Public Servant Lifestyle

The use of employees personal IT kit and unauthorised downloading is causing mayhem for workplace IT management, says a new report.

MP3 players and other personal kit is causing mayhem for workplace IT - with music and other 'downloading' in the office hampering, slowing and endangering organisational networks.

Staff introducing gadgets such as MP3 players and smart phones to their office networks to download music, video and other personal content over the web are putting increasing pressure on organisations information technology (IT) systems. Some 60% of 100 IT directors polled in a survey listed the trend for using gadgets such as iPods at work as one of the issues which increases the number of calls to IT service desks.

With 36% of UK internet users downloading music and 12% downloading movies, it is inevitable that the practice will start to cause problems at work. Graham Ridgway, CEO of IT service management specialist, Touchpaper, which commissioned the research, part of a comprehensive study of the modern IT support department, explains: “MP3 players and other gadgets, which encourage people to download music or video files onto a PC or a corporate network, can eat up data storage space and slow down the network, so it’s no wonder IT directors, are complaining. A huge 48% of IT directors also expressed concerns about home workers letting friends and family tamper with their lap tops – so maybe ‘little Johnny’ is using mum or dad’s work laptop for music downloads.”

Go-Slow Network

The use of MP3s at work is among five key issues (below) which IT directors claim exacerbate the volume of IT support queries. A number of these, such as users not following guidelines provided by the IT department, point the finger of blame at the workers themselves. So it is ironic that 86%of IT directors feel end users are now more demanding of IT services and 59% are resigned to that fact that end users will always be dissatisfied when there is an IT problem.

Issues which exacerbate the number of IT service desk queries:

Viruses and security breaches

Users introducing unauthorised devices - such as MP3 players, 'smart' phones, lap top computers, CD ROM and floppy discs from outside the organisation etc...onto the corporate network

Users not following guidelines provided by the IT department

Users’ own lack of basic IT skills

Users trying to fix problems themselves rather than draw attention to difficulties (and their use of outside IT kit), leading to greater problems.

While managing IT service and support is getting harder, the research found that there is not a great impetus to improve things, with 62% of IT directors complaining that senior management fails to recognise the importance of IT service and support and 52% highlighting a lack of budgets and resources.

Managing IT

Graham Ridgway from Touchpaper, which provides software for managing IT service departments, said, “Our study highlights the increasing pressure on IT service departments today with issues such as viruses, gadgets and people tinkering with their computers adding to the problems. But organisations have got to find ways to better manage and reduce the load on the service management team if they are going to get the most productive use of company IT systems. Examples include providing better self service software tools and access to knowledge based systems so that users are more empowered to resolve simple IT issues themselves.”

The Touchpaper study consisted of three separate surveys; an independent survey of 100 IT directors conducted by research company, Vanson Bourne; an independent online survey of 1000 adults using IPSOS UK’s i:Omnibus service; and an online survey of 48 helpdesk support staff.

More information available in Work Environment, Education & Training, Gifts, Home Electric, Home Computing