PC Policies

My current firm is about 100 years old, and is one of the larger groups of attorneys out there.

We are adopting an ideology that the department heads determine who gets what kind of computer. It gets pretty complicated, but I'm sure this is due to our particular internal politics. The parts that don't get complicated are probably fairly applicable to the community at large, and I'll illustrate:

The budget for and type of each department determine how many technology credits they get. Each type of system/device available from the approved pool for the firm costs a certain amount of tech creds. I'll make up some arbitrary numbers...

A laptop is 4 credits. A desktop is one credit. A handheld is two credits [including the monthly service fee for remote connectivity]. A handheld with out remote connectivity would be, I suppose, just one credit. [It is assumed that the laptop would be able to dial in to the corporate 800 number, at least, if not configured with global local numbers for some ISP.]

Each department head then decides which individuals merit which devices. I won't get into some of the obvious political benefits, as well as business benefits, unless someone asks for particulars... But there are many, on several sides.

Dear Chris,
I'm the one in charge of everithing that has to do with computers in my school. This is a little school with 2 computer rooms (13 PCs each, 1 PC in every classroom, 2 PCs in the secretary's bureau and 5 PCs and Macs in the Teachersroom). Actually i'm a teacher and not an IT prof. We don't have a real policy but some rules that we apply to the subject. We decided that every teacher has the right to have one PC in his classroom, they just have to ask for it. I'm the only one who has the right to have a laptop because I'm the only one who brings it home for works, ... concerning our net. About this, I would suggest that in your company should have a laptop all the people who can have the need/necessity to take it out because their job asks them to work outside of their bureaus and have a connection with your intranet. (excuse my english, but I live in an italianspeaking country). We do allow personal use, but outside working hours and with internetrestrictions (personalemail with care because of viruses and only allowed sites). In any case this is on testing. If we will see that it doesn't work, we will change and prohibit it. We do allow connection of personal devices, but the installation can only be done by the administrators, to keep control of the situation. We do not allow the installation of softwares that are not owned by the school. We don't have the need of secretness. In your company, due to secret policies, can you allow it, to install personal devices that could permit to take out documents, ...? In case, you could allow it just to top managers, or special services and in any case under the control of the administrators. We enforce a 1 PC policy: this is done in order to keep under control the exact situation of our intranet, hardware and software.
I hope this will help you, but I understand that your case is very different from mine.
Best wishes,
Piero

The post by dpetrac is a good example of putting business requirements at the fore.

Based on years on both sides of the discussion, here are some recommendations.
* A corporate policy regarding personal use of company resources is preferred to a PC policy. Second best is a corporat policy on PC use.
* Decisions as to what tools are used belongs with the lowest possible level of management for a given group. IT should provide suggestions and boundaries of support only.
* Budget responsility belongs with the business units, except where decisions cross business units (like the WAN).
* Support or policy? Policy should be "written" by business unit leaders, approved by senior management.
* See first comment.
* See first comment. Corporate security policy should also impact this.
* Leave this to the business unit.

A key thought is to let business units make the decisions that impact how they meet their objectives. You may have made the best possible selection of PC or PDA or thin client or communications device based on technical evaluation. It means nothing if my business unit makes all its revenue supporting a client who builds a competing product. I will use the inferior product my client makes if it helps me keep him as a client. And I won't bother justifying it to IT, and if the CIO wants to call me on it at the next executive session I will rip him apart in front of our peers for a lack of business sense. If I have to provide laptops to all of my employees as a way to keep them from taking offers from competitors, I will do that too. I may set up a full Internet cafe for my department to use and provide the PC for it if our security policy keeps them off the Internet and Internet access is a factor in where they choose to work.

Now as an IT manager, I will simply limit support to the COE (consistent office environment), insure "foreign" network access is prevented, and not lose sleep over the decisions of the business managers. I will instead keep communications channels open so that if their non-standard solution makes better sense the our current solution I can adjust in a timely fashion.