Ground up IT strategy

Constraints

  • Few resources
    • To pay for IT
    • To package/maintain/install IT
    • To configure for use
    • To train users

Institutional Problems

The Meatware

  • User intransigence
    • technological: don’t understand/like new technology imposed on us; we have change fatigue
    • Technical: trained to be inflexible; formal;
    • Lawyers don’t write well. Legal drafting is convoluted, over particularised, and therefore prone to negotiation and error
  • User knowledge is imperfect
    • Individuals who don’t understand policies are incentivised to apply them literally (being institutionally short an option - see below)
    • Institutional Knowledge: Generally is good (UBS turnover is comparatively low) but we leak institutional knowledge and it is not tracked and captured.
  • Institutional knowledge is poor
    • We don’t track our decisions - no MI kept on litigation close shaves; which issues come up and which don’t.
  • Legal department’s institutional position: Being a control function, Legal is “short an option” - will get no credit for approving a deal that is successful; will be criticised for failing to approving a deal which encounters any legal issues.
    • Important to carefully differentiate legal from commercial issues and allocate ownership correctly.

The firmware

  • Bad static data (inaccurate; unreliable)
  • Bad legal standards (overcomplicated; commercially unrealistic; out of date)
  • Bad templates (too many; overcomplicated; inconsistent; out of date)
  • Bad taxonomies

Opportunities

  • Data we don’t use: All historical departmental email: - a rich source of indexable institutional knowledge - this resource should not be restricted to use in conducting.
  • Underused/misunderstood existing tools -
    • Sharepoint
    • Microsoft Word/Excel
    • Workshare
  • Opportunities to enhance/improve existing tools
    • TADH
  • Easy implementation to enhance interaction and connectivity
    • “Business Data Catalogs” to interrogate external databases from within Sharepoint
    • Application Interfaces (“API”s)