Sloppy and shoddy practices, questionable conduct, failing to provide information. No, this isn’t another post about ACS:Law. Bear these phrases in mind as we take a look at karma visiting a US based legal firm and paying them back big time.
The internet powered age provides many positives. These same positives can also become major pitfalls, as the Steven J. Baum foreclosure firm found out last month.
My complaint to the London Assembly got a response from Southeastern’s Mike Gibson. Looks like the usual placatory garbage to me, so here are the relevant bits for your review along with some comments of my own. The spelling mistakes contained herein are straight from the e-mail.
Comments appreciated.
Part 1 looked at the basics you need before starting the DR planning process. Part 2 looked at the process of starting the DR plan and talking with the different parts of your organisation to build a picture. Today I’ll look at the next stage: getting an actual plan document in place.
Remember that this is a general outline of an approach to DR planning. Every business and organisation has its own structure and provision; the ideas and suggestions made in this series should be amended to fit your own business needs and IT provision.
At this stage (ideally) you should have
At this stage no promises have been made to anyone about service levels. You can’t make a commitment until you have gone through the planning process and seen what you can do in reality.
The ideal minimum service level documents should help you draw up a wish list for a basic level of service. Some will be practical and realistic, others will be neither. If you have pages and pages of notes from this exercise try and distil them into something more manageable. This body of work is your bedrock. From this you will be able to work with an IT services company to develop a DR plan.
In what looks like becoming an annual thing, the Local Government Association has published its list of 250 words that it thinks the public sector should not use. I would go further and say they are words that people should never use in a professional environment.
I say it looks like becoming an annual thing because the LGA did something similar around this time last year. I wrote about it here.
For reference/pinning up on noticeboards/leaving on managers’ and executives’ desks the LGA have published the list as a PDF file.
My own thoughts on this list haven’t changed from when I first wrote about it last year.
I’d like to see red and yellow cards in use around offices for when people overdo the jargon. I was discussing this at a hostelry when someone suggested that the punishment for a red card should be a ballgag, locked in place for a few hours.
That would shut the Jockstrap brigade up!
What does this list tell us? Cut out the garbage, cut out the bulldust and use simple English.
It’s not rocket science.
Getting the best value for money is important to everyone. Whether personal or business we all want to get as much as we can from the resources we have. In business it’s called best value. My grandfather called it “not throwing your money away”. Whatever you choose to call it, it’s not rocket science.
Getting the right people and equipment to do a job is important. Again, it’s not rocket science. You wouldn’t use a lawnmower to put nails into walls nor would you hire an aromatherapist to rewire your house. You wouldn’t hire me to provide safety checks at a nuclear reactor. These courses of action would surely lead to things going wrong.
I have some experience in the housing sector as well as some in fire and security. So I was very shocked to read that Southwark Council had used housing officers to provide fire risk assessments on high properties instead of surveyors. It seems the logic was that a one day training course would equip a housing officer to be able to carry out an assessment with the same level of knowledge, skill and expertise of an experienced surveyor.
The words to respond to such a serious lack of Clue and dereliction of standards fail me. Well, polite ones do.
Who seriously thought that a housing officer would be able to do a surveyor’s job? With just one day’s training? I have seen both surveyors and housing officers at work and they are jobs requiring different knowledge and skill sets. Both jobs are challegning enough on their own. The idea of mixing them strikes me as crass stupidity.
The BBC’s article continues with a killer punch:
Every council in London used external consultants or in-house experts to carry out checks, except one – Southwark Council had sent 132 housing officers for one day’s training by the London Fire Brigade [LFB].
These officers were dispatched to carry out detailed checks on aging buildings six storeys or higher.
But the LFB did not think they were qualified for the job.
An email from a top LFB official, leaked to BBC London, said: “Our course information clearly states the course is designed to provide the knowledge to undertake assessments in simple premises.
“The course is not designed to equip attendees to carry out assessments in complex structures where a clear level of expertise is required.”
An official LFB statement confirmed: “London Fire Brigade does not approve housing officers to carry out fire risk assessments.”
Southwark’s cost-cutting cost six lives. Whoever thought up this half-witted idea and whoever approved it should come forward, admit their errors and resign. I hope that the authorities give serious consideration to manslaughter charges being levelled against those people.
As the former station officer who trained me on fire marshalling said “Responsibility goes upwards in matters regarding fire safety.”
I hope those responsible for this incomprehensibly stupid decision are held to account for their catastrophic lack of Clue.