The Daily News is brought to you by George Spafford, Principal Consultant at Pepperweed Consulting, LLC.  Pepperweed is nationally recognized as a leader in IT Management and was recently recognized as one of the Inc. 500 fastest growing privately-held companies.  For more information, check out our website at www.pepperweed.com or call 888 229-0145. Please let us know if you see stories you think should be included in the next issue of the Daily News, and feel free to forward this email on to others.

 

Do you need a public speaker at your next IT-related event?  If so, please contact me at george.spafford@....  A number of programs are available including one hour presentations, keynotes, executive awareness sessions and so on all revolving around technology business, the management of IT, ITIL, and risk management.

 

"Excessive dependency on past policies, however successful, is dangerous in time of rapid change” – Michael J. Kami

 

The Picks of the Day

No Satisfaction at Toyota

“It's the story of Toyota's genius: an insatiable competitiveness that would seem un-American were it not for all the Americans making it happen. Toyota's competitiveness is quiet, internal, self-critical. It is rooted in an institutional obsession with improvement that Toyota manages to instill in each one of its workers, a pervasive lack of complacency with whatever was accomplished yesterday.”

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/111/open_no-satisfaction.html

 

The DST “Bug”

As a reminder, Daily Savings is this Sunday, March 11^th.three weeks earlier the previous years.

http://support.microsoft.com/gp/cp_dst

http://www.energy.gov/about/EPAct.htm

http://people.howstuffworks.com/dst-bug.htm

 

Health Care Can Bankrupt America: Walker

“Walker, the nation's chief accountability officer and head of the Government Accountability Office (GAO), reportedly said that the United States is overwhelmed simply in meeting the requirements of entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare.  He also warned that economic growth alone won't solve the problem, reported the Associated Press.”

http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/8800245/c_8800284?f=alerts

 

Study: Digital information ballooning

“The report, assembled by the technology research firm IDC, sought to account for all the ones and zeros that make up photos, videos, e-mail, Web pages, instant messages, phone calls and other digital content cascading through our world today. The researchers assumed that an average digital file gets replicated three times.  Add it all up and IDC determined that the world generated 161 billion gigabytes -- 161 exabytes -- of digital information last year.”

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/03/06/information.explosion.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest

 

IT Process Improvement / Quality Management

Human Error Multipliers

“Studies show that up to 80% of network availability incidents can be tied to human error. In addition, the fourth annual CompTIA study on security breaches shows that 60% can be attributed to human error. With statistics proving over and over that human error should be of concern, it is a wonder that more attention is not paid to managing it. In fact, there are a number of behaviors that can dramatically increase the odds of human error yet organizations fail to manage them.”

http://www.spaffordconsulting.com/Human%20Error%20Multipliers.html

 

Accurate Configurations – Why Technology Alone Isn’t the Answer

“Having an accurate and timely understanding of what is in production is vital to everyone in IT. So much so that many groups are rushing to implement automatic tools that promise to discover new and changed systems on the network. Like any tool, these automated systems have a time and a place but groups must understand the causality of their Configuration Management concerns before simply buying one of these tools and putting it into production.”

http://www.spaffordconsulting.com/Accurate%20Configurations.html

 

Free On-Demand Webinar:  Understanding the Role of the CMDB in ITIL

Discusses Configuration Management and how the CMDB facilitates data exchanges with the other ITIL process areas.  Provides examples of the types of data that the various areas may need.

http://www.jupiterwebcasts.com/_archives/2007/webcast_03-05-07/files/lobby.html

 

IT Audit / Internal Audit

IA “Helpers” Newsletter

Guidance for professional auditors.

http://www.auditservices.com/helpers.html

 

What the Board Needs to Know About IT: Phase I Findings

“In 2006, Deloitte Consulting LLP began a research initiative to explore how boards of directors are approaching information technology (IT). Phase I of this research represents the findings of more than 30 interviews with directors and senior executives. The findings from the Phase I interviews have been captured in the point of view: ‘What the Board Needs to Know About IT: The Board's Role in Leveraging Technology as a Strategic Resource.’”

