[log in to unmask],Net wrote at 08:57 on 27/09/98 
about "Re: The Strategy (again)":
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>Roscoe <[log in to unmask]> writes
>>Anyone managed to print it, my version won't print despite
downloading it
>>twice

I have read it but not even thought of printing it.

>Why not just fax a request for the number of copies you want? *Surely*
>they've printed enough for distribution this time?
>Mary

For one reason because it should be more effective to index the text 
in an electronic form than by using sticky tags up the side and 
along the top to identify the sections for quick reference to.

I will make available my indexed version, all text from the html 
version in a read-only Idealist database, if anyone asks.  I am just 
chopping it into smaller pieces to speed things up on the 486.

What is the point of this?  Well, try this, in a meeting discussing 
the PCG's plans whenever reference is made to something that might 
be in the policy, a 0.75 second search brings up all references to 
that in the policy (and of course any other documents one cares to 
index.)  On a fair sized monitor, or better on a data projector.

Our use of infromation in  meetings is primitive in the extreme, 
with most information presented in support or opposition to the 
matters discussed being asserted from memory and commonly on further 
inspection found inaccurate.  I know that industries commonly 
stagger on with that level of info, but I also know that the people 
doing it in industries tend to be better at it and less distracted, 
to be dealing with smaller amounts of less complex information, and 
I seriously hope, to be less torn by internal rifts than the NHS.

There is little said about the use of information in actual 
management, it seems to be taken as read that people will get their 
secretaries to print out whatever they want to distribute, or indeed 
will turn up with the printed documents from The Centre...unmovable, 
unclippable, unsearchable, see among other references, the current 
BMJ editorial.
Where's the chief knowledge officer?
     J A Muir Gray
     BMJ 1998;317 832-840
     http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/317/7162/832

which does not talk specifically about use of IT in management but 
applies well to it.

I was excited when I found myself heading for a "modern meeting 
room" in a hotel chain for a (BHIA) meeting - I was a little 
disappointed when I found that means it has a fax, flipchart and 
plugs for an audio conferencing phone system.  But that was a step 
beyond what the NHS has and uses.  We could do better, we should do 
better, we must do better - or I am going to sulk.
--- OffRoad 1.9r registered to Adrian Midgley


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