J.S.M.Whitaker" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
...
>the
>infrastructure but the data is the province of the (lots of) owners.
Agreed. In a recent talk here I said:
"My database of departmental information is now 4.7 Mb and growing. I
continue to extend it. But it's not my database - and it would be a
serious mistake if I became possessive about it.
The problem is that as yet, no-one else is very interested in it. As it
grows, I must devolve responsibility for keeping it up to date and correct.
Putting this another way, the staff must take on some responsibility for
the quality of the information. The alternative is irresponsibility.
There is a technical problem here as well as a political one. No-one will
take responsibility without authority; that's why the database is currently
on my Mac. I have complete authority and responsibility. Sharing that out
among 30 members of staff requires a good technical solution which involves
things like access rights and database design. Most of this is already
available. It also needs a good political solution, which is harder for
technologists to understand.
The reason that it becomes political is that when you introduce a single
integrated computer system into an organisation, you must formalise and
codify much of what was informal and unstated. In doing so you discover
that different people in the organisation have different informal and
unstated ideas about how the organsiation was organised, how it functioned,
and their place in it. If these people perceive the new system as a
threat, they will react accordingly.
This is not specific to websites: it is described in books about system
design that predate the web and even the internet by many years.
However, I would like to see an integrated information base in the
department, replacing the fragmented information system that we have at
present."
--
Norman Paterson, University of St Andrews
http://www.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~norman/
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