Information Technology in Public Buildings

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The general public is way, way ahead of the Information Technology (IT)  departments of our government and school systems. (Home networks and the amazing growth of the Internet.htm) Also See (Home Wireless Security)

As a public service most, if not all public buildings should have wireless access.  We've written about this before. The progress is painfully slow.  The present and past excuse has been security.  That is a weak argument.  The wireless network for public access should have no connection except by the world wide web with the servers that the general public uses in public buildings.  You can keep them separate.

Why do we need this access?  The reason is simple.  We go to meetings in public buildings and we'd like to take notes on our laptop.

When a person goes on the road for a trip of any kind, they stay in hotels and motels that have high speed internet connections. They have laptops and increasingly more sophisticated phones.  The kids are way ahead of IT.

No Internet means they get no business. People won't frequent hotels without World Wide Web access.  Let's take a Best Western Hotel for instance.  You can hook right up to the Internet in most of these hotels.  Is there any danger to the Best Western Corporate Structure?  No!  They are have separate networks and these have nothing to do with each other.

So why has it not been done in our public buildings for us to use?  The best guess is that the IT departments put it way low on their priority list.  It's not  important to them and they like to control access and the keys to technology in their organizations.  The dirty little secret is that the people they are serving are no longer helpless and the Internet is an important part of the infrastructure of our lives.  The IT people get bad reputations as being unresponsive, obstructive and out of touch.

These same public buildings hope to rent people conference rooms for meetings .... hmmmm.

The next excuse for IT is that they want to "do it right".  That implies that others do it wrong.   There is some IT head someplace that dictates what can be done and when. It implies that you have to pay big bucks to do it.  It implies that you don't know what you're doing.  It's just not true.  It's well known how to do it and it's inexpensive.

The last excuse says that we have to wait to get the best deal and the best technology.  That's a false argument too!  It's not expensive to have a wireless hub or hubs in public buildings.  You can go online and buy them, go to Staples and buy them or go to your local Computer Store and buy  them.  If they fail, go get another. They are cheap.  If they have trouble reaching all  parts of the buildings, get a repeater.

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21/03/2009 01:54 PM

Ah, but these big buildings have all kinds of tougher problems than your home, don't they? That's not true either.  If a signal is weak, repeat it with a plug in device.

Ok, but the central IT staff would constantly be on call for glitches.  That's not true either.  The staff out at the public building can handle wireless easily. There are people in each remote spot, who have wireless at home. Just a bit of training or no training for the experienced home user, would do

The other day we were in a public building trying to transfer a file to a staff member.  He  knows what he's doing.  His computer would not read the disk, so we tried another.  It was an old machine... way out of date and would not read it either. So much for IT keeping their machines in tip top shape.

We tried a third machine that is in the same public building.  It could read the file, but its connection to the Internet and Mail was blocked by the remote IT organization.  Now moving to a fourth machine in the lobby, we managed log  on to it, read the CD and mail it to the original person that it was intended for in the first place. That person was about 50 feet away.  He uses a public Internet mail connection, so we could get it to him.  Does that seem the  most secure way of doing things or the most direct? 

It they would have had wireless, I could have taken my notebook and mailed it to the receiver's public account and he could have downloaded it and used it as  intended.  Let the IT guys handle the security issue of file transfers over the Internet.... good luck.  So all the security worries are not valid.  They allow general access to the Internet and yet not a separate secure wireless for public use for meetings and other purposes.  Notice we did not mention the staff that works at the building.

Somebody should tell these IT organizations that they really don't control the Internet.  People find ways to do things in an awkward manner none the less.  IT can cripple an organizations in the field.  The IT folks used to be able to get away with these charades since they had mainframes and big data processing organizations, but that's long past.  The general public is too smart and the people who work in the field are too used to getting the latest technology and using it in their home, in coffee houses and on the road.

Bruce Telecom offers  most all that is needed for the Public Buildings.  You can get the rest easily.  The World Wide Web is part of the Infrastructure, just like the roads, but more valuable and easier to maintain in the long run.

It dawned on me that we've been talking about this to the government agencies in the County for 1/4 of the life of the Internet.  The Internet is 20 years old.

No modern company would be that far behind their customers needs, why has it taken so long here in Bruce County?