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|In: Industry Commentary|Last Updated:

This column is about running IS. The politics it usually covers are corporate politics … the brown-nosing, back-stabbing, hallway persuading, deception, misdirection, and lunch-buying that is basic to business.

Governmental politics I usually leave alone. I’m not a ribbon-wearing actor, so I figure I have no special expertise that warrants your attention. I’m about to make an exception, because a political issue is about to have a big impact on the world of IT.

The issue itself is the ridiculous notion that writing big “soft money” checks to a political party is an expression of free speech. Conservative pundits in particular have adopted this cause, but in all their tortured logic they’ve proved only that they’ve become toadies to those among the ultra-wealthy and influential who will do anything to increase their wealth and influence, regardless of the social consequences.

Let’s be clear about the relationship between wealth and free speech: If you want to use your wealth in the pursuit of free speech, buy as many full-page newspaper (or television, or radio) ads as you want to present your views. Heck, buy as many newspaper companies as you want. That’s free speech. Writing politicians checks to influence votes isn’t free speech. It’s bribery, no matter how hard George Will tries to make it into something noble.

As an IS manager, soft money is about to affect you in a personal way. As evidence, I offer a recent Wall Street Journal article describing meetings between Bill Gates and senior Republican lawmakers, after which the lawmakers called for a probe into the Justice Department’s prosecution of Microsoft.

Did Bill Gates bribe the Republicans? Not hardly. Microsoft pursued the high road, honorably exercising its right of free speech by contributing lots of “unrestricted soft money”. Your stance on DoJ vs Microsoft notwithstanding, if you understand basic civics you should be outraged.

How does this affect you? One word: UCITA (the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act). InfoWorld columnist Ed Foster has fought a lonely battle against UCITA in these pages. All he’s had on his side are facts and logic. But when your state legislature debates UCITA it may hear lots of free speech “rebuttals” in the form of soft money contributions.

So I’m going to make an exception to my policy of avoiding politics, because in this particular case, InfoWorld’s readers can have a significant impact. At least, some of you can. Here’s how:

CIOs have access to CEOs. CEOs, at least those of large corporations, have access to, and considerable influence over politicians. Don’t want UCITA to become law? Make sure your CEO and chief legal counsel understand how it could affect your business if it passes.

Handle this gingerly — you’ll be taking a risk. Be businesslike, not alarmist. Recommend that your chief legal counsel review UCITA as the first step — don’t recommend any action based on your understanding alone. But introduce the issue. Educating your company’s leaders on issues like this is your responsibility.

In a nation that views influence-buying as free speech instead of bribery, UCITA won’t be stopped with mere facts and logic. It will be stopped the way it’s being promoted: by old-fashioned political arm-twisting.

I suggest you use your political skills … the corporate kind, that is … to make that happen.

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|In: Industry Commentary|Last Updated:

Nobody ever apologizes.

I don’t know why this exemplar of good manners has vanished. Perhaps the self-esteem movement decided it damages one’s sense of self-worth. Or maybe some staff attorney decided it admits guilt and is too risky to utter.

Or maybe nobody ever told customer service representatives the first words they should utter (once customers outlast the automated, “Your call is important to us,” lie to present a complaint) should be, “I’m sorry you’ve had a problem. How can I help you?”

A real-world example, directly relevant to your job: A correspondent called her bank’s interactive voice response (IVR) system to check her balance. Pressing a few dozen buttons revealed that her account balance was precisely zilch. A few more buttons and she heard about a large transaction, not of her doing, which had cleaned out the account.

The next morning, in one of those Burns-and-Allen conversations in which each follow-up question elicits an increasingly peculiar response, she heard:

  • A recent merger caused some account numbers, including hers, to duplicate those of some of the other bank’s customers. Everyone affected was assigned new account numbers (and accounts).
  • No, I can’t tell you your current balance. If I had your date of birth on file I could, but that didn’t survive the conversion so I can’t.”
  • “Your automatic payments? We notified all of the companies. Some will accept the change; others won’t. [How will I know?] “You’ll just have to work through that.”
  • “Your new account number? No, we can’t give that out over the telephone. It should be on your new checks, though.” [What new checks?] “You didn’t order new checks? This was covered in the letter we sent… Oh, I guess that wouldn’t have helped: We only sent them a week before the change, so you wouldn’t have had time to do anything.”
  • “You never received the letter?” [No.] “No, I can’t send you a copy.” [Who can?] “I don’t know.”

And on and on. What she never heard was, “We’re sorry for the inconvenience.”

Why is this more to you than just an amusing anecdote?

Think how much of the above disaster either originated in or could have been ameliorated by IS. New account numbers could have been assigned months before merging the systems, and with a little custom programming, provided through both printed bank statements and a pre-recorded IVR message. Losing the birth date field on a database conversion is an amazing lapse. As far as handling the conversion of automatic bill payments to new account numbers, it doesn’t take much imagination to invent a half-dozen automated procedures that would have made problems rare exceptions.

No, IS doesn’t own the whole episode. But here’s something to ponder:

This conversion might have been good business if only employees had been inconvenienced. Dealing with exceptions manually is sometimes the right decision.

Real, paying customers have, and should have, higher expectations. In an age of e-commerce, your mistakes will, increasingly, drive customers into the arms of your competitors. And in this age of e-commerce, IS will increasingly be held accountable, not just the delivery of working technology, but for final business results.

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