Does it really have to be this hard?

I was chatting to a friend in another part of the firm we both work for earlier and we were remarking how systems within large organisations such as ours often make things so much harder than they need to be.  I launched in to one of my trademark rants, and it inspired me to put hand to keyboard once more and get it out of my system by means of a blog!

What I am about to tell you sums up the bureaucratic processes that slow our public services down.  There is a lot of talk about how we should be enabling people and making things happen rather than the current culture of telling people what they can't do and putting barriers in the way.  This shows that we still have some way to go......

We have just had a new chap start in our department, not someone new to the organisation, but someone transferring from elsewhere within the company.  We've had a long wait for him, but he finally arrived on Monday, bright and early and ready to get stuck in.  Well he would have been had there been any IT equipment for him to use.

In his old department he had use of a company laptop, for information security purposes this laptop was encrypted so that only he could access the information contained on it, standard company policy.  Now as we are one big organisation, with one IT department that's effectively paid for from the same big pot of money you'd assume the most sensible, cost effective option would be for him to bring this IT equipment with him across the road to his new office?  To clarify, it is only across the road, not a different city, not even the other side of the city, just a few hundred yards.  To be fair this was what had been agreed also.  So last week a man from IT came over and disconnected the desk top computer at the desk he was to occupy and put in the docking equipment compatible with the old laptop.

In the meantime someone else from IT (the same IT department) decided that for some reason known only to them, he was not allowed to bring this laptop with him and would have to leave it behind for whoever later replaces him in that department.  They will instead supply him with new equipment which he will have to wait for while its being encrypted to him.  Because this new equipment is different, someone from IT will then have to come and take out the docking station they have just put in for the laptop he was told by IT he couldn't bring with him. and replace it with a new one compatible with the new equipment.  On top of this the old laptop will have to be rebuilt and encrypted for the new person that takes over his old job.

In the meantime he is sitting at a desk without a functioning pc because it was disconnected to set up a docking station he was never going to be able to use, and to add insult to injury the desktop is still sitting there waiting to be collected, but we aren't allowed to reconnect it.  The wait goes on.......

A waste of time and money maybe?  Hey what do I know!!

Does it really have to be this hard, does it????

C xx