http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/article/0,1002,sid%3D26562%26cid%3D132853,00.html

 

Legal and Regulatory Compliance

Internal Control Seminars

Several of my colleagues have been presenting compliance-related seminars across the country for the past five years:  Sarbanes-Oxley, Corporate Governance, Internal Controls, Fraud Prevention and Detection, and Information Security.  The next seminars are in March in New York, Atlanta and Houston:  SOX Compliance for Small and Medium Sized Businesses (“SOX for SMBs”).  They will discuss practical, cost-effective internal controls over financial reporting.  The seminars are as entertaining as they are informative.

http://www.compliance-seminars.com

 

Sarbanes-Oxley Charges in Conn. Case Worry Corporate Defense Lawyers

“Russell, the former attorney for the church, is accused of obstructing an FBI investigation that led to the January conviction of the church's music director, Robert Tate, for possessing child pornography.  Russell was charged under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which Congress passed in 2002 after a wave of corporate accounting scandals to make it easier to prosecute such cases. He faces up to 40 years in prison if convicted.”

http://www.insurancejournal.com/news/east/2007/03/06/77462.htm

 

The Great Controls Divide: Small v. Big

“The number of companies with less than $75 million in market cap that reported material internal-controls weaknesses surged from 573 in 2005 to 677 in 2006, according to Glass Lewis. But bigger companies have fared much better.”

http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/8792372?f=AlsoOn030207

 

Security and Risk Management

US sees China as top intelligence threat: report

“China's intelligence services are the most active in the world in spying on the United States and are aggressively targeting advanced technology, a senior US intelligence official said in remarks published Tuesday.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070306/pl_afp/usespionagechinacuba_070306164255

 

Cybercrime Conference Highlights RFID Security

“IOActive, a small security consulting company, brought out some big guns to help defend itself against an RFID giant at the conference on Wednesday. Leveraging the        American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the U.S. Department of        Homeland Security (DHS), IOActive hosted a panel discussion that turned into a pep rally to support its fight to disclose RFID security flaws that were detailed in a presentation quashed by RFID card vendor HID.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20070306/tc_pcworld/129604

 

Dan Lohrmann | Culture of security

“When it comes to security credentials, Dan Lohrmann has some powerful training. He became Michigan’s first chief information security officer after a career in IT and security that began at the National Security Agency. He moved to state government in 1997, when he became chief information officer and IT services director for Michigan’s Department of Management and Budget.”

http://www.gcn.com/print/26_05/43222-1.html

 

Healthcare / Bio-Informatics / Care Delivery Organizations (CDOs)

On Demand Webinar: Optimizing Health IT

 “Information technology’s (IT) use in healthcare is booming yet many hurdles are being encountered in regards to successful adoption and then ongoing support of these systems. Many healthcare organizations are rushing to implement technology to meet mandates but have challenges to address in terms of strategy, controls and processes. As a result, the outcomes of these organization’s IT investments are suboptimal and, in some cases, actively put patients and the healthcare provider at risk.”

http://www.complianceonline.com/ecommerce/control/trainingFocus?product_id=700297

[This is a $249 fee for this webinar.]

 

Walter Reed problems seen as likely systemic

“Substandard living conditions found at the Army’s flagship veterans hospital likely exist throughout the military health care system, the head of a House panel investigating Walter Reed Army Medical Center said Monday.”

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17466102/

 

UnitedHealth Earnings $1.5B Less Healthy

“UnitedHealth Group will reduce previously reported net earnings by more than $1.5 billion due to incorrect accounting for stock options.  The restatements reflect changes under both the company's current accounting method, Financial Accounting Standard No. 123R, and its historical method, Accounting Principles Board Opinion No. 25.”

http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/8807988?f=alerts

 

Electronic health records safer, fast

“A development that a decade ago seemed futuristic to doctors, hospitals, labs, clinics and insurers is today becoming a necessary medical tool to help streamline operations, reduce errors and improve patients’ experiences.”

http://www.gazette.com/onset?id=19810&template=article.html

 

