“IT is totally dry and boring” said your correspondent (Release me, Letters blog). He has obviously lost enthusiasm for computing. Imagine if those working on our big government projects were infected by similar individuals. Maybe we would all benefit if they left to take up a more suited profession  “mopping floors and cleaning up kitchens”. Do us all a favour: work in IT only if you enjoy it.

Dave Walker

What you say is true (The world is going to India, Outsourcing blog). IBM has its largest operation outside the US in India. Indian brains are tapped by all international giants for cutting-edge research work. GE, Siemens, Merck, Microsoft, Oracle – you name it, all have research and development operations in India.

The world’s largest bank, food and beverage, insurance, steel and pharmaceutical companies are all headed by Indian chief executives. India itself is kind of a mini-Europe.

Jay, submitted on the web

Your reader Johnny is right when he talks about the poor pay in IT (Should have taken the bus, Letters blog). Last year I earned a little less than £30,000 for working on average three days per week. I have no academic qualifications, only a good number of years’ experience. I only have a basic knowledge of networks and earn my money looking after simple PCs and printers.

And yet I see adverts in your publication offering the same sort of salary but requiring various degrees or other qualifications and experience. They also ask that the candidate takes responsibility for this, that and the other, although the work, project or prospects are always exciting, which I suppose must count for something. And no, I don’t charge plumber’s rates.

Bob, submitted on the web

Am I the only one who has experienced significant delays in receiving an SMS, sometimes up to a few hours? If users are relying on timely SMS to access their system, it is possible that working time could be lost (SMS to replace token security). How do those lost man-hours compare against a £40 token?

Andrew R, submitted on the web

If new laws target downloaders, I think a lot of internet companies will lose a lot of custom (Government to attack download pirates). Most people have the internet so they can download whatever interests them. I know for a fact that I will cancel my broadband subscription if this is made law.

Perhaps if cinema tickets and DVD hire were cheaper, people would not download as much. Most of the films being made these days are such rubbish that I cannot see why anyone would want to pay to watch them anyway.

Tony, submitted on the web

There are far more important things surrounding the misuse of the internet that the government should be dealing with before it even thinks about media piracy (Government to attack download pirates).

The government does not seem to care as much when the little people are wronged, but any injustice to industry makes it pulls its finger out. I doubt the entertainment industry is going to have a lean Christmas because of media piracy.

Dylan, submitted on the web

This is a very good article (Lite relief for project delivery), but I believe that the author’s statement: “The fact that a project is well-managed and ticks the right boxes does not mean it will deliver a working system” is incorrect.

I think a project is well-managed when the scope verification is being done properly – and in absence of such verification nobody can guarantee a “working system”. The point to note is the definition of a “working system”. In my view, it is a system that conforms to the requirements of the work. In fact, this is what quality management is all about. If we do not do this, the project cannot be said to be well-managed.

Tanuj Mittal

This is a joke, right? (Law change will raise costs for local council IT). Why does Socitm think that the private sector should not absorb these costs – it should. This is about disclosing the tax burden to the taxpayer. If suppliers want local government business, they should bear these costs.

This is akin to firms telling the customer, who is ultimately the taxpayer, that they will do the work but not disclose how much it will cost. These suppliers and overpaid IT consultants will increase their costs and tie all this legislation up in as much red tape as they can to make it expensive and unfeasible to do.

Ben Rattigan

In his letter, Steve wrote: “One might think that banks had introduced chip-and-PIN merely so they can refuse all refunds on disputed transactions because they can always say: ‘How did they know your PIN?’" (Suspicious minds, Letters blog).

Was this not precisely the reason chip-and-PIN was invented? Credit card fraud cost banks more than £150m per year, because the rules said that users would be protected from fraud that was not the user’s fault. Chip-and-PIN was designed as a way of proving blame. If you can prove it was the card user’s fault, for example they gave away their PIN, you can deny liability.

