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The Malta Independent | Thursday 3 February 2011
ICT Feature 10 ways to help mitigate the effects of email overload Some useful tips on how to better manage email overkill. Most were gleaned from the web, while a few are based on personal experience. For the organisation • Adopt a policy on a email use and etiquette guiding your employees on what use to make of email, covering aspects such as limiting the length of an email, how many recipients to include, avoiding abuse of the Reply to All feature, refrain from ‘dumping’ information on a sender (simply for due diligence purposes), sending nonurgent emails beyond a certain time, etc. • Deploy a well designed intranet for the publication of news, updates and other announcements to avoid using email as the sole means of information dissemination. Use the intranet as a repository for widely used documentation such as quality manuals, business plans, templates, progress reports and so on with different access levels.
Roderick Spiteri
Alexander Borg
Alexander Borg is a Client Relationship Manager at MITA
If you thought you were alone in weathering the data deluge on the web, help is at hand… from the web itself Since its inception in the early nineties, the Internet has spawned many ways of interconnecting people. For several years email and static websites constituted the main medium of communication. Eventually, as technologies evolved, more sophisticated, customisable sub-types emerged in their various forms: internet forums, social networks, instant messaging, internet telephony… For those of us who use them, services like CNN and BBC news feeds, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIN and Gmail have all become very au courant in our day-to-day jargon. Even Skype has found its way onto most business cards. In parallel with this evolution, the giant strides made in computer technology have slashed the cost of data storage and processing power to unprecedented levels. This has led to ever growing vast volumes of data flooding the web ready for consumption – according to estimates by The Economist ,150 exabytes (billion gigabytes) of data in 2005 and 1,200 exabytes (eight times as much) in 2010. The Internet has not only reshaped and revolutionised the world of communication, it has begun to seriously challenge our ability to process and cope with this veritable data deluge, and keep abreast no matter what. Hooked on email With so much information inundating the net, and with many of us feeling the pressure to be ‘always-on’ at all times and being constantly updated on all facets of our job, “information overload” is now a much talked about phenomenon. In brief, this is defined as the “difficulty a person can have understanding an issue and making decisions that can be caused by the presence of too much information” .
In this age of ‘info-mania’ email is unreservedly the primary source of data overkill we have to contend with. In addition to filtering out spam mail, we also have to deal with the growing number of voluminous attachments, not to mention the countless RSS feeds and social network updates received. To prove the extent of the phenomenon, a 2008 AOL survey of 4,000 email users revealed, for example, that 46% of Americans were hooked on email, and that 60% of them went to extremes like checking their mail while in the bathroom. In a recent article The Daily Telegraph quotes a study that found that each bit of new information gleaned from the internet causes the brain to release a dose of dopamine, a pleasure-inducing chemical which has been linked to addictive behaviour . Studies abound about the way online information hogging our brain hinders deep thinking, memory and learning abilities. Loss of creativity Psychiatrist Dr Edward Hallowell asserts that information overload can lead to loss of creativity and Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD). The latter is a condition induced by a hectic life which compels us to cope with so many information inputs and outputs that we begin to feel distracted, irritable and restless. In extreme cases, we may even be made to feel inadequate, inept, and above all underachieving – in spite of all the work we seem to put in. ADD, Dr Hallowell says, can actually undermine an organisation’s “most valuable asset, namely the imagination and creativity of the brains they employ, by allowing ADD to infest the organisation”. Contrastingly, in a context where the
internet has increased productivity in absolute terms, information overload is at the same time actually hindering productivity. No matter how efficient users are in their stratagems in filtering and optimising traffic, the ubiquity of email means that it also becomes a source of frequent interruption and distraction if used and managed incorrectly. Few realise that users are compelled to engage in a mental effort of frequently trying to structure and make meaningful sense out of information, which is intrinsically unstructured, duplicated and originating from multiple sources. Performing this mental process several times a day while doing a job, can be mentally taxing and should not be underestimated. Indeed, pundits now argue that multi-tasking, fashionable in the gung-ho pre-2008 crisis years, causes more harm than benefit to the timeliness and quality of work outputs. Email - a solution becoming a problem? A study by Microsoft researchers found that a user replying to an incoming email alert pop-up, may actually translate to a 24-minute interruption by the time that user returns back to the task put on hold . In a special survey Intel found that in a context where an average of two hours a day are spent processing approximately 350 emails a week, their staff believed that one-third of these emails were actually unnecessary . Web technologists are aware of these problems, and an area where considerable research is carried out to structure better information on the web is the “semantic web”. This can be loosely defined as the ability of computing devices to understand the
meaning of information on the web to allow users to find, share and combine it with other information more easily. In other words, if we could use systems that exchange data in a more structured and meaningful way, there would be less need to resort to an unstructured form of communication such as email or open-ended web searches to exchange information. Beating the Information Overload To better structure information within organisations, the market has long been able to offer solutions – though, admittedly, this is a complex area under constant evolution. Nevertheless, enterprise content management systems, records management systems and work folk solutions can all provide a shot in the arm to streamline and better structure information flow and corporate memory within organisations. Enterprises will soon realise how important it is to start investing in systems that give more structure to information to mitigate impact on employee creativity and productivity; and that if they do not innovate on this front they may in the long run succumb to competition. Until new research gives us better tools on how our brains can cope better with storing, structuring and processing information, simple measures can still be taken to mitigate and help better manage information overload (see Tip Box). The web itself is replete with articles and research papers on the matter. If not for the advice offered, reading through one or two of these is useful to understand that we are not alone in weathering the data deluge, and that help is at hand…from the web itself.
