win the hearts and minds of the electorate.
I think that the legacy systems existed because of a combination of laziness (good old inertia) and fear from not knowing how to block and/or correct network intrusions and glitches in interoperability that might occur if new technologies were tried or allowed.
We should have learned by now that every new technology has the potential and often does blow a big security hole in networks. We should also have learned that people will, to make their work more easy, use the new technologies under the radar. Consequently, Telework program managers need to embrace these inevitabilities and deal with them. Look out for:
Rogue office WiFi systems so staff can work wherever they need to to get the job done,
Rogue IM use so staff can be in constant contact with colleagues, whether in meetings, in the cafeteria, on the road .... wherever,
Staff wanting to use 2nd Life Avatars for Customer support, training and product demonstrations,
The dreaded thumb drive being used so staff can take tasks home to complete them on their home computers,
Bandwidth being gobbled up by peer-2-peer music and video swapping or downloading,
Staff setting up team/project Google document sharing sites to enable collaboration and so speed up the "time to market" of tasks,
Staff MUST have laptops both so they can work wherever their jobs require them to and to provide organizational operational resiliency for when (not if) a natural or man-made disaster happens -- then staff can work at pre-designated alternative locations without missing a beat.
It now becomes a Risk Management issue for Telework program CIOs - expect that new IT tools will be used 'anyhow', so new vulnerabilities will be created. Don't stop them. Enable new IT products & services to be widely used, but within a controlled environment .... one controlled by you. Exciting, productivity enhancing IT tools, yet with potentially serious consequences, needing to be grasped and reigned in.
About The Telework Network: The Telework Network promotes the adoption of telecommuting strategies which provide companies with integrated operational and resilient continuity, increased productivity and reduced overhead costs and labor turnover. Telework, also known as telecommuting, provides employees with a better work/life balance, while reducing a company's carbon footprint and improving regional air quality.
The Telework Network offers the products, services and resources that both employers and employees need to start or expand a telecommuting program, or learn and exchange best practices within a peer-to-peer forum.
