But what I’d like to know -and what McAllister conveniently forgets to mention- is: What, exactly, constitutes a ‘True Data Disaster?’

Are we talking about a leak that effectively kills a company’s credibility dead? I don’t think so, because if incompetence or data mismanagement had any kind of real-world relationship with a company’s success, Yahoo!, Amazon, TJX and Heartland Payment Systems and dozens of others would at very least have suffered losses in stock value following their colossally poor management practices.

Are we talking criminal abuse of private information? If that were the case, then Microsoft, Yahoo! and all the nation’s telcos (save Qwest) should be facing imminent demise because of their complicity in the unconstitutional breach of their customers’ privacy in the US Government’s domestic spying programme.

Are we talking straight-up data loss? If so, then Microsoft (hmm, that name keeps coming up) should have taken a dive when they managed quite literally to lose all of Danger Networks’ data.

Or are we talking non-performance and generalised uselessness on a scale that beggars comprehension? If that were the case, then why do large consultancies still manage to win multi-million dollar contracts that suck up centuries of developer time and never actually deliver a thing? Think of the FBI’s famous foray into modernisation, the now-legendary death of the UK’s online medical database and any of a hundred other projects that ended up entirely written off (to the tune of 100s of millions each) without so much as a downward tick in the value of the contracting companies involved.

It seems that in the esoteric world of noughts and ones, belief matters far more than empirical truth, making a true Data Disaster literally inconceivable.

There can’t be a Data Disaster today, because we can’t imagine what one would look like. Likewise, there won’t be a Data Disaster until we become capable of realising that they’re all around us, happening every day.

Public health is a human rights issue. Medical services, though, are ultimately ruled by economics. The tension between the two will never be resolved. It will, however, shape our future in ways that are impossible to measure.

This morning over coffee, I received news that the 15 year old daughter of a friend had passed away. She’d been ill for over a month, but a full diagnosis was never made. All anyone knew was that her head ached terribly.

Within an hour of hearing this, I learned of the untimely death of Ture Kailo, MP for TAFEA Outer Islands.

Ture was well known in Vanuatu. During his tenure as DG of the Ministry of Youth Development and Training, he was a consistent champion of youth issues and a friend to many local NGOs. Many took heart when, after his politically motivated ouster from the Ministry, he announced his candidacy for national office. Everyone I spoke to expressed deep regret at his passing, noting that Vanuatu politics has suffered a real and measurable loss.

Cases like these often define the debate over national health care policy. The loss of prominent individuals like Kailo demonstrate in unambiguous terms just how much we stand to lose when we lose a single life.

But what of my friend’s young daughter? The magnitude of her mother’s loss is of course immeasurable. And who can tell what she might have achieved?

I am a firm believer in the need to personalise issues such as education and health care. Unless we can see the effects of our decisions, unless we can put ourselves in a position where we share the burden of their costs and the value of their rewards, we are far too susceptible to error.

There is, however, a tension between the moral weight of our decisions and their practical implementation. Simply stated, public medicine is costly, time-consuming and requires significant planning and coordination. Vanuatu as a nation has fared poorly in meeting any of these challenges. Money is limited, skilled professionals are thin on the ground and coordination even inside a single hospital is often the result of improvisation, not planning.

It’s tempting to see the death of these two individuals (and the countless others who might have been saved, had circumstances been different) in a tragic light. The young woman had been complaining of terrible pain in her head for over a month. Her initial visit to the doctor produced no result. It’s quite likely that, with better facilities, equipment and training, they might not have failed in that regard.

But Kailo’s tragic loss tells us too that sometimes, even with world-class medical facilities available, fate conspires against us. Having been hospitalised in Sydney myself for an emergency surgical procedure, I can attest to the quality and professionalism of the Australian medical system. Their best efforts did not suffice to save this man’s life.

We have to admit the possibility that even if we had been able to diagnose this young woman’s condition, we might still have been powerless to save her.

The emerging dialogue around health as a human right was questioned recently in an article in the Financial Times. William Easterly, a professor of economics and co-director of the Development research Institute, claims that the application of generic moral arguments is indeed persuasive, but sometimes in the wrong ways. He compares the respective budgets of HIV/AIDS campaigns and those combating tuberculosis and malaria. Each kills about the same number of people every year in southern Africa, but, “Aids accounted for 57 per cent of World Bank projects on communicable diseases from 1997 to 2006, compared with 3 per cent for malaria and 2 per cent for TB.”