Majority of market now adopting value-driven healthcare, Leavitt says

“’There are four cornerstones that have to be in place to get to a value-driven healthcare system,’ Leavitt said.  ‘The first is healthcare IT, and that enables the other three, which are quality measures, building epsiodes of care, and aliging incentives to choose high quality, low cost providers.’  Leavitt said he still wakes up thinking ‘health IT, health IT and health IT,’ as he did when he first addressed the same audience 18 months ago.

http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=6569

 

Health record banks: Feasible way to HII

“Although more than 100 communities are now pursuing efforts to provide anytime, anywhere healthcare information and decision support through HII, a realistic assessment of progress reveals a sobering picture of much activity, but few (if any) new systems in production. The handful of communities with operational HII has not increased significantly, and physicians using EHRs in their office practices are still a distinct minority (albeit growing slowly).”

http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=6571

 

Human Error / Safety / Environment

Eco-Warriors at the Gate

“The preparation of the deal was as much about politics as the number-crunching and financial alchemy that are private equity's stock in trade. In essence, the buyers are betting that the increasingly sensitive question of how to produce energy in an environmentally acceptable way is better handled by a privately owned firm than by one exposed to the public markets.”

http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/8808144?f=alerts

 

Going Green

“A study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, released last month, found that the power consumption of data centres doubled between 2000 and 2005, and now accounts for 1.2 percent of American electricity consumption, though other estimates put the figure at 4 percent. Companies now spend as much as 10 percent of their technology budgets on energy, says Rakesh Kumar of Gartner, a consultancy. (Only around half of this is used to run computers; much of it goes on cooling.)”

http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/8792620?f=FinancialSoftware030607

[This is a very interesting article.  Where there are problems there are opportunities.]

 

Global warming to push up premiums

“Insurance premiums for property will increase as global warming raises seas levels and creates more frequent and intense storms, the chairman of the world's biggest insurance market Lloyd's of London says.”

http://au.biz.yahoo.com/070306/30/14pmt.html

 

Outsourcing / Globalization / International

Managing Globalization: How fast China grows will affect everyone

“Just how fast will the Chinese economy grow in the next 10, 20 or even 30 years? It is a topic of great disagreement even among experts, and not just because of the Chinese government's not-always-reliable statistics. It's also a crucial issue for all the other countries in the world, as the outcome will determine how much time they have to adapt to the stresses of Chinese purchasing and productive power.”

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/03/06/business/glob07.php

 

Paulson hails Japan's economy, presses China reforms

“US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson on Tuesday hailed the strength of Japan's economy despite a recent market rout as he prepared to head to China where he will push for politically sensitive reforms.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070306/pl_afp/uschinajapanskorea_070306143728

 

Economics / Business / Misc.

Six Degrees of Irritation

“Business types are finding all sorts of uses for social networks, but some say they are the ones who are being used.”

http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/8760672?f=FinancialSoftware030607

 

Going Global With Accounting

“The worldwide market meltdown shows just how global our economy has become, for good and for bad. All the more reason, then, for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to boost investor confidence by simplifying accounting practices for international firms, an issue the regulatory agency will address this week. “

http://www.forbes.com/home/businessinthebeltway/2007/03/05/sec-accounting-standards-biz-washington-cx_bw_0306sec.html

 

End Notes

Titles and links to articles written by George Spafford are listed at:  http://spaffordconsulting.com/articles.html

 

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Pepperweed Consulting, LLC, was founded by IT professionals who recognized a need for quality IT Management tools and specialists peaked in their implementation and use. Today, Pepperweed is nationally recognized for its unique ability to provide optimal infrastructure and process designs and to deliver on the promise of those designs through hands-on implementation of selected technologies. Recently listed as one of the Inc. 500 fastest growing, privately held companies, Pepperweed is one of the largest IT Management practices in the U.S.

 

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George Spafford Principal Consultant Pepperweed Consulting, LLC® Office:  269-556-9597 Mobile:  269-208-1832 FAX:  208-978-6295 George.Spafford@...

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