Techology Problems Sometimes Become Business Problems Through Politics

Post date: Oct 29, 2012 4:25:26 PM

In the last entry I talked a little bit about how unaddressed technology problems can some times become business problems. Another interesting phenomenon is when technology problems become political problems and then become business problems again.

Any problem can be made into a political problem. The easiest ways to do this are to start looking for blame as to whose "fault" the technology problem. One of the other ways is to get the politicians involved to create regulations to solve the technical problems that have not been addressed. This second method of mapping a technical problem to a political problem is the subject of this entry. It should be noted that conforming to the new legal or regulator requirements becomes a business problem that can be solved by technology. The problem has now come full circle!

Some good examples of the phenomenon of nomial technolgy problems becoming regulated to get the business to solve that are the HIPPA (Healtcare Information Privacy and Portability Agent ) and Sarbanes-Oxley. Both of these can be viewed as political and regulator actions necessary to get business to solve technology problems.

In the case of HIPPA, healthcare providers and others were not investing the technology dollars to assure the privacy of patient data nor to provide interoperable systems to share data. Both of these are technology problems. The businesses failed to addresses these technology problems and did not view them as "business" problems to be solved. This unaddressed technology problem initiated a political process and regulations.

The political process did not and really can not solve the technology problem. Instead these regulations forced organizations to solve the technology problem or face the regulators.

As more and more business are driven by technology it must realized that the concerns, and proper care and feeding of the technology becomes a business requirement in and of itself. The SARBOX regulations and process are all about making sure and signing off on the fact that your business critical technologies and processes have the proper care and feeding.

For the near future I suspect that is technology as a business requirement will be a theme.