Saturday, November 12, 2011
Secrecy
I noticed over breakfast a bit in the DT which said that some judge had ruled that the Minister of Health & Wellbeing must release the risk register associated with the privatisation of the health service, or some important part of that operation. Now while I do not much care for this privatisation, I do not much care either for judges meddling in this way.
I first came across risk registers when conducting the Gateway reviews invented for the government by Sir Peter Gershon KBE. These reviews came with a large pack of materials to guide both reviewers and reviewees and a risk register was one of the many things that all good projects were supposed to have. It was not enough just to have one of these things. It had to be of a volume commensurate with the size and nature of the project and it had to be active. Knocking up something suitable the day before the reviewers turned up was probably more work than having a real one.
Now it may well be that such registers are apt to rapidly degenerate into a mechanical box ticking exercise, but the underlying idea is sound enough. People running projects should think about the things which might blow them off course. Or down to the bottom of the sea. There are always threats to the success of a project and they do not get any smaller by brushing them under the carpet or by pretending that they don't exist. You must face up to them and take appropriate avoiding or mitigating action. Blah, blah. What I am not sure about is whether the combination of the great British public and the great British media are likely to be able to conduct a sensible debate about a risk register. The whole idea is to include every conceivable risk. If the probability is low but the impact is high you include it. You might include all kinds of juicy tittle-tattle about how this particular risk came to grow to its presently elephantine proportions. But would you include all this stuff if you thought you were going to have to have some kind of a debate with the Sun? Debates which are apt to absorb huge amounts of management time. What about if the threat in question was a state secret?
Not an issue for the sort of projects that I was involved in because the Sun couldn't care less. But it might smell stories in a more serious project. And I think it ought to be up to the Minister. If he is content to release the actual risk register - perhaps in its native Excel - all well and good. But if he deems it appropriate to release a management summary that is OK too and he has to take whatever flak he might attract for being economical with the truth. I am not at all sure that it helps to have judges swinging into the fray. Let our MPs earn their keep if something is going wrong; this kind of meddling is fully part of their job description.
On a related note, the DT also tells me that the mobile phone hacking scandal continues to grow like topsy and looks to be consuming far more public resources - in particular police resources - than the whole paltry matter is worth. Celebrities have been served notice that bad people might get to hear their telephone conversations, so let them take mitigating action if this is a cause for concern to them and leave the rest of us to get on with our lives. Or to get on with providing the public services we really do need.
The government no doubt believes that market forces will encourage mobile phone operators to make their operations more secure and I believe that they may well be right on this occasion.
Moving onto today's DT, we have an interesting juxtaposition of stories, pointing up our sometimes odd attitudes to animals. On one page we have a large picture of a shark eating a seal alive. We are told that the photographer got an incredible adrenalin rush when he snapped it. Worth every one of the large numbers of pennies it took to be at the right place at the right time. On the next page we have a rather smaller picture of a young man swinging a cat around by its tail, a cat which does not appear to be any the worse for what is described as appalling cruelty. The RSPCA is busy on the second case. Perhaps Rowan Williams should take on the first?
I first came across risk registers when conducting the Gateway reviews invented for the government by Sir Peter Gershon KBE. These reviews came with a large pack of materials to guide both reviewers and reviewees and a risk register was one of the many things that all good projects were supposed to have. It was not enough just to have one of these things. It had to be of a volume commensurate with the size and nature of the project and it had to be active. Knocking up something suitable the day before the reviewers turned up was probably more work than having a real one.
Now it may well be that such registers are apt to rapidly degenerate into a mechanical box ticking exercise, but the underlying idea is sound enough. People running projects should think about the things which might blow them off course. Or down to the bottom of the sea. There are always threats to the success of a project and they do not get any smaller by brushing them under the carpet or by pretending that they don't exist. You must face up to them and take appropriate avoiding or mitigating action. Blah, blah. What I am not sure about is whether the combination of the great British public and the great British media are likely to be able to conduct a sensible debate about a risk register. The whole idea is to include every conceivable risk. If the probability is low but the impact is high you include it. You might include all kinds of juicy tittle-tattle about how this particular risk came to grow to its presently elephantine proportions. But would you include all this stuff if you thought you were going to have to have some kind of a debate with the Sun? Debates which are apt to absorb huge amounts of management time. What about if the threat in question was a state secret?
Not an issue for the sort of projects that I was involved in because the Sun couldn't care less. But it might smell stories in a more serious project. And I think it ought to be up to the Minister. If he is content to release the actual risk register - perhaps in its native Excel - all well and good. But if he deems it appropriate to release a management summary that is OK too and he has to take whatever flak he might attract for being economical with the truth. I am not at all sure that it helps to have judges swinging into the fray. Let our MPs earn their keep if something is going wrong; this kind of meddling is fully part of their job description.
On a related note, the DT also tells me that the mobile phone hacking scandal continues to grow like topsy and looks to be consuming far more public resources - in particular police resources - than the whole paltry matter is worth. Celebrities have been served notice that bad people might get to hear their telephone conversations, so let them take mitigating action if this is a cause for concern to them and leave the rest of us to get on with our lives. Or to get on with providing the public services we really do need.
The government no doubt believes that market forces will encourage mobile phone operators to make their operations more secure and I believe that they may well be right on this occasion.
Moving onto today's DT, we have an interesting juxtaposition of stories, pointing up our sometimes odd attitudes to animals. On one page we have a large picture of a shark eating a seal alive. We are told that the photographer got an incredible adrenalin rush when he snapped it. Worth every one of the large numbers of pennies it took to be at the right place at the right time. On the next page we have a rather smaller picture of a young man swinging a cat around by its tail, a cat which does not appear to be any the worse for what is described as appalling cruelty. The RSPCA is busy on the second case. Perhaps Rowan Williams should take on the first?
# posted by Jim @ 6:40 AM 