Phil, submitted on the web

I am afraid that working unpaid overtime is expected in many places (Why are you giving up £5,000 a year?). When you are on a fixed monthly salary, rather than paid hourly, it is next to impossible to request overtime pay just for finishing the workload. If there is an expectation of “getting the job done”, people end up having to put in that extra time. I do not like it either, but I think it is very hard to change.

Mark Kobayashi-Hillary

We need to attack the IT skills shortage with long-term solutions, rather than temporary measures – and this will involve a re-evaluation of our approach (IT skills shortage reaches highest level in 10 years). Both business and government tend to propose measures that have immediate effects.

But while higher levels of recruitment may look impressive, the real answer lies in employee development and retention. Too often, money invested at entry level comes at the expense of existing staff. And once through the door, employees are frequently neglected – particularly in terms of training and skills. Sadly, this means that initial potential can dwindle.

We need to realise the importance of middle-order staff. A more even distribution of resources, combined with greater recognition of roles, will improve both operational output and business performance. This may not excite the board members, but it will go a long way to relieve perennial staffing issues.

Ross Eades, InterQuest Group

Accenture's research reinforces the fact that the retail industry is still a long way from operating on a customer-centric strategy (High street problems send shoppers to the web).

Holistic customer profiling and behavioural targeting need to become a key priority if store visitor numbers are to be improved. By having the technological capability to understand what is driving customers in terms of preferences and behaviours, retailers will be able to cater their in-store offerings a lot more effectively.

Retailers such as Waitrose are using forecasting and merchandising software to ensure quality service is being delivered to their customer base. More stores need to use this type of actionable insight to improve the in-store experience. There is no excuse for retailers that are under-delivering in terms of customer service and stock availability. Continuing down this route will result in damaging the customer experience and destroying brand loyalty.

Jason Goodwin, SAS UK

Managers talk deadlines - as in time remaining. IT staff talk milestones - as in modules completed. Unless managers start thinking in terms of modules completed, and IT staff start thinking in terms of time remaining, the problem of business-skilled IT workers and IT-skilled business workers won't go away (IT skills are falling short of demand).

For that to happen, business workers - especially business managers - are really going to need to know much more about IT, and IT workers - especially IT managers - about management.

How many managers today, and not just in IT, are qualified in both business administration and IT?

Gordon Docherty

I have both IT/technical (BSc and MSc) and business (MBA) qualifications and experience, yet find when looking for work that you can only be "technical" or "business" but not both (IT skills are falling short of demand).

Isn't it about time that companies started waking up to the fact that the reason they don't have staff skilled in both IT and business is that there is just no interest from within the respective, entrenched camps within those companies to disturb their very comfortable status quo? What has IT to do with the business, and what does the business know about IT?

Name withheld on request

I was pleased to read of the launch of a Web 2.0 security forum in Computing (Web 2.0 security forum launches), as our view has been that more and more companies are adopting Web 2.0 technologies without implementing sufficient security policies and practices.

Web 2.0 within the workplace is not a fad that is going to disappear; the technology and applications make a whole new mode of working possible that will lead to increased productivity and profitability. However, it will be necessary for businesses to face up to the accompanying security issues to reap the benefits Web 2.0 promises.

Businesses need to educate staff on best practice and their individual responsibility in helping secure new web applications.

IT departments must also take responsibility for the security below this surface level, which involves keeping a close eye on the network and bandwidth rhythms and professionally auditing applications.
Organisations that work to raise awareness of these issues can only help the overall progress of new, powerful applications in the enterprise, as secure best practice here will enable whole new ways of working.

Simon Haighton-Williams
Web Technology Group

J Brown's assumption that the IT industry will not immediately welcome her after she gained her Masters is correct, but not for reasons of sexism and ageism (Should I stay or should I go, Letters blog, letters.computing.co.uk).

Rather, any IT graduate is of little use to the vast majority of employers because he/she additionally needs to have a couple of years' work experience to be quickly useful.

That's business, not prejudice. It is not fair but it is everyday life in IT.