Others pointed out that Easterly complaint should be against the implementation of medical programmes, not their inspiration.

Those who argue for health as a human right deal at length with participation as the key to successful achievement of “the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, without discrimination of any kind.” Here, particularly, is an area where Vanuatu has a very long way yet to go.

When my friend’s daughter first showed signs of illness, she was not taken to the doctor. Instead, she was treated with kastom medicine, to no avail. As is far too often the case, by the time doctor’s at Vila Central Hospital finally saw her, her condition was well advanced.

People might get more out of public health services if they expected more from them. But by treating western medicine as a last resort, by treating hospitals as a place where we’re born and where we die, we deny ourselves any other possibility.

Many would argue that our medical services are treated that way because that’s all they are. Resources are so limited that, besides the occasional perfunctory dose of antibiotics, our hospitals are only geared to basic lifesaving interventions.

And that brings us full circle. Until we can re-imagine public health as something that affects us all – and that consists of more than medical intervention after the fact – we will continually find ourselves stuck in the same quagmire of overstretched, overburdened resources, fighting a losing intervention against cruel fate.

Health is a human right. And that right starts with participation. And participation starts at home.

Education, prevention, awareness and healthy living might not be enough to save the lives of the two we lost today. But they do save lives. The problem is, our economists will never know it. They cannot measure the effectiveness of medical outcomes because if all goes right there won’t be any.

Health policy should be personal; it has to matter to us all. But the resources available are finite. That does not mean, however, that the outcomes are. Listening to both instinct and reason at once is a tenuous task. But that is precisely what all of us, politicians and public alike, will have to do if we want public health to improve in Vanuatu.

Last week I reported that, in spite of requests for information, neither TVL nor Digicel had responded in time for publication. I’m glad to say that in the days following, both of them contacted me. The way in which they did so was quite interesting to me, so this week I’ll share a few details, mixing them liberally with anecdote and observation of my own.

As with all such gossipy pieces, it’s possible the end result will tell you more about the author than the subjects.

Tanya Menzies, CEO of Digicel Vanuatu, was first to respond. She apologised that she hadn’t answered in the time I requested, but was quick to suggest we meet for coffee and a chat.

The ‘chat’, when it happened, lasted over two hours.

Tanya, a Jamaican ‘to the heart’, as she proudly told me, has a remarkable personal history. Hired in Digicel Jamaica’s first month of operation as a customer service agent, she quickly rose through the ranks and was gained national attention in her homeland when she was named CEO of Digicel’s Tongan operation at the tender age of 31.

With an academic background in early childhood education, it should come as no surprise that this fresh-faced, composed young woman takes a caring approach to management. She insists that all her staff address her by her first name, and maintains an open door policy in the office.

She was quick to credit what she characterised as a very flat, non-hierarchical organisational structure for her – and others’ – success. She adds that she hopes to see ni-Vanuatu employees follow the same path to international success. Local staff report that the pace and corporate culture at Digicel takes getting used to. It’s fast-paced and tightly focused on results. Such observations notwithstanding, Digicel’s retention rate is high, and nobody I’ve spoken with has voiced regret about working there.

Menzies’ presence is one of quiet confidence. She dresses with understated classiness; her only touch of overt flair when we met was a stunning wedding ring, testament to the importance family has for her.

Her manner melds seamlessly with her appearance. She speaks softly, but with little hesitation and much assurance. Unafraid to expose the limits of her knowledge, she freely indulges her curiousity, devouring new information. I was amused to note that she asked more questions than I did during our extended talk.

Menzies doesn’t hesitate to admit that, despite her pride and very close identification to the Digicel brand, the operation here has its faults. But she quickly follows with a list of steps she’s taken to improve the service in the eyes of her customers. This includes dozens of new customer service staff, extensive training, and the quick localisation of all but a few positions.

“There’s a difference between rolling a service out and running an operation,” she told me when I observed that the honeymoon period for Digicel in Vanuatu appeared to be over. “We invest a lot of time training our staff, and that means some of the changes take a while to appear.”

Customer service is clearly close to her heart, not least because that’s where she got her start. She told me how she enjoys driving around Efate and stopping to talk to people about the service. The proof in the pudding is in the tasting, of course, but if Tanya’s character and calm leadership is any indication, the future augurs well both for her and for Digicel in Vanuatu.

