OK - here we go with my first ever blog.  Never done one before on the basis that I doubt there are actually any people who would want to read it!  However here we are in the restricted world of St Andrews ASP planning, so you never know - next stop Washington Post? 

I met with our School secretary yesterday to talk about various admin related topics.  In the School of Biology (as is probably common in science schools) administrative work is widely carried out by technicians as well as by secretarial staff.  In response to the ASP Requirements Gathering survey the School has therefore delegated information gathering to several pairs of technicians & secretaries.  There is a pair for each of the four principal buildings in the School.  This group will meet again on January 21st 2009 in order to pool findings, and I have arranged to attend so that I can see what comes up in the verbals - 'spoken metadata' so to speak.

I find that what is carried in that 'spoken metadata' is often much more revealing than whatever ends up on the paper report.  As an example, I imagine that the paper report will mention somewhere that the School receives staff contract information from Human Resources.  Well, that is correct, but it doesn't altogether tell the whole story, as I found out while chatting yesterday afternoon...

HR send out staff contract information to the School so that the School can verify that it is correct.  Of itself that seems like a good and modest thing to do.  However if you think about it more, it reveals some of the inherent problems of 'central only' data planning.  The only way the School can verify the data, is by checking it against some locally held record.  Each School may have different requirements for 'other things' it wishes to do with a list of its staff, and therefore local lists of staff will be held in a variety of ways. The information required to check the data from HR may be strapped on to one of these electronically, or may be kept independently in some other form by the School secretary.

If the School secretary had come to me (as an IT bloke) and asked about getting information about staff contract dates, my first thought might have be to make enquiries about creating a datalink to what HR have on file.  Setting aside the fact that historically such a request might have lead to an irate personnel officer requesting that intimate parts of my anatomy be secured painfully to a rock off Fife Ness at low tide (thank goodness we're up for Cultural Change!) it turns out that my reponse wouldn't have been helpful anyway, as the reason for the request was to verify the centrally held information, and there wouldn't be much point in verifying it against itself.

Gold standard anyone?

 

 

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