Should IT Shops Let Users Manage Their Own PCs? 559
An anonymous reader writes "Is letting users manage their own PCs an IT time-saver or time bomb waiting to happen? 'In this Web 2.0 self-service approach, IT knights employees with the responsibility for their own PC's life cycle. That's right: Workers select, configure, manage, and ultimately support their own systems, choosing the hardware and software they need to best perform their jobs.'" Do any of you do something similar to this in your workplace? Anyone think this is a spectacularly bad idea?
mixed feelings (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:mixed feelings (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:in the perfect world... (Score:5, Interesting)
Could work if the users are technical enough (Score:3, Interesting)
What it isn't going to do is reduce your costs. You might have a very minimal help desk and no specialized staff installing those desktops but that knowledge, time and effort must be spread through the organization. You may also find it harder to get good deals on bulk purchasing depending on how you do it.
Goose versus Gander (Score:5, Interesting)
But of course they had no appreciation of how bad it was to be in the trenches. Their computers performed so much better than the equivalent computers of the end users that they often did not realize how hard it was to get work done on a standard image.
When I reached the point where I ran one of the departments, I kept an old standard-image computer as my main computer and made sure I was always at the end of the upgrade queue. My view was that if something worked well on my computer, it would work on anyone's. And if something didn't work well on my computer, then it meant some of my users were having a bad experience.
So maybe if the IT department would just use the same image and hardware as the end users, they'd know enough to provide a decent standard image, which would solve a lot of user complaints.
Standard practice for Mac users (Score:3, Interesting)
Then another place I worked, the one time the tech support people touched my Mac, they screwed it up...
On the other side, I watched an employee of a Fortune 50 company visit another company's location, where the latter would assign you a specific IP address to use. This guy didn't have enough privileges on his Windows box to configure the IP address on it, and of course his corporate help(less) desk's attitude was that they had to have the machine hooked up to the internet to remotely administer it. Catch-22...
Dilbert's "Mordac, Preventer of Information Services" is unfortunately the way of life for most corporate IT departments. When I'm King, every CIO will provide each employee with a charge number against the CIO's budget, when an IT problem prevents that employee from doing productive work.
dave
I worked as a site tech in one place... (Score:5, Interesting)
And then they teach kids that "crime doesn't pay". Talk about hypocrisy.
Another reason to pick up homeschooling.
Re:in the perfect world... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:in the perfect world... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:in the perfect world... (Score:4, Interesting)
What happens if your employee copies a bunch of MP3's to the PC, since they like to listen to music.
Most employees can probably do that unless it's locked down so tight they don't have access to windows media. Most companies don't do that because they may have their own company programs and training videos they want the employees to view. And then, if the employee has a USB drive you'd better remove the sound card because there are certainly portable apps [portableapps.com] that can just run it from there.
It's called personal responsiblity. I don't think most people are saying let the users go wild and install any software they want. But if they're dumb enough to install something illegal (MP3s, last time I looked, are not inherently illegal) they should be held responsible. When companies are proscuted is when BSA comes in and finds MS Office on EVERYONE's computer and they can only produce a license for one. (I don't think the RIAA would even bother with this as most companies DO restrict usage of P2P applications so no sharing would be available.)
But it does remind me of an BOFH (true story) that had the computers so locked down (Win95 days) you could not access Windows Explorer (aka File Explorer then) to try and keep users from installing or using rogue programs. (In fact I seem to remember, Win95 was actually on a server and his users had to log in to it.) Thank goodness I wasn't under his section. But my section taught department computer classes to get employees up to speed which is how we heard about what he was doing. Of course it made the computers unstable as hell....
Re:in the perfect world... (Score:2, Interesting)
Even in IT shops? I'd hope that, say, software engineers actually understood a thing or two about computers.
On the other hand, even among software engineering staff I've seen people have pretty much no idea about software licenses or even the thought that they should be given some attention. I have to agree that piracy may be a problem at times, although the way I see it, licensing is something that technical stuff should be aware of, and if they aren't, they should be educated.
For the record, I'm the admin of my own work computer, and it would certainly seem a pain to me to have it any other way. We're talking about IT shops here, and generally the programmers I know like to have their tools set up the way they see fit for their work. Especially for debugging you may sometimes need tools that an IT department might not have thought of, or which would be semi-useless without admin privileges on the local machine anyway. Think about packet sniffers, for instance, which may actually be helpful when debugging networking applications.