I didn’t get the opportunity to meet with Ian Kyle, Managing Director of Telecom Vanuatu and Regional Manager of Cable & Wireless. But the fault was entirely my own. I wasn’t able to take him up on the offer of a coffee and a chat before this week’s deadline caught up with me.

Kyle represents, in his own way, a breath of fresh air for TVL. He too comes to us via management positions in the Caribean, where he oversaw preparations among Cable & Wireless franchises there for market liberalisation. In his public appearances here and in the long, chatty response he sent to me concerning last week’s column, he too demonstrates a friendly, frank and pragmatic manner.

In strong contrast to the staid, sometimes downright dogmatic approach that TVL management has shown in the past, Kyle’s influence has always been professional, strongly ethical and realistic. He’s overseen very touchy negotiations in several markets, and his handling of them was the subject of more than a little pleasant bemusement from participants in the liberalisation process. Some seemed almost perplexed when the intransigence to which they had become accustomed disappeared.

On more than one occasion, those with a view of the proceedings expressed surprise and relief over Ian’s determination to fight things out in the market place, rather than in the courts. Had it not been for his presence at the negotiating table, things might have gone much worse than they did for all concerned.

His approach is admittedly something of a departure for TVL. While he’s quick to decry what he characterises as the tendency for some commentators to attribute some kind of a dark personality to the incumbent, he states frankly that, ‘there’s no doubt that TVL, like any protected licensee needed a kick in the backside to [pick] up its game.’

He continues:

‘I’m a firm believer that competition is necessary for forcing that improvement on any incumbent. The new management team and myself have been spending much time, money and energy encouraging this honest internal awareness and service improvement.’

Kyle goes on to credit TVL with playing a ‘pretty decent game’ with regards to the whole process and observes – rightly, in my view – that ‘[n]ot many countries across the world, let alone the Pacific, have achieved as smooth a transition.’

While it’s always dangerous to lay all credit or blame at the feet of our leaders, it does seem fair to say that much of the flexibility and robustness that Telecom’s shown since the market opened is due to a fundamental change in attitude. And cultural changes like these often begin at the top.

Our situation here in Vanuatu bears a passing resemblance to the recently concluded US presidential campaign. Except that we have two ‘change’ candidates, both of whom have a demonstrated record of pragmatic dynamism and success.

Happily, we don’t have to pick only one.

Neither Digicel nor TVL are unique in choosing to play their cards close to their respective vests. Asked to prognosticate about upcoming developments, both Tanya Menzies and Ian Kyle chose to answer only obliquely, if at all. Nonetheless, they were open about their reasons for doing so.

I still maintain that openness bears sweeter fruit than reticence, and if nothing else, both Menzies and Kyle have clearly demonstrated their willingness to listen and to embrace change as an integral part of how they do business.

I’ll integrate this into an upcoming column sometime soon.

His question, based on numerous similar postulations, is whether IT is becoming extinct. His answer (you knew it was a rhetorical question, right?) goes like this:

Since the days of punch cards, IT has believed itself to be guardian of precious computing resources against attacks from non-technical barbarians known as “users.” This arrogant attitude, born of once-practical necessity in the era of early data centers, reflects inability to adapt to present-day realities. Such attitudes, combined with recent technological and social changes, are pushing IT to share the fate of long-extinct dinosaurs.

The list of arguments he offers in support of this thesis are all valid to some degree, and all supportive of what he’s positing, but he somehow manages to miss the point that means most to business:

Monolithic, top-down, IT-as-bureaucracy approaches are being subverted by recent changes in technology and services, but so too is business in general.

Krigsman’s bullet list of arguments bear consideration, there’s no doubt. Let’s look at each of them in turn:

• IT services have become a commodity.It might be more useful to look a little deeper and to state that communications have been commoditised differently in recent years. Krigsman, channeling Nick Carr, claims that IT’s baseline role underpinning all normal business practices makes it no more important to a CEO than plumbing. As one wise commentator put it, this only demonstrates how senior management under-rates the importance of plumbing.
• Social media empowers users at the expense of IT.True enough. I believe it’s possible (not necessarily likely, but possible) that social media applications may provide some of the long-ago-promised disintermediation that Web pioneers ranted so much about in the 1990s.

