IT Policy

Keeping Users Out of FaceBook - I Don’t Think So

This is another great example of why IT in Advertising is unique. One of the biggest challenges facing us in Advertising is educating our users, a group of marketing and creative executives, in the new world of digital media. When you’ve got a group of individuals who desparately need to learn about Web 2.0, the last thing you want to do is to discourage their use of these tools.

In fact, we spend a great deal of time doing just the opposite. We’ve been actively encouraging our users to sign up for, and use tools such as Facebook, WikiPedia, Twitter, etc., While most of the IT world may be worrying about how to restrict the use of such sites, we’re doing exactly the opposite. We encourage our marketing and PR folks to actively monitor social media sites and blogs for news or comments about their clients. We encourage our creative users to actively monitor the latest trends in digital media.

It might be a bit out of the ordinary for IT to turn a blind eye to this stuff, or maybe to even encourage users to frequent these sites, but this business has always been a bit different. I’m just thankful that I have one less thing to police.

User Feedback via Company Blogs

We had an interesting post on our company blog (internal) today. It was a very negative post regarding Microsoft PowerPoint 2008 for the Mac. We’re not particularly heavy users of PowerPoint on the Mac platform, so I’m not terribly concerned about the perceptions regarding this particular product, however it does raise some interesting questions regarding the use of company blogs.

As those of us in the IT community know, perception can easily become reality in our business. When a negative groundswell exists regarding a technology product, it can become exceedingly difficult to support it. I’ve seen it work in reverse as well, where people fall in love with products, and before we know it we’re rolling something out much more rapidly than we expected.

It’s up to us to attempt to control these perceptions, whether they arise on blogs or in the hallway. We need to stay on top of what’s being said, and we need to counter these arguments when necessary. In my own case this morning, the particular user doing the commenting was someone whom we respect and was asked to evaluate the software. We defended ourselves with an explanation about how we test and deploy new software, and hopefully a little bit of humor. In the future, I’m going to be a little clearer about asking them to at least give me a heads-up before they go public with a negative review, but I’m also not going to attempt to censor the discussion.

Anyone Else Notice an Anti-IT Movement?

Has anyone else noticed a growing trend in IT bashing? I don’t want to sound like I’m whining myself, but I do pay attention to what’s being written, and particularly about things like the iPhone and the Mac’s push into the enterprise. The articles generally have great relevance to our business, and I do like to keep tabs on what others in my position are doing.

However, what have really caught my eye of late are the comments posted on this and similar articles. There are definitely some folks out there who don’t like IT very much, and it’s interesting to hear the arguments. In this article those of us in IT are accused of using “technical mumbo-jumbo” to stall the entry of Macs into the enterprise and to defend our own staffing levels.

I realize that it’s only one individual’s comment in this particular case, but I’ve noticed quite a few of these comments being posted lately. It’s usually found following an article such as this, where the author is discussing Macs or iPhones in the enterprise, but I’ve seen similar comments with regards to IT getting in the way of other things the user wants to do – it might be installing software or bringing in personal hardware.

We face a tough-sell on this stuff. It’s not always easy explaining our policies and decisions without it appearing to be “technical mumbo-jumbo”. Don’t ignore the public relations element of our job, particularly inside our own companies. I’m lucky enough to be right down the hall from our PR folks, and I frequently tap into their expertise when it comes to selling what we do.

Streaming and the NCAA Tournament Coverage

What better day to discuss the issue of streaming audio/video than today? With the NCAA Tournament upon us, and CBS offering up every game at no cost, there will undoubtedly be more than a few of our users who decide to spend the afternoon keeping track of their bracket selections.

We’ve tried blocking this type of traffic in the past, but any such efforts on our part have not lasted long. The reality of our business is such that we need to ability to view or listen to streaming video/audio in order to do our jobs. We have Public Relations and Public Affairs people whose jobs require them to monitor local and national media for breaking stories. We have Creative and Account Service people who routinely use YouTube for viewing the latest commercials created for both our own clients and our competitors. As a result, any efforts to block this traffic have been short-lived.

We’ve tried monitoring tools, using both software and/or hardware to attempt to keep tabs on streaming in order to cut down on the non-productive uses (today’s basketball games would be a great example). The problem with monitoring is that it can get expensive. We’ve got 5 different external pipes we’d have to monitor, so any appliance-based solution would require 5 pieces of hardware to monitor all the access points. Furthermore, it requires somebody to watch things, and none of us really have the time to sit at our desks and monitor real-time streaming. When we have done this sort of thing, generally the only time we check is when we’re hearing complaints about things being slow. Today might be an exception, but at the moment we’ve basically given up.

I’ve always resisted the urge to have IT personnel act as “cops” when it comes to these types of productivity issues. We do have a policy against non-business use which covers this type of thing, but as far as actively monitoring, I’d much rather have my guys spending their time fixing things and finding ways to increase productivity than acting as a high-priced police force. If we can find some ways to monitor things without breaking the bank, great but otherwise we’ve got better things to do. Personally, I feel very strongly that it’s the job of management to keep tabs on their own personnel, and I think it’s a bit of a cop out for folks to expect IT to do that job for them. If an Account Executive is wasting their time watching basketball games or viewing non-work related videos on YouTube, I would expect that to be reflected in their job performance. IT might be called in to verify that type of activity is occurring, and I’m perfectly ok with that. I just don’t believe that we should be the ones bringing productivity issues to the attention of managers. It should work the other way around.

How does your company handle these types of issues? Do you monitor? Are you doing anything special with regards to blocking the NCAA tournament coverage?