Not waving, but....

iSociety's latest report, 'Getting By, Not Getting On: Technology in UK Workplaces', is published today.

It will provide little ammunition to the proponents of expenditure on new systems and new technologies. UK workplaces are full of employees struggling with quite basic problems: systems that go down, networks that go down, inputting backlogs from systems failures while keeping up with current work, unloved and unused (and expensive) KM systems, bulging email folders (so often the 'alternative' KM system adopted by employees), laborious cutting and pasting between applications, and equally tedious inputting information already recorded on paper. And more than a few managements who see ICTs as another way of enforcing control rather than as tools allowing creativity - in problem solving - to flourish to the benefit of the bottom line.

It was good, therefore, to see some glimmers of light during the research for this project. Such as the (public sector) IT director who - while upgrading networks and all the other backend stuff - is determined to use ICT training not only as a means of ensuring people know how to use the tech to best effect, but as a way of enabling all staff - including those not currently using computers - to acquire basic ICT skills to improve their own career prospects. This was the same organisation that set up a small call centre that didn't use any of the now standard call centre software control mechanisms, but nevertheless achieved massive increases in productivity. And the same organisation that provided regular training courses for staff: curiously, while many public sector staff still believe they are the poor relations compared with the private sector when it comes to training, the research showed that firms these days often see formal training as superfluous.

In my view, however, the focus of much training is invariably on applications: people are not taught about the principles of how their machines work, how to benefit from shortcuts, how to deal with problems that do occur, how to deal with the spaces between applications, or how best to integrate different technologies, both low tech and high tech. The application is at the centre: there is no holistic view of the computer user.

Press coverage so far includes the BBC and The Guardian.