Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Going Up To The Country, Paint My Mailbox Blue

If you make a system easy enough to use, or even user-transparent, there will be far fewer problems with compliance. For many IT people this is axiomatic. When we are talking users who don't really care about all of our fancy high-tech equipment, it goes double. Securing e-mail doesn't have to be a nightmarish ordeal:

"Secure messaging is sort of a serendipitous technology," Osterman says. "If you ask somebody if they need to encrypt e-mail, a lot of people will say, 'No, not really.' But put an easy-to-use encryption capability in front of them, and they find more uses for it."

If it is hard to use, they won't use it. If it takes a lot of time, they won't use it. If it seems to interfere with proper care of their patients, they won't use it.
And if they won't use it, why bother?
Let's make these systems and policies transparent and user-friendly.
Or they won't use it.

No comments: