On 19 March 2012 23:00, Norman Gray <[email protected]> wrote: > Paul Perrin said: > >> They should have had such information to hand. >> >> Do you think they are so slipshod on keeping their buildings insurance up >> to date? > > No, they should not have had this information to hand. Creating the database > tables to manage this sort of information is expensive, and creating the > processes to keep that information up to date would cause an expensive > bureaucratic explosion, which would be a gross waste of money. I do not > imagine that the central offices of any large commercial operation could put > their hands on scattered TV licence information either (they're not daft). >
As Paul said, that sort of information is the sort of information any commercial operation would collect and hold. I've worked for a few as a DBA and there's always been a system to manage such information (TV license, software licenses, insurance policies &c). A good inventory holds both the tangible and intangible items owned or held by a company. It's important because it keeps you out of court (and provides a defense or at least mitigation if you find yourself in court) and also provides management information for future planning and internal auditing (if done well). Whilst maybe not cheap it's much cheaper than not doing so then having to pay a fine and do it quickly. You could make the process of gathering an maintaining the information bureaucratic and expensive if you wanted to but there's no inherent reason for it to be, just make it part of the regular procurement process that when any item is received that should go into the inventory (pretty much anything non-consumable so TV license, yes, coffee or toner, no) there's a simple online form to log it in. For a large corporation such as the BBC I would expect (hope) that they are using an integrated ERP system where doing a goods received notification on an invoice (basically telling the finance system that the goods have been received so it should action the purchase order payment, in accordance with the financial controls processes of the company) would automatically transfer the relevant line items into the inventory system and put a job in the work queue(s) of the appropriate people to confirm the information and enter any extra information required (e.g. serial numbers, expiry/renewal dates &c). As for my rationale for wanting the information, I had a number of motivations. Curiosity was one, given that they had been found delinquent before were they any better now. Flagging up the potential hypocrisy of demanding we all have a TV licence but not being properly licensed themselves was another. As I recall I'd been party to a number of discussions where some people tried to argue that their businesses don't need a TV license for a TV in the office as their staff would have a license for their own TV and there's a clause that lets someone who has a license at one address have a TV at another (there is, or at least used to be, something similar to that which covers students and others staying or travelling away from their home where so long as their home has a license they can watch TV so long as it's a portable powered entirely from batteries). That certainly factored into my motivation. Obviously a consequence of my query was that they discovered, ahead of TV licensing, that they had one site which should have had a license but didn't so were able to rectify this and avoid a fine. As I recall the standard fine for a residential property not being correctly licensed is £10,000. Presumably the fine for a large corporation would be significantly higher, the PR fallout would also be quite costly as well. There is an effective cap on the cost of FoI requests of, IIRC, £400 so regardless of the seniority or not of the person who collected the data and prepared the response it would have been less than that. Way less than the fine they would have recieved had my Fol request not drawn their attention to the issue. No doubt less than the cost of one episode of Match of the Day, and, I know which one I'd rather they didn't do! Stephen -- It's better to ask a silly question than to make a silly assumption. http://stephensorablog.blogspot.com/ | http://www.linkedin.com/in/stephenboothuk | Skype: stephenbooth_uk Apparently I'm a "Eierlegende Woll-Milch-Sau", I think it was meant as a compliment. _______________________________________________ developers-public mailing list [email protected] https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/listinfo/developers-public Unsubscribe: https://secure.mysociety.org/admin/lists/mailman/options/developers-public/archive%40mail-archive.com
