Now the news comes out – Obama’s staff move into the White House offices and discover old, tired and broken technology. This along with restrictive policies which appear to be based on 1970’s IT thinking are hampering his teams ability to do their job. They sound like web savvy workers slamming into the wall of antique technology. My god – most of them use MACs and Blackberrys. Sorry – not allowed at the White house. “Here’s a PC running Windows 2K . . . the last person using it didn’t complain, so what’s the problem?” I’m sure they’ll work through it. Their boss has managed to hang on to his Blackberry or something like it (rumour has it a $3,500.00 General Dynamics highly secure PDA) so I’m sure he’ll sort things out for them.

I can’t help but wonder that this scenario is being played out in other enterprises without the high profile the White House has. Gen Y tech savvy workers leave school and go to work and discover their employer’s idea of high-tech is four year old PCs running MS-Office and Outlook email. They’ll find a way around it but may put their jobs in jeopardy by ‘breaking the rules’. My advice? Break the rules – be careful – be productive – but break through to the 21st Century. It’ll pay off in the long run.

Dean