InfoWar

[nobody@REPLAY.COM (Anonymous)]

The Wall Street Journal, October 31, 1995, p. B1.


It's Time You Became A Manager of Change, The Consultants Say
[Excerpts]


Rapid innovation and product introduction require a nimbleness
lacking in many corporate bureaucracies.

"There's an intrinsic need to improve your effectiveness at
managing change -- whatever form it takes," says David Nadler,
chairman of the New York-based Delta Consulting Group.

Change-management boosters are also telling managers to learn
about "knowledge management" as a means of achieving their new
goals.

Knowledge management attempts to make fuller use of internal
information networks. The consulting units of Arthur Andersen,
Ernst & Young and Price Waterhouse are peddling systems to
collect, store and distribute knowledge. Andersen designates
"knowledge managers" who monitor traffic through its Lotus
Notes e-mail software and store valuable information on a CD-
ROM. The disk contains 16,000 pages on everything from
performance measurements to employee motivation.

One problem with the system: "It's so difficult to tie
knowledge-management systems to bottom-line improvement," says
C. Jack Grayson Jr., whose American Productivity and Quality
Center co-sponsored a knowledge-management symposium with
Arthur Andersen. "That just feeds suspicions that it's just
another fad."

It's also difficult to get employees to contribute to the
information pool [fearful their jobs may vanish after overt
knowledge-transfer, hence, the appeal to managers for systems
that covertly siphon knowledge and record grounds for
dismissal].

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WSJ, October 24, 1995, p. A24.


Privacy Laws Are Lax On New Technology, Federal Agency Says 

Washington -- Inconsistent privacy laws let companies sell
sensitive information about consumers who use new
communications technologies, the Clinton administration
warned.

In a report, the Commerce Department's National
Telecommunications and Information Administration called on
communications companies to tell customers if they plan to
sell information about what they watch or whom they call, and
to make it easy for customers to squelch the disclosure of
sensitive information.

Federal regulations allow people to ask their phone company to
keep information confidential, but the rule generally doesn't
apply to small phone companies or wireless phones, according
to the report. Laws that prevent video stores from disclosing
what movies customers watch don't apply to pay-per-view
services by satellite-television providers. And while a 1986
law prevents on-line computer services from snooping into
electronic mail, it doesn't prevent the services from selling
information about who e-mailed whom, and what the topic was,
the report noted.

The Commerce Department stopped short of calling for
legislation to close the gaps. But "if industry doesn't do it,
consumers will demand that the government do it," predicted
Larry Irving, assistant commerce secretary for communications
and information.

Industry representatives played down the privacy loopholes.
Ronald Plesser, a Washington attorney who represents online
services and direct marketing firms, said, "I know of no
example of anybody trafficking in e-mail descriptions." A
spokeswoman for Hughes Electronics Corp.'s DirecTV said, "We
do not release names of customers that ordered movies.

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