How to Safely Enable Enterprise 2.0 Applications in the Workplace - Smart Policy Creation and Enforcement (
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Smart policy creation and enforcement
Enablement is about education, even
when the users seem ahead. The role of IT is that of advisor and
mentor, showing what applications are best at solving the requirements
and how to best use them.
But it's also about raising the
awareness of the associated risks. For that, IT professionals need to
become super users themselves by adopting Enterprise 2.0 wholeheartedly
and without prejudice. Only then can they successfully educate users on
all the risks—even those pertaining to social and reputational
implications.
For governance to be effective, IT
needs to take a major role in the definition of smart policies. But it
is critical not to be the sole owner of these policies, as their
effectiveness and relevance are inversely proportional to the amount of
classic IT thinking. Adoption of Enterprise 2.0 was achieved with lots
of non-IT executive sponsorship and support, which means that IT needs
to avoid obvious mistakes. Examples of users making mistakes using
social media are easy—but ultimately a losing argument because they are
inevitable, just as building relationships is less than perfect.
Nor is it appropriate to pursue
compliance arguments because no legislation exists per se that governs
the use of Enterprise 2.0 applications. Smart policies come down to
regulating the use of the right tool for the job in the right way. For
example, in a heavily regulated environment such as stock trading, the
use of instant messaging (IM) is subject to retention and auditability
rules. IT needs to educate the traders on the implications of each of
the tools, participate in the definition of the use policy and
subsequently implement, monitor and enforce its use. In this example,
that policy could prevent the traders from using Facebook chat but
enable MSN Messenger.
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