[cap-talk] In Defense of Identities - not

[Marc Stiegler]

I have seen this too. But I have never seen nor heard of an organization 
that, once having signed a pen to you, required that you go back to the 
stock clerk to keep the audit trail straight when the guy in the cube 
next to you asked to borrow the pen. Or when you lent a pen to your 
subordinate so he could sign the paperwork you had just handed him. This 
is the real analogy: we're talking about a second delegation of an 
authority that has already been delegated to you. Everyone assumes you 
can have the wisdom and responsible attitude necessary to re-delegate 
your authority, not just with pens, but with items of equipment of 
substantial value, without more paperwork. Good thing, too, because the 
stock clerk has far less info than you with which to make wise decisions 
on further levels of delegation.

--marcs

Jonathan S. Shapiro wrote:
> On Tue, 2006-12-05 at 21:00 -0500, Sandro Magi wrote:
>> Exactly. Maybe I should have brought up this analogy before: why don't
>> businesses have sysadmins for delegating access to paper and pens ? They
>> are just as much business assets as computer resources (server and desktop).
> 
> In many businesses, they *do*. They are called stockroom clerks. At
> AT&T, for example, every box of pens you got from the stock room had to
> be signed for, and if you grabbed too many people would ask why.
> 
> Over time this was dropped for items below a certain cost threshold.
> 
> So I would say that the asset value is the main thing in deciding what
> to audit.