Is the boss nickel-and-diming your IT operations?

A guest post from John Monroe, editor-in-chief of Federal Computer Week.

It’s only human nature: An old clunker of a laptop computer doesn’t seem so bad when money is tight. Especially to the manager who has to watch the bottom line and who doesn’t mind waiting two minutes for a PDF document to load.

It might not be ideal, but it’s good enough.

Many of us use the same rationale when it comes to buying a car. Faced with our own tight budget, we are willing to put up with a growing number of glitches until the cash outflow becomes intolerable – or the junker simply breaks down.

The problem is that in the workplace, such decisions might have unintended consequences. At what point does old technology go from being an inconvenience to being a productivity problem?

Unfortunately, it’s tough to put a price on productivity, while the price tag on a new laptop is visible for all to see. Putting off the inevitable purchase might only save a nickel here and a dime there, but do that long enough and it all adds up.

Worse yet, in the current budget environment – which might be getting much worse in the months and years ahead – “good enough” is likely to be an evolving standard, and not for the better.

Is your agency cutting corners on IT operations? And what are the unintended consequences?