For the individual • Keep your emails concise and bulleted. Because it is email and we are always in a hurry, we are often tempted to just write instinctively off the top of our head. Spend that extra minute or two checking your email and empathising with your intended recipients. That might save them from having to spend several minutes to decipher your message. If necessary, extract relevant parts of a document and paste them into the email rather than sending the entire document.
Victor Camilleri
Victor Camilleri is the department manager of the Sourcing and Vendor Management Department at MITA.
liance Malta – a body which brings together decision-makers from academia, ICT industry and government. We will also tackle the issue of information overload. How often have you tried to search something off the internet and ended up with hundreds, if not thousands of results? Or have you ever tried finalising a
report but kept being interrupted by emails? Reality is that we’re living at a time where information manages to find us even in times when we’re not actively searching for it. In this week’s edition we’re including a feature article with some tips on how we can be successful in holding off information when we don’t want it.
The ability to foresee the future, even if to a certain degree, is something which every economic operator would like to posses. This will not only allow the organisation to prepare itself better but also to carry out any necessary changes that will allow it to be in a better position for the anticipated future. Besides the political, economic and social environments of where they operate, economic operators are also interested to know from beforehand what certain large organisations within their economic region are planning. Being the largest ICT organisation on the island, the Malta Information Technology Agency (MITA) has understood that its procurement plans are of interest to both local and international economic players. Therefore, since June 2009 MITA has been issuing a regular Procurement Outlook listing the intended procurement needed to fulfil the Agency’s and Government’s IT and IS needs. MITA believes that the private ICT sector has a vital role to play in the delivery and implementation of its programmes. The publication of MITA’s Procurement Outlook therefore eases participation in such tenders by giving additional time, above the tender publication period, to interested suppliers to identify a solution that can best
meet MITA’s requirements, including partnering with other large suppliers and build the relationship and trust that such projects often necessitate. This will result in the Agency engaging the best services available for Government to derive maximum value for investment. Even though the agency is very careful as to which procurements should be included in the outlook, sometimes it has no control on the issuance of these tenders in the indicated periods. In its bid to ensure that tenders are issued within the indicated periods MITA will be introducing more flexible, efficient and innovative procurement processes to eliminate these delays. All planned procurements within the Procurement Outlook are subject to revision or cancellation. The information is provided for planning purposes only and does not represent a solicitation or constitute a request for proposal. It is neither a definitive nor an exhaustive list and is compiled according to general information available to MITA on the date of publication. A new version of the Procurement Outlook listing all the intended procurement activities for the next six months will shortly be published by the Agency.
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All planned procurements within the Procurement Outlook are subject to revision or cancellation. The information is provided for planning purposes only and does not represent a solicitation or constitute a request for proposal
Joining forces for a worthy cause – the eSkills Alliance Malta Fabianne Ruggier
• Switch off your automated incoming email notification pop-up when you are doing something which requires concentration. Then set specific times during the day when you look at your mailbox. • Resist the temptation of promptly responding to an email even if you believe that it will take you a ‘few minutes’ to verify the information requested. Often those few minutes may become an hour or more. Opt for batching replies into a specific time of the day, or just politely tell your sender that you cannot respond immediately, and give a date when you are likely to revert with the requested response. • If you are not the anxious type, simply accept that you cannot read every single tweet, email and attachment you receive, or ‘be friends’ even with people you often sip coffee with in the canteen. • Be pragmatic, if filing your mail by name or topic takes up too much of your time, simply refrain from doing so, or maybe just file the key ones. Nowadays email search facilities are powerful enough to enable you to retrieve what you are looking for. Instead of triggering email pingpongs, just pick up the phone if all you require is a clarification. Or directly drag that email into your calendar and schedule a meeting if there is a need for one. Email ping-pongs become terrible time-wasters which confuse recipients often stoking misunderstandings.
