More on IT People

My involvement with IT department unfortunately did not stop since November. A simple project went wrong, IT types got involved and everything came to a grinding halt. Work has been finished in November; since then these types masterfully orchestrated endless “internal team meetings” going nowhere, and working my client up into a frenzy of distrust and paranoia. While frustrating, this episode was an opportunity for reflecting on the psychology of these people and their role in the context of ICT4D.

The majority of staff of an IT department in any large public organization is on the other side of the digital divide, through their own choice. Strange as it may sound, these people chose to live on the have not side of the divide. What they don’t have, and don’t want to have is knowledge: of the world, of means to help their organization go forward. The less you know, the safer you are.

It does make sense, unfortunately. IT department is a cost center; its mission is maintenance of infrastructure. Considering the amount of hardware per employee any budget organization has, it’s a safe place for someone who knows a bit about how to set up a server, fix a printer, or even to dabble a bit with software on his or her home PC.

Software is about automation and efficiency. When successful, a piece of software can help a non-computer person do miracles in terms of productivity. Software is getting smarter and easier to operate for the dreaded end user.

Wait a minute! Wouldn’t better software mean putting the IT department out of a job? Users doing their own thing!? Hey, we’re not crazy to work ourselves out of our jobs! (I swear, I heard this from one of those guys two months ago).

And so we have it: more procedures, “processes,” “reviews,” “quality standards;” lots of big words yet nothing written to show for; these are all things coming from IT department with only one purpose: preservation of the status quo.

One notch above those guys is a whole class of “independent consultants” – IT department material, just a bit more enterprising. Types that learn on client’s dime, leaving a plethora of duct-tape “solutions” behind them, and fitting any project into the one or two tricks they know. They too want to preserve the status quo: as long as things are complex, people will pay them by the hour.

The complications and low quality of solutions on part of IT staff and their independent clones generalizes into frustration and distrust of all software and people who provide it in any form, destroying our opportunity to make impact with software in a way that truly makes a difference.