There's a well written feature article business managers should read in Upside magazine about information technology (IT) consultants, if only for the entertainment value.

Author Geoffrey James begins his tale of doom and destruction with the provocative statement: "Perhaps if large IT projects were sold like snake oil, people wouldn't be so surprised to learn that 40 percent of them end in failure.'' He was basing his claim on a 1996 survey conducted by the Standish Group which also found, according to Mr. James, that "even respected companies such as Andersen Consulting and Lockheed Martin -- increased, rather than decreased, the risk of failure''.

Mr. James then launches into a captivating account of the kind of failures, mismanagement and mayhem that can beset companies. I'm well known around the office for liking these kinds of attacks on consultants.

But I also believe the stories often neglect to look at the other side of the ill-fated marriage -- the managers who hired the consultants in the first place and allowed them to wreak havoc on their businesses.

I mentioned the story to a buddy who's in the business and he gave me his version of what sometimes happens to mess up IT projects: "Everyone learns systems life cycles in college,'' he said. "It's taught as basic computer analysis. It's analysis, design, implementation, and maintenance.'' His beef with businesses managers begins when they call his company team in and tell them to put the system in place as quickly as possible. In other words, the IT consulting team is brought in at the third stage -- implementation.

It's frustrating. If the process is not thought out fully from at the beginning, the IT team hired for the job may be putting in place a system that was doomed to fail. The IT team then gets the blame for the mistake.

"Most clients start you at the implementation stage,'' he said. "They don't ask you `How is it going to help our business? How is it going to improve our work flow?' These are the bottom line questions. They only give you time to implement. They don't want you to go back to the analysis stage. Well what do you want for that kind of mandate? They don't realise that sometimes a good two weeks of analysis will save you ten weeks of implementation. You try to get them back to analysis but they don't want to take the time to look at it carefully. They have been pressured into a solution.'' When managers bring in outside IT people they want to bring new technology and force it on top of the current way of business. They don't see the opportunity technology gives in changing the way the company or organisation operates.

"People need to look at reengineering the current process but they end up trying to implement in the current process,'' he said.

The story is available at www.upside.com/twxis/mvm/stor y?id(equals)35ed7fe10.

Click on the "Bait and Switch'' link which contains a separate story about how consulting firms purposely end up assigning an inexperienced team to a project once the bid is won.

Another link takes you to advice on how to avoid IT fiascos. Mr. James, the author of "Success Secrets from Silicon Valley'', concludes the best way to avoid problems is by "making the scope of your projects reasonable, keeping end users and management involved, using consultants sparingly, and allowing for adequate planning, testing, and training''.

Civil liberties groups are getting set to challenge what they see as another attack on the freedom of the Internet. Last week the US House Commerce Committee made another attempt to pass restrictions aimed at protecting pornographic content from being seen by minors. Anyone in their right minds wants to see that done.

Even with some of the voluntary controls in place, there is lots of purient material on the Web open to view. The bill is aimed at any communication or image that depicts or describes "in a patently offensive way...an actual or simulated sexual act...that taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors''.

The bill is a new version of the Communications Decency Act which was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court last year. Here again the civil liberties groups say the new version will also serious restrict other types of material protected by the US First Amendement about freedom of speech.

It's a tough call, and a debate that's not restricted to the Internet.

Children must be protected. But the values of a free society where information and ideas must be allowed to be disseminated must also be protected. Another issue is to protect the companies owning the computer servers on which the material is being stored. If they are forced into the role of monitoring content they might end up becoming the unwitting cyberpolice. No one wants that to happen.

Tech Tattle deals with issues about technology. You can contact Ahmed at 295-5881 ext. 248 or 238-3854 or techtattle ygazette.newsmedia.bm