CIOs Share Tips For Managing Consumer Technology
As consumer tech continues to invade the workplace, CIOs share their best practices for managing support.
CIO — You've noticed it seeping into the IT workday. An end user calls the support desk for help connecting a new iPod to the desktop. Another asks how to add Skype capability to the desktop. Consumer IT—technology and devices initially designed and marketed for use in the consumer space—has infiltrated the workplace.
CIOs overseeing the invasion of consumer technology know it's not enough to simply write a management policy, post it on the intranet and then revisit it a few years down the road. "Stagnant policies and procedures just aren't practical for these types of technology," says Rob Israel, vice president and CIO at $400 million John C. Lincoln Health Network. Policies need to be revised on a regular basis, according to user needs and organizational security concerns; Israel revisits his every four to six months. And for any policy to work, CIOs need to have a strong communication strategy, involve users in policy creation, build in security and find a balance between restriction and freedom of use.
Communicate Existing Policies
"I know some CIOs who have 150 or 200 security policies. That's just way too many," says Israel. His consumer IT-related policies total 30. The limited number makes it easier to communicate the policies and their updates. When Israel's team makes a policy addition or change, they explain the rationale to users with straightforward language. "We'll say, 'Do you know why we encrypt e-mail?' Then, we'll explain why we do it in three or four sentences," says Israel.
Involve the End-User Community
Jay Dominick, formerly CTO at Wake Forest University and now CIO at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte , sees more consumer technologies being introduced every day. Most come from students, who tend to have both disposable income and time on their hands.
"Our policy-making process involves multiple layers of faculty, staff, student input and the legal office," says Dominick. "So it can take six months or a year to reach consensus." In 2000, when Napster hit university networks, Dominick says "it took almost two years before there was a response from universities as to how to manage it."
A couple of years ago, senior business executives were struggling with how best to keep staff apprised of new thinking. They came to Rinaldi with an idea: They wanted to tape seminars and meetings and make them available online. The idea clicked with Rinaldi and his team; his deputy CIO took ownership of the project.
Less than a year later, JPL-TV debuted on the corporate intranet. The tool is a variation on YouTube and currently has about 100 videos in its growing inventory, complete with search functionality (which is still maturing). Employees throughout the organization can visit JPL-TV, search for a specific video and then watch it on their desktop. The JPL-TV team is creating a set of specific management policies, which will be found on the site, and include items like permission to videotape participants in the meetings and specific guidelines about what types of meetings to include.
-C.M.