  Social media do in many ways short-circuit some of the management processes that manifest themselves through monolithic, institutional IT, but: a) Their threat to corporate confidentiality has not fully been assessed; and b) A good many more forward-looking companies are embracing such tools through the leadership of their IT departments, who appreciate their lighter weight and lower maintenance costs.

• Software as a service (SaaS) providers are replacing in-house IT infrastructures.I’d like to see some decent metrics before believing this. Prima Facie, it doesn’t have the ring of truth. I’ve seen numerous companies announce their intention to provide software as a service, but I haven’t seen signs of any significant migration.

  I don’t believe that the issue of information ownership has been adequately addressed just yet. Granted that most managers don’t get how privacy and confidentiality work on the Internet. But I’m sure that the lawyers will start to grok it, soon enough.

  Whether litigation and, potentially, legislation will have a salutary effect on corporate information protection remains to be seen, because new privacy legislation and regulation seems to be in constant contention with (semi-)official government surveillance polices. I strongly suspect, however, that software as a service will take the form of leased or rented application-in-a-box type servers being hosted inside a company premises, supported primarily by the vendor but managed by corporate IT.

• IT leadership is alienated from senior management.

  Yes, jargon makes it difficult to be understood. Yes, projects – because they are poorly understood – are often late and/or over budget. Yes, IT managers need to make an effort to be clearer about their demesne. But the problem, again and again, is that other managers don’t think they need to know the details. And IT consists of nothing but details. I do my best to write plainly and use simple metaphors in my weekly column, but let me tell you, there are times in my professional life when I’ve been forced to say, “Look, I know you don’t understand me, but you’ve got to believe me when I say X.” Very often, this doesn’t happen. The discussion never moves beyond the sticker price, and damn the torpedoes. More about this in the next point.

• Corporate leadership doesn’t understand the implications of IT decisions on business strategy.

  I can’t point to any studies, but anecdotal information and personal experience leads me to believe that this happens more often than people would like to admit. It’s preferable, I suppose, to blame the blathering geek. The worst outcomes almost always arise out of the worst possible compromise: Selecting a non-technical person as CTO or CIO. It’s true that good geek managers are rare as hen’s teeth. It’s also true that throwing Harvard MBAs at the problem does nothing to alleviate the disjuncture between IT and Business, and much to exacerbate it.

• Volume purchasing arrangements contribute to IT stagnation.

  I wrote recently that detailed planning in an area of inherent complexity is pointless. A more process-focused approach, on the other hand, can be made to work reliably. In this light, the problems with cyclical purchase programmes become obvious, as do the shortcomings of per-seat or per-connection licensing.

  I don’t know what it will take to make people see that there are better models than costs that scale with your revenues. Such licensing schemes exist, but they are not the norm. Importantly, they usually come with professional support built-in. That’s not always true of standard commercial software licenses. As long as support is an overhead and not something to be taken advantage of, volume licenses will seem to make the most business sense.

  Software as a service as it’s most often envisioned simply exchanges leasing for ownership, but does nothing to address the fundamental issue of volume being valued over quality, savings over investment.

The problem lying at the heart of all of these issues is really quite simple: Communications works differently now that we have this Internet thing. In many ways it’s incompatible with 19th and 20th century business theory, and the jury is still out about which one will win.

Obviously the technology giants will learn lessons about management and technology and will, if only through natural bias, tend to adjust management to fit communications capabilities, rather than the other way around. But there are vast resources invested in the traditional corporate business model, and many of these businesses retain control over the means of distribution of information. The telecom companies in particular have become increasingly irritated by the subversive influence of the Internet, and they’re starting to realise that they can simply take the whole thing back.

Attacks on Net Neutrality and an increase in ‘Intellectual Property’ issues are symptomatic of the realisation that ownership has a completely different meaning where information is concerned, one that is in some ways quite antithetical to the way many corporations have done business in the past. It would be naive to think that they’d simply acquiesce to the changes being wrought on them. It’s not in their nature.

Spring is past on the Internet, and the bloom is, in some ways, off the rose. Corporate management is coming to the very expensive realisation that IT projects do not fit nicely with standard practice, but the alternative they face – distributed, open and ultimately uncontrollable collaboration tools – might represent more of a danger to them than the pitfalls of centrally managed, monolithic IT.

In my opinion, the battle is still being fought, and a lot more blood will flow before this particular dinosaur is nothing but a series of dents on the sedimentary substrate.