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  Monday, December 16, 2002


Sorry to steal this story from Matt, but I don't think he was tough enough on this issue. I originally posted this as a comment, but damn it, I should be writing content for my own website.

Today's Daily Bulletin reveals that there was some doubt whether the Quest student information system was going to be in operation over the Christmas holidays. Apparently, "the answer is only now definite"

"Quest service will remain available," says a memo from the registrar's office, "subject to unexpected system outages."

Yeah, sounds like a definite maybe to me. So, the system *will* be available ... unless of course it's not. Imagine if you were the CEO of Amazon.com and a memo crosses your desk saying "The Amazon.com website will be available this holiday season unless it unexpectedly *wink* *wink* fails while we are all away on vacation." In that case, the person responsible would be fired because it is not acceptable for a mission critical computer system to fail.

Now the difference in UW's case is that nobody cares whether the customer (of course I'm talking about you the student) is served during the holidays. In fact nobody really cares at any time of the year because the right incentives are not in place. In the corporate world, if the customer is not satisfied, she will go spend her money at the competition and the disfunctional company's will go out of business. A company's executive/shareholders will not allow this to happen because this eventuality does not make them richer. That is the incentive. At UW, nobody but the student minds if the customer is not able to check their marks, or add/drop courses, or access their tuition statement because the system is down. After all, what can the students do? Switch schools? UW's administration is not accountable to the students (or the taxpayer, if you want to consider him the stakeholder), and that is the fundamental problem.

I used to think that if I were UW's president, I would introduce accountability by firing one Quest employee every time there is a fuck up. But now I realize that the president doesn't feel accountable to anyone either, so why shouldn't he just sit back and enjoy his fat paycheck and PeopleSoft kickbacks while the suposedly great Math/Engineering school disgraces itself with IT debacles time and time again?

The only real solution which installs the correct incentives is to have the entire university administration work for and be accountable to the student body's elected representatives. Did the administration fuck up another simple IT project? Then whoever's in charge will have to come crawling to the Feds present to explain why he should be allowed to keep his job. Students will elect someone who will keep the university employees responsive to THEIR needs.

Recently an e-mail survey asked how our student government could get people to care about Feds elections. I say, give our representatives some real power to improve student's customer experience at the university by putting people with the right incentives in charge.
3:42:04 PM     comment []



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