Peter Rose

Call me a Luddite if you want, but I remain unimpressed by Bill Gates' vision of the future, which sounds more like Futurama or the Jetsons every day (The revolution is only just beginning).

So, we will see "computing available everywhere", will we? Isn't the word for that "intrusive"? If computing is available via "a wide range of devices, often taking advantage of nearby displays and projection surfaces", that sounds to me more like the future as envisioned by science fiction author Philip K. Dick, with advertising and messages being beamed directly to you wherever you are, as you walk down the street, lie in bed, take a shower, or whatever. Intrusive? The word doesn't do it justice.
And when Gates talks about delivering "the best experience for the device you are using", whose definition of "best" is he using?

My ideal experience is not being surrounded by screens of all differing shapes, sizes and colours, demanding my attention and a response, regardless of whatever it is I am actually trying to do, such as buy groceries, enjoy a drive in the countryside or listen to some music - something I definitely want to do without distractions of any sort.

He needs to remember that visions such as George Orwell's 1984 and Dick's Blade Runner are much better described as dystopias, rather than utopias.

Get in step with the real world, Bill - and by the way, I don't think it is going to look much like your vision of it.

Peter Royle

I would like to hear from anyone who has had problems with their bank account showing someone has used their PIN code and card, and what the bank has done about it (Needling over PINs, Letters blog, letters.computing.co.uk).

For example, if someone has your PIN code and stole your card, do you get your money back? How many occurrences have there been? Every day I see people entering their PIN number in shops and I can easily see what they have entered.

One might think that banks had introduced chip-and-PIN merely so they can refuse all refunds on disputed transactions because they can always say: "How did they know your PIN?"

Getting someone's PIN is fairly easy from what I have seen in shops and garage. Do banks publish any numbers on debit card fraud?

Steve, submitted on the web

Finally, there is some focus on what we get out of the police force, rather than the money we can pour in (Police IT needs strong central co-ordination).

Sir Ronnie Flanagan correctly identifies one of the inhibitors to effective policing: over the years - 43 police forces have developed their own IT infrastructures, and while these work locally, they simply do not exchange information seamlessly for effective national policing.

What happens next will be interesting. The police IT leaders need to tread carefully. Ripping out existing technology and replacing it with shiny new equipment simply does not work Ð just look at the NHS's IT disasters or the £2bn wasted on government IT in the last seven years.

Instead, we need to see a systematic and gradual modernisation programme, which does not throw away the years invested in current technology.

It is essential to protect this investment and build on it rather than trying to start again. Decades of intelligence and proven practice reside in these disparate infrastructures. Reuse of technology assets and non-disruptive integration between systems will enable our police service to revitalise its IT systems efficiently.

Jim Close
Software AG UK

Automating back- and front-office systems is one thing. But creating an infrastructure and a series of massive and interlinked databases to facilitate a tradeable market in healthcare among the polyclinics perhaps run by profit-driven companies - how many choices of GP do you want, for example - is another (Get the balance right for NHS IT, Editor's diary, editor.computing.co.uk).

Perhaps deciding to have your emergency or acute treatment in a different part of the country, at a cost that is effectively open-ended, has little or nothing to do with improving your care as a patient.

Dominic Pinto

It seems ridiculous that people with higher levels of electro-sensitivity should have to be relocated to somewhere with a lower WiFi field (Experts raise health concerns over WiFi).

Surely this is some form of discrimination? Segregating people based on some health-related aspect? Not enough research was done into the health risks before we were bombarded with WiFi. Now a lot of us have convenience at the cost of our health.

G Jones

The IT shortage is a joke (IT skills shortage reaches highest level in 10 years).

If the demand is that high why do IT staff get such low wages? I have a Masters degree, two years of good IT experience and I am looking for a job because I get paid only £20,000. A bus driver - who does not need the same education - earns much more than me.

Check Lothian Buses web site: average salaries for bus drivers are above £24,000.

Johnny, submitted on the web

At last, a balanced view on the NHS National Programme rather than rantings about its shortcomings (Get the balance right for NHS IT, Editor's diary, editor.computing.co.uk).

