Policy Wonks
Later, the term was applied to people who became intense experts on government policy, thus inspiring the term "policy wonk." But there exists a different type of policy wonk in IT.
An IT policy wonk is somebody who is tasked with crafting the rules and regulations associated with using IT technology. Take, for instance, the rules associated with how much storage is allocated to a given user or the specific security protocols that a company decides to put in place. Those rules are crafted by anonymous IT policy wonks.
A lot of these people spend an inordinate amount of time studying, implementing and policing IT policies. In fact, when you think about it, IT policies are really a superset of the traditional rules put in place to govern systems, networks, applications, storage, security and identity management—coupled with a raft of new regulations covering how information is shared and accessed.
But at this rate, even our policies will soon have policies.
So the time has come to start thinking about how to automate the whole policy management space before we all become, well, wonks. That's the opportunity that Symantec Chairman and CEO John Thompson is going after by merging his company with Veritas Software. That's the opportunity that newly appointed Computer Associates President and CEO-elect John Swainson is after. And you can bet that everyone from IBM Software Group Senior Vice President Steve Mills to BMC Software President and CEO Bob Beauchamp is thinking about the same thing.
In effect, their collective goal is to outwonk the wonks by creating new tools to automate policy management, thereby reducing the total number of wonks we need in IT. Essentially, they're all betting that businesspeople will pay a premium to manage their systems and deal with compliance issues with as few wonks as possible. In short, nobody likes a wonk, and as such, they are now officially an endangered species in IT.
What's your word on wonks? I can be reached at (516) 562-7477 or via e-mail at [email protected].