This is the blog of Ant Miller, senior research manager and dilettante geek at large at the BBC.
I wail moan and cuss about the challenges and fun to be found here.
These are my personal opinions, and not those of my employer. Or anyone else here for that matter.

Monday, October 31, 2005

Breaking barriers.

I realised the other day that the IT service we (the archives) get is not the same as other departments get. I knew about the integrated telephony and IT service the HR had sorted a few years ago- this is very handy. For instance if you have a telephony application that depends on a desk top client, a joined up service for your desktop and phones is good sensible stuff. And when only one company is delivering both you have to wonder what sort of idiocy kicked in when we got our contract signed. Ah well I thought, next time we'll get it right.

Then I found out about the New Media set up- Siemens, the new owner of our old IT crew, have subcontracted the desktop support to an outfit called Lapworths. And they will build anything you like. This is rather like running a steam train service, and finding out another part of your steam train organisation is allowed to use jet aircraft.

Often I find aditional barriers to doing my job, and I have to take these barriers onboard, and work with them, and learn to bend and adjust my aims. And then, every so often I fond out that someone elsewhere in the organisation has seen these rules for the abitrary whimsical nonsense they are, screwed them up, and binned them.

I shall do likewise.