Having correctly stated the scale of the problem - 10, 20 or 30 years of changes - I think it is remarkable that the decisions taken in modernisation are happening at all. It is a huge problem.

Rather than criticising the approach, perhaps an un-British position could be taken: applaud the changes when they materialise. Applaud the staff in the NHS who are making it happen.

We will all benefit from these wide-reaching changes. In the future the last thing we will want to know when having an operation is that the National Programme should have been delivered better or cheaper.

Patrick O'Brien

More than two months after the initial child benefit data fiasco, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) is only able to accept self-decrypting files, which rather defeats the object.

I am trying to send a Statutory Return to HMRC which contains details including name, address, postcode, date of birth, place of birth and National Insurance number - great for identity theft or getting hold of a birth certificate, which then also provides your mother's maiden name.

The Information Commissioner recently issued Marks & Spencer with an Enforcement Notice giving the
retailer until 1 April 2008 - only two months - to complete encryption of all its laptops (M&S breached Data Protection Act).

Why does the commissioner not give HMRC 60 days' notice as well?

Keith Appleyard

I am a parent of a child at a well-regarded north London state sixth form. There have been a number of occasions on which teachers have failed to turn up without notifying students at all, who end up hanging about for a bit and then drifting off.

I suggested that students be notified of absent teachers by SMS text message (Education, education, computers, Intellect blog, intellect.computing.co.uk). This suggestion was brushed aside with the comment that I appeared to have a lot of faith in technology. I think real-time feedback to parents and students is a long way away.

North London parent submitted on the web

Tom Young's article (Managers' IT key to effectiveness) is highly relevant to a core problem in business IT, and it is in contrast to Computing's 24 January editorial (Business must see IT as everyday task).

We must first structure the problem, and I see it as being all about people and IT. The initial problem is that people lack relevant information, have limited opportunity for information and knowledge sharing, are kept in pigeonholes, are penalised for initiative, and are greatly underused.

Second, IT itself is greatly under-used. Consequently, there is limited synergy between people and IT in business organisations. So, what to do about it? Be pessimistic and cynical, or optimistic and positive?

The place to start could well be to follow the philosophy presented in your editorial: start with appropriate education for senior people and management.

Dr C James Bacon

I agree with these women (Women feel a career in IT is "boring" and "uninspiring").IT is totally dry and boring. Unfortunately, I have done it for years and am in a quest to get out. It is neither art nor science, nor mathematics. It lacks the fascination and substance of those.

Setting up an Oracle database for someone else to store their rubbish has exactly the same excitement as mopping a floor and cleaning up a kitchen.

John Ross

I am a female IT manager working in the publishing industry. I have four women in my team and 12 men. It is a great team but I wish that when I am recruiting, more women would apply for the jobs (Should I stay or should I go? Letters blog, letters.computing.co.uk).

Women bring a different set of interpersonal skills into the team and it is good to have that mix. Typically no women apply for the jobs that I advertise. If you think you have the skills, or the potential, you should go for it. You do not necessarily need an MSc.

By the way, I am also on the upper side of 40.

Julie Rogers

I understand there are many claims that compulsory identity cards are effectively a universal panacea - an answer to virtually all the evils in the world - among which is the prevention and solution of crime (Card times, Letters blog, letters.computing.co.uk). The reality is far from this Utopian view of the world.

May I draw your readers' attention to an authoritative source, and highlight a rather pertinent quote? It suggests that compulsory ID cards and their underlying databases show no correlation with low crime - whether prevented or solved:

"The crime rate in Belgium is in the high range of industrialised countries. According to the United Nations' sixth annual survey on crime, crime recorded in police statistics showed the crime rate for the grand total of recorded crimes in Belgium to be 8,034.93 per 100,000 inhabitants in 1997. This compares with 1,506.5 for Japan - a country with a low crime rate - and 9,622.1 for the US - a country with high crime rate."

This is taken from Crime and Society, a comparative criminology tour of the world by  Dr Robert Winslow of San Diego State University. For more details click here.

