Why are so many organisations resisting the new ways of sharing information being made possible by the internet, rather than embracing the opportunities they offer?
After writing earlier this week about how a council had banned the use of Twitter, I had my own experience of an organisation resisting the inevitable the other day, when a communications manager from an NHS trust asked me to send her a copy of a film we had made that featured her trust. I e-mailed her a link to the film on YouTube.
We posted the film there to make it accessible to the widest possible audience, reduce bandwidth demands on any NHS organisations that wanted to host the film on their sites, and to save on the costs of needing to send out any hard copies. But she couldn’t access it.
“Sorry,” she replied to my e-mail, “ Please can you send it to me in the post? We’re not allowed to watch video content on our computers here.”
What rational reason could her organisation have for not wanting their staff to be able to access video content over the web? I know there are those who would argue that the internet is full of inappropriate, offensive and illegal material. But since the time of the stone tablet and chissel, people have been presenting pornographic, blasphemous and libelous words and images for all to see. That is no reason to ban pen and paper.
The NHS is full of talk of innovation, assessing patients by video-links, using video-conferences to cut its carbon footprint. Lord Darzi, who has to be one of the most filmed health ministers in history, puts out video content for staff on his own blog and the Chief Medical Officer recorded a video introduction for each and every chapter of his recent annual report.
So why are IT policies in some NHS organisations so out of kilter with the prevailing wind on new media? Any why is it public sector organisations, so well placed to benefit from the ability of new media to help increase their accountability and engage with their various constituencies, who seem to be digging their heels so firmly?
Below, if you’re interested, is the offending video on YouTube.
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