Keep Updated For an emailed summary of the responses to this column, sign up for the Sound Off newsletter today. I just returned from the CIO Perspectives conference in Boca Raton, where I had a long conversation with several CIOs about the cultural wars that take place between the IS staff and the rest of the organization. Realizing that the relationship problems between the IS department and its users are still fairly widespread, I ve decided to run a column that appeared on Sound Off over a year ago. Sadly, its relevance, seems to live on.
Most corporate users hate their IS staff.
While a certain amount of mudslinging takes place among all departments in most organizations, the pile at the door of Information Systems is usually pretty high. We get constant calls about problems that we know for a fact we ve explained to users time and time again, says Greg Merideth, Director of MIS at Technology and Business Integrators, an IT consulting firm. Everyone wants to use their computers, but nobody is willing to learn how. Merideth and his team have decided that after a certain age, users are simply incapable of grasping the basic concepts of computer operations. Anyone over 46 we forget about, he says.