Dominic Pinto

Bill from Belgium is missing the point (Card times, Letters blog, letters.computing.co.uk).

If we all lived in Belgium we would probably not have a problem with ID cards. However, we live in the UK.
The UK is a place where the government does not have a great record for either delivering complex IT projects on time or on budget, or ensuring that personal data is kept secure.

Keith Lyall

Perhaps in Belgium the government is a bit more careful with its citizens'  personal data (Card times, Letters blog, letters.computing.co.uk).

The UK government seems to keep leaving our sensitive data lying around in all sorts of unsuitable places.

Gordon Ansell

I work for an IT consultancy specialising in the investment banking industry and we are trying to formulate a strategy around the impact of offshore outsourcing (Stemming the tidal effects of offshoring, Sandra Smith's blog, sandrasmith.computing.co.uk).

We have offices in the UK, China, the US and the Philippines, and we use a successful near-shore/far-shore mix to provide a cost-efficient solution with the expected quality. I completely agree that this model will work for the near future but is not sustainable long term, and we will continue to struggle to find near-shore people with the relevant skills.

Some things we are considering include partnering with other companies to collaborate and train people in technical/business skills; working with universities to design courses around how we see the industry moving; and investing in near-shore technical roles even though this will hit the margin in the short term.

The alternative is that wages will rise as there will be fewer high-end technical consultants to choose from. This will make the contract market expand and we will lose good people to it.

Dominic Murphy

There is a policy to force encryption on government communications (Whitehall looks to encryption).

At the same time a number of police forces are putting out tenders for body-worn video camera/recorders for police officers. One of the requirements - which is perhaps not particularly intelligent - is that the video recorded must be capable of being played on any PC with Windows Media Player.

That provides an open opportunity for anyone with a media card or USB drive to obtain a video made by one of these body-worn units and easily play it. How does this fit in the encryption scare?

Lee Tracey

I would put a pre-condition on "IT as an everyday task"  by saying that every single manager and executive needs to become business-IT savvy (Business must see IT as everyday task).

I am not talking about point-and-click skills, which Bill Gates says everyone should have, but the kind of wisdom that comes from a big-picture, integrated view of business and IT.

What would follow from being business-IT savvy would be the ability and confidence to see IT as an everyday task. It is hard to have a situation where "there are no IT decisions, only business decisions" when executives may not have the necessary confidence to embrace the IT content, because of an absence of IT knowledge.

A second pre-condition to seeing IT as an everyday task is the need for new mental models. For example, information resources (IR) instead of information technology.

The IT paradigm leaves us with the historical non-business or even anti-business view. It should be obvious instead that the result of everything we do is information, and not only that, but information which gives net value to/for the client/user and the business, especially with information overload becoming an increasing issue.

Surely this is something that business managers and IT could agree on - seeing IR as an everyday task.

Dr C James Bacon

I welcome the news that employers and universities have finally joined forces to tackle the UK's technology skills shortage and develop a more knowledgeable and ultimately more competitive workforce (Masters to plug the skills gap).

This, coupled with Gordon Brown's plans to expand apprenticeships, is an encouraging start, but it will take time for us to reap the rewards.

To make sure we do not lose our ability to compete in the global marketplace, we must engage young people early on in their career choices while in the interim embracing skilled migration to use the global talent pool.

Research by Harvey Nash Group showed that one in 10 young workers claim to have received no careers advice while in full-time education, and of those who did, 48 per cent found it confusing and unhelpful. These figures highlight the dedication needed to shape the future of our home-grown talent.

Andy Bookless

It would seem to me that according to Accenture and your article (Rise in consumer technology creates tough choice for CIOs), the chief information officer (CIO) has morphed into the chief technology officer (CTO), thereby taking us back a good few years.

As this is in par with my role in the organisation for which I work, for me the distinction is clear. The CIO ought not to be involved with technology or customers' desires. Any CIO worth their salt is not interested in which technology is being used.

