Times of change

A question I have often heard by skeptical users of electronic services within organizations was: “What is the use of Intranet?” Honestly, more than once, the question included words that would deserve that classic “beep” in TV programs. “It is like the Internet, but within the office” someone answered; “the web access to internal systems”, said another one; “the internal communication channel to share knowledge”, responded a third one. In the sites that I know it was generally some of the two first answers; and I have heard very little about the last one.

The truth is that I have never heard anyone saying: “the Intranet is the site where I go to make my work”. In some sites the Intranet offered access to information such as the internal phone directory for employees and their birthdays, or the connections to access information systems when they had been designed to operate on an Internet browser. In others it included access to the regulation in force, a user manual, documentation about processes and procedures and in some case the internal reproduction of interesting topics, such as our CIAT bulletins, collected from Internet for users who did not have permissions to access them. Some sites included institutional elements such as the mission, vision and strategic goals; or institutional periodic bulletins or, not frequently, Internal Blogs allowing users to think on diverse topics, not always work-related. In some places the site was complemented with self-help areas or pages to share photos of the social events shared at the workplace.

But in those years, I only saw success for Intranet in places where the browser homepage was precisely set to direct the user to the Intranet. And when there was a need to answer a difficult question, requiring specialized knowledge on a complex topic, the answer was always “let’s ask Maria or Juan or Mr. So and So. Ironically, at the times when we learned to use google for our own name, I never heard anybody saying: “Let’s look for it on the Intranet”. It is also ironic that when Wikipedia has so many articles that it is boring to list them, we have never heard any colleague saying “this institutional knowledge should be shared on the Intranet”.

Today, the work patterns have changed and continue changing. Within what we could consider closed institutional spaces, management tools and practices specifically oriented to collaborate and share knowledge have been included.  Some examples:

• Electronic mail does not need presentation, but have you noticed how often the CC field and the “Answer all” button are used for “informing everyone”;
• Storage of corporate documents, with Wikis and all those facilities of SharePoint or Knowledge tree;
• Micro blogging in which not only the followers find out about what someone does and thinks and, sometimes they even receive instructions through Yammer, jive or Twitter;

• Instantaneous messages with online identification, that not only makes the electronic mail look slow, but have so many flavors that they are confusing (What’s App…etc);
• Tools to share files and to collaborate online such as Google Drive, Dropbox, or the cloud version of Office, that are used not only to share files and to edit common documents among various users, but also to synchronize files between the different devices, and thus to go from the tablet to the computer or the smart telephone.

The day when it becomes impossible to work without computer has arrived. Today, for most of us, the workspace includes a connected computer, the capacity to synchronize with our movable devices, the capacity to look for information in several places, to interact online with colleagues, clients, competitors; the certainty of cloud support for a presentation in the cloud, or if I can read something here and there, and if it is urgent, even by phone. We went from an Intranet more announced than used to a work environment very connected and very digital.

Many technological areas within large organizations certainly live a nightmare; the tightly controlled access to Intranet within the institutions has been replaced by tons of emails (not always corporative), chat messages that include from birthday greetings to password keys for systems access, shared files in multiple services, comments on social networks, etc. Restrict the access by using firewalls? Of course, but what to do when the boss wants his mail on his new telephone? When somebody has an unlimited data plan on the telephone allowing to have access from the office to any site and write a Tweet, post a photo in Instagram or a video in Vine that can become viral and to quickly favor or harm the reputation of an organization?

Is the question different within the tax administrations? A simple search to the text of the Manual of Tax Administration (1) shows us that the word Internet appears 55 times in 49 pages. The word Intranet appears 3 times. But, do we internally use Yammer, WhatsApp, Dropbox or some tool for instantaneous messages?  If the answer is no, ask yourself “are you sure? ¿and what about the smart phones and the 3G connection tablets? And what about that other personal email in case the file is too big or when the file extension does not go through?

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