Maybe you still wouldn't want to allow everyone in the company to manage their own computers. Accountants probably don't need such a diverse set of tools as technical staff. Where to draw the line and how to give the rationale for that is another thing.
Re:in the perfect world... (Score:3, Interesting)
I work in an 'IT shop' (what the hell does that mean anyway) in so far as most of my lusers are savvy, and the remote ones..... anyhow, giving my users the chance to have free reign of what they install would be LETHAL to the business. As it is they can install almost any software they want. Two things apply here: first, if I catch them with pirated software nothing short of 4 chocolate doughnuts will stop me from exacting my retribution. Secondly, if they wish to buy software it has to come through the IT department with the usual justifications required (same applies to hardware).
This method works quite well because the users can't just go and buy the latest (Mac) hardware for their job, but still have admin control over their machines. I control the perimeter as well as the file servers, email systems and backups, users have free control of their machines.
That all seems to be early, but it's disjointed and I haven't had my coffee yet. My point is that letting the users have free reign is fine so long as you have control between you and the money. And yes my users sometimes bring their own personal hardware in, but the company isn't liable for it and they know so.
Re:in the perfect world... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:in the perfect world... (Score:3, Interesting)
That would be something that they would need to explain to their bosses of why they no longer have a network connection. Chances are it wouldn't be permanent, just long enough to make sure the person's superior is made well aware of it and why he was disconnected. You make someone responsible for something, you also have to make them accountable and there should be some kind of punishment.
The other thing it brings up is not only the fact that the person installed unauthorized software on their machine, but this brings up the point of how effective was the person doing their job before if they had the time to dick around with installing said software. Granted some people do put in more hours and take little surfing/smoking breaks during the day. When you get down to it, as long as the work gets done isn't that the point? True, however ponder this, just providing a workstation to someone with the apps does not a good environment make. You need to ensure to do proper risk analysis and decide where you are willing to sit with risk, what do you transfer (i.e. colocating services) and what do you mitigate. You have to assume that network security is not Joe User's forte thus he probably doesn't have that as his topmost priority (otherwise why is he just a user?) so the ramifications of what he does may impact the rest of the users will not naturally be forefront in his mind. You want to take that risk that your job may be forfeit?
In the real world what your suggestion would be the ideal although potentially more work to keep on top of.
Where I work (military) a virus will get your machine disconnected from the network to get a full disk scan and report of what caused said infraction (I had it a couple of weeks ago when I went to a website that kicked the AV to do a false positive), that is standard procedure. This SOP would probably be considered extreme in the private sector but for us it is part and parcel of the job.
Re:I should be so lucky (Score:4, Interesting)
It certainly is. Toolkits have historically been provided by the mechanic (I've been a mechanic for many years), as the selection reflects personal preference. I found the link below by Googling the common phrase in want ads for mechanics "Must have own tools". The reason it is used is that only extreme newbs (or screwups who pawned their gear!) DON'T have their own tools. Mechanics often start their careers by buying tools as students (hence the vendor student discounts on basic sets) and will buy tools throughout their careers. Tool vendors visit shops and sell toolkits to mechanics on payment plans. It is common for tools to be insured because they are so expensive.
http://www.careeroverview.com/auto-mechanic-careers.html [careeroverview.com]
"The most important instruments a technician or mechanic uses are hand tools. Typically workers will use their own tools, and a lot of experienced technicians and mechanics own tool sets worth thousands of dollars."
http://www.calmis.ca.gov/file/occguide/MECHAUTO.HTM [ca.gov] (note the date, the price figures are low)
"Most mechanics have to buy their own tools. As an apprentice, the mechanic
may have to spend up to $500 or more on tools. By the time they reach journey-
level, a mechanic may have spent up to $10,000 on tools. Mechanics with a
specialty like those who work on foreign cars may spend even more on tools
because foreign cars need metric tools."
Re:in the perfect world... (Score:3, Interesting)
Then someone should immediately report me to the BSA. Quite contrary to company policy, and without the express written consent of the IT department, I've installed a whole host of questionable software with no auditable license paper trail.
Unfortunately, I'd have a much harder time doing my job without Vim, Firefox, GIMP, OpenOffice.org, MySQL, and Scribus. I also run a very questionable program called VLC, but that's more of a time waster than a productivity tool.
I sure hope the BSA don't come after me.