terrapinsanity.com

This morning’s Diamondback reported yet another information processing mess: 600 Freshman Connection students – who are already on campus, having long since had their own orientation not to mention started class in September – were mailed orientation information as if they are expected to start here in spring.

Another needless expense. Another embarrassment. But place blame where it is due: leadership’s willingness to abide inferior, if not incompetent, information processing operations that consistently get in the way of – not enable – our strategic plans.

Main Admin values the Preventors of Information Services because computers that can’t provide reliable data also can’t be used to answer questions Main Admin doesn’t want asked. You know – about how well we are really doing in delivering value to Maryland tax payers. There are some great stories to be told about quality, the theme of this blog. There are also horror stories whose scope Main Admin is just as happy can’t be fully measured.

In the present case, we feel for the folks in Orientation and Office of Extended Studies. They’re at the mercy of whatever mailing lists are generated by the Preventors of Information Services, who have simply never gotten their collective heads around things called data models. Let’s recall the experiences of yesteryear when Freshman Connection students were alternately barred from registering for spring classes or dropped from their fall classes because the computers didn’t recognize their status. The latest snafu is just another example in the continuing saga of data disasters.

You’d think a leadership that promotes a message of quality would have thought to ensure the computers were fixed after the first couple go-rounds.