This time it’s the Department of Work and Pensions, in particular their contact centres.

Contact centre employees have to use a number of different systems containing client information. These systems are not properly joined up, so that people applying for benefits or pensions have to give the same information on a number of occasions - when much of it is already held on a system in the department.

Not only is this frustrating for the member of the public, as well as the staff member concerned, it’s also a very good way of ensuring that inaccurate and inconsistent information gets into the system(s).

“There are at least 55 different telephone numbers for contacting the DWP and, quite incredibly, if you contact the wrong service, the department’s technology will not enable your call to be transferred to the right service.”

I suppose that if you make it really hard for people to claim benefits then you save money, as fewer of them will stick it out, but it’s expensive in terms of productivity and staff morale.

There are some worrying aspects to the anti-piracy technologies that are part of Microsoft’s new Vista operating system.

In any case, the entire concept of significantly reducing the functionality of running systems is saturated with risks. Microsoft notes that their products aren’t supposed to be used for “critical” types of applications. That’s a fine sentiment, but Microsoft has succeeded all too well in getting developers to use their operating systems in all manner of exceptionally important applications. That’s the reality.

Of course, just because Microsoft says that they can use such drastic anti-piracy measures in any particular situation, doesn’t mean that they necessarily will, but can we really afford to take that chance? Even if you are the most 100% squeaky-clean human on planet Earth, and would never even dream of running pirated software, you may want to think twice (or more than twice) before jumping into bed with Microsoft on this one.

The End User License Agreement (EULA) for Vista is also much more restrictive than previous EULAs. So your chances of inadvertently violating it, and hence being a software pirate, are much higher.

I can’t put it better than Bruce Schneier, commenting on a Los Angeles Times op-ed by Dennis Gilbert. People just aren’t rational about risk. They over react to some risks, and under react to others.
This has big implications for risk management, especially in risk identification and risk assessment.

More importantly, though, it affects how both we and those that govern us respond to global warming and terrorism.

We can’t just ignore the environmental impact of IT. If, as some hope, the Stern review is going to raise the profile of environmental issues, and lead to actual changes in business behaviour, then IT won’t be exempt.

It’s been reported that yet again sensitive information has been posted on the web because people don’t understand the difference between what you see and what you get. A pdf document posted by the Civil Aviation Authority contained blacked out sections that were about airport security. However, the sensitive sections could be read quite easily: they just used black on black, or something similar.

Pdf documents contain all the text that was in the document from which they were produced; just because it’s not immediately visible (black on black, or a black block superimposed) it doesn’t mean that it’s disappeared. Just select the text to see it, or if necessary copy and paste into another application, or view the pdf file with a text editor.

A recent survey suggests that many websites won’t work well with IE7. Normally, it wouldn’t matter much if sites don’t work with a new browser, as take-up is typically pretty slow. However, many people will be upgraded to IE7 automatically.

I have to admit that I haven’t tested my site with IE7. I’m hoping that it will be OK, though, because I know it works with most other browsers. There are a number of sites out there that really only work with IE6, as they take advantage of its non-standard features. They are the ones that are likely not to work with IE7, which apparently has a different rendering engine.

In this case, it’s definitely a case of “do as I say, not as I do”: don’t skimp on the testing.