Lifting the IT Curtain

posted by Ellen Perlman

"I smiled politely but I had no idea what you were saying." So said a non-techie National Parks Service employee, referring to the cocktail chatter he's had with state CIO's and technology vendors the night before.

He mentioned his difficulty to that same audience in Miami, during a session of the annual conference of the National Association of State Chief Information Officers, which I'm attending right now.

New York State CIO Michael Mittleman commented later to the attendees, "Wasn't it embarrassing? The Park Service needed a decoder to understand what was being said last night at the reception."

You could view it as simply amusing, the inability of some techies to exit IT jargon-land. But Mittleman fears that tech people use such indecipherable language when talking to legislators. In which case the natural reaction would be a curtain descending on communication and a "no" vote on funding. "Legislators are leery of things they don't understand," Mittleman said. That's true of regular people too."

Comments

[Marty Cohn]

Every industry and specialty has its own jargon, this is not just an IT issue. The responsibility falls on the speaker to make sure the person or group he is speaking to understands what he's saying. The successful speaker is able to set aside any technical jargon that the audience may not understand and explain in language that can be understood by a lay person.

[Christopher Swope]

I agree with Marty, but I think the IT people are more guilty than other fields. It's not just that they throw around acronyms like CRM. It's that what lies beneath the shorthand--"customer relationship management" system--is itself very technical and requires much explanation to understand. Marty's right, though: know your audience. There's more room for jargon at a NASCIO conference than, well, anywhere else.