It is the confidentiality, integrity and availability that should be of concern to a CIO. In the past, before information theft was such a big concern and therefore did not require excessive attention, the IT director would call the shots over information security.

Because of the extent to which criminals will now go to steal information, the legislation that has grown as a consequence, and the impact of a major breach, it requires the full attention of a specialist, not a jack of all trades.

I hope that what is being promoted in your article is limited to a handful of organisations and does not become the norm.

It is a difficult enough task as it is; add the IT manager's role into it and surely the job will be too big to handle.

David McAdam

I could not agree more (Facebook is not all it was cracked up to be).

Fast forward five years from now and all the most successful networks will either have a common cause, such as microfinance for the poor, or be a utility that helps you achieve a goal over and above just "hanging out" and self-publishing.

Recent scientific studies suggest that sustainable networks - those that do not degrade - are associated with "low clustering". In other words, diversity in groups is far more successful than density - so networks with thousands of small groups rather than dozens of big groups are the most robust.
Facebook is a highly dense cluster. A word to the wise: decentralise - small pieces, loosely joined.

Leon Benjamin

There is already a national scheme that provides modular study leading to a Masters degree for people in employment (Masters to plug the skills gap).

You can specialise in a range of areas in computing and IT, from programming through to project management. To find out more about this scheme, go to www.tinyurl.com/2vqgeq for the relevant page on the Open University web site.

Roger Moore
The Open University

I agree that automation technologies will steadily necessitate a different skills set and training regime for staff (Virtually skilled), but it is important to realise that this training can no longer be focused merely on IT processes. If IT and IT staff are to become genuinely aligned to business requirements, this needs to be replicated in training.

Gaining a better understanding of business outcomes can be extremely rewarding, enabling IT professionals to see how their role contributes to the business as a whole.

To a large extent, this is reflected in the most recent version of the IT infrastructure library (ITIL V3). Where ITIL version 2 focused more on processes, ITIL V3 addresses issues relating to service design and strategy. As the everyday processes of support become gradually managed by technology, IT departments will have greater capacity to focus on innovation and development for the business.

With this capacity and with more business-focused skills, IT has the opportunity to shift its perception as a support or cost centre to a profit centre in the eyes of the boardroom.

Finbarr Callan

On the security of Barclays' PINsentry home banking security device, some of your correspondents are missing the point (Safety not in PIN numbers, Letters blog, letters.computing.co.uk).

If someone is looking over your shoulder as you enter your PIN in a store or garage, they could later lift your wallet and have three guesses at your PIN without needing any special equipment and in complete privacy. For example, they could pretend to be fiddling with their mobile phone while using its camera to record your key presses as you enter your PIN.

Banks will not give you a refund if someone uses your PIN with your card because they insist that no one knows your PIN except you.

The PIN is the only key to your bank account and Barclays has just distributed thousands of portable, free devices that allow anyone to have three attempts at cracking a PIN with no penalty for trying, other than locking the card after three unsuccessful attempts.

The point was that they had no need to display a "PIN correct" message at all. In doing so they have created a big security hole.

Steve, submitted on the web

It was encouraging to read such a positive article (How to empower the techies) recognising the value of coaching in IT.

As well as the valuable uses outlined in the article, such as change leadership and developing skills and confidence in others, there can be considerable benefits to the overall climate of the workplace if coaching is adopted as a prominent leadership style.

In research by the psychologist Daniel Goleman on situational leadership styles, he identified that the coaching style is one of the most effective in creating a positive work climate.

He encouraged leaders to develop a broad repertoire of skills and to recognise the problems with the overuse of any one particular style, coaching included.

In our experience leaders, particularly those in technically-based environments, who use the coaching style skilfully can reap great rewards by creating strong relationships with partner organisations as well as colleagues.

The development of relationships that encourage sharing of objectives and learning creates mutually respectful, open and trusting relationships that can lead to productive long-term business partnerships.
Investment in coaching training for managers can provide considerable benefits all round where the prevailing culture values and rewards this behaviour.

Anne Cuthbertson, CPCR