Welcome to the second week of The Malta Independent ICT Feature. This week’s edition includes an article about the benefits that economic players can get by having a degree of foresight into the procurement activities of a large organisation operating within their territory. We can also read about the scope and programme of works of the eSkills Al-
Procurement Outlook – providing economic operators a degree of foresight
• Promote a culture change by showing your employees that you are aware of the need for making their life easier in the management of communications. Do so by setting the example. Do not send any blanket emails to all staff just for the sake of all-round visibility if the communication is about something of specific interest only to some. Consider adopting “email free” afternoons to give employees some relief from the interruptions and focus on their work (this ban must obviously not be extended to email traffic in and out of your organisation). • Consider integrating tools to your mail service that can optimise the user experience by prioritising, flagging, filtering out and automating traffic, or even integrating your emails and attachments within shared repositories with controlled access to specific groups of users.
The Malta Independent ICT Feature
Fabianne Ruggier is a Consultant on Human Capital and the Executive Secretary of the eSkills Alliance Malta
The scope of establishing an eSkills Alliance Malta is for Government to work closely with relevant stakeholders in determining its future policy, programmes and incentives to ensure that Malta offers the right quality and quantity of e-skills for the ICT industry to thrive and flourish. The Alliance was launched on 13 October 2010 by Hon Minister Austin Gatt in the presence of key ICT industry players, the University of Malta rector and representatives of MCAST and the private training industry. Key employers, such as 6PM, Computime, Crimsonwing, Bank of Valletta and Loqus Group are participating as Governors of the Alliance shaping the human resource requirements for the industry. The Chamber of Commerce and the Malta Employers Association, who in turn represent further ICT employers demanding e-skills, also form part of this group. The Board of Governors of the Alliance involves also decisionmakers from the supply-side of ICT education and skills such as the University of Malta, MCAST, the Malta Council for Science and Technology and the Ministry for Education, Employment and the Family. MITA is driving the working-level representatives of the Alliance through an executive committee, whilst the industry-veteran John Ambrogio is chairing the decision-makers/Governors of the Alliance. The Alliance has an important and extensive programme of works aimed at addressing the gaps and mismatches between the demand and supply of ICT professionals. The Alliance is currently discussing the creation of a Maltese e-Competence Framework and an e-skills taxonomy that defines ICT jobs and links educational pathways to an ICT career. The industry will benefit from this framework as CEOs and managers will be able to use it as a tool for the
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The Alliance executive committee is also extending the discussions it is holding at the working-level with other industry players who are not formally represented in the Alliance
management of ICT talent within their companies. On the other hand, ICT students will be able to use the framework to get a much clearer picture of what sort of skills are expected by employers for the different ICT domains and roles. Finally the framework will also serve as an official guideline for an ICT career delineating the different career progression paths and the related certification routes required. This will be highly useful for established ICT professionals who want to progress in their career and also for those individuals who want to make a career switch. The Alliance executive committee is also extending the discussions it is holding at the working-level with other industry players who are not formally represented in the Alliance. This involvement is done by nominating ambassadors from within the industry to participate in committee meetings and present the industry’s positions on different themes. One of the committee’s priorities at the moment is the setting-up of an ICT Professional Body. A body of this sort will guide ICT professionals on
the ethical standards requested by the ICT and ICT-using employers in the provisioning of services and/or products. The indigenous recognition mechanism which this body will be using in levelling the ICT profession will endow each of its members with the advantage of being a nationally reputable and trusted expert in his/her respective field in the local industry. At the working-level, the representatives of the education sector are very active. Discussions on future joint actions and programmes have been held with the Directorate for Quality and Standards in Education and the ICT Faculty at the University for closer collaboration between academia and the ICT industry. For the students, this will mean that during their educational experience they will be able to participate in initiatives which will boost their workplace knowledge and aptitudes. This translates into an increased potential for succeeding in interviews and employment opportunities because ICT employers will be more satisfied with the improved technical and soft-skills profile that these future graduates will be presenting. The members of the Alliance have joined forces to work towards the same cause. The members are in fact committed to take action today and invest time and effort to improve the public and private synergies for the improvement of the national e-skills base. The executive committee of the Alliance is looking for further industry representatives who would like to act as industry ambassadors and provide input to the creative work undertaken by the committee in devising action plans which seek to improve ICT education opportunities and strengthen the ICT profession. If you are interested in participating, send your details on eskillsalliance.mita@gov.mt