Goals of Government Technology Initiatives

Interesting results of a survey on the goals of government technology initiatives:

51% increase operational efficiency and organizational effectiveness
22% improve customer service
11% facilitate effective decision making and policy formulation
7% enhance citizen participation
4% redefine community interactions
3% enhance economic development
2% other

source: IBM/Robert H. Smith School of Business, U of Maryland, Nov 2002

Anti-Email Policy?

According to this article in Internet Week, Phones4u CEO John Cauldwell is banning inter-office e-mail at his company.

"Calling internal e-mails a 'trap' that costs more than $1.5 million dollars a year and eats as much as three hours of employee time per day, British telephone retailer Phones4u has banned them, according to press reports Friday."

Mitch Wagner, editor at Internet Week, expanded on some of the downsides of using e-mail in his weblog.

I posted the following comment:

First, I think you have to take it with a grain of salt when a mobile telephone company CEO announces that e-mail is a poor communication tool!

E-mail usage can be a boon to or drain on office productivity, depending on how it's used or mis-used. It's nice to say that by eliminating e-mail workers will save 3 hours each day, but that calculation fails to include the time workers will now spend using alternative communication methods. Will they now spend hours a day checking and sending voice mail, arranging and travelling to face-to-face meetings, etc.?

Overall, I wouldn't give up internal office e-mail or trade it for only IM access. E-mail simply can't be beat for handling non-urgent asynchronous conversations. I like the fact that I respond to other's non-urgent e-mail on MY schedule and can in turn send out questions that others can take time to think about and respond more fully to then they could if we had the same discussion in person, by phone or by IM. Just as importantly, keeping e-mail archives helps me maintain my own "institutional memory" about how and why past decisions were reached. I know there are potential legal and productivity pitfalls, but just banning internal e-mail is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Can't Spam Authors Be More Creative with their Subjects?

I get a lot of spam. On a bad day 75% of my e-mail can be junk come-on's for Viagra, anatomy enhancers, cable TV descramblers, and adult entertainment. I try not to get too worked up about it. After all, I get a lot of junk mail in my physical mailbox too (though none of that is booby-trapped with viruses, worms, spyware, etc).

I know I could apply a lot of technical solutions -- such as e-mail spam filters that are getting a lot better -- but, frankly, I've been doing fine just by keeping up with important operating system patches and anti-virus updates, and ignoring the temptation to even look at the contents of obvious spam (and NEVER opening suspect attachments).

Thank goodness the writers of spam e-mail go out of their way to help me identify their junk immediately by using weird subjects. Here are a few of my favorites:

"I thought this could save you a few bucks smoking the way you do. so"

[I'm already saving quite a bit by not smoking at all. And dangling a word at the end doesn't really tempt me to keep reading. really...]


"Where are you?" "Wish I could be there." "Why did you block my ICQ?"

[I get about 20 "personal sounding" e-mails like this a day that are simply come-ons for spam messages. I don't even look, just hit delete.]


"Want to get a drink? fb3g483tz7q"

[A new trend seems to be including a string of characters at the end of subjects. What's it for? Something to track this message? An attempt to trick filters? I have no idea but it makes it easy for me to spot candidates for deletion.]


"Here's a powerful, effective anti-spam tool."

[Spam advertising for an anti-spam program. How could you go wrong ?]