Every few months my wife and I have a party. Apart from the goodness of
seeing friends, it also forces us to get the house cleaned up. A good thing all
around.
It is in this same spirit that Stephen Ashton, director of Global IT business management
at the investment bank Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein says that Sarbanes-Oxley
is good for IT. (See the article, "Sarbanes-Oxley
‘Good for IT‘", by Andrew Donahue published yesterday by ZDNet
UK.) Despite having 10% to 15% of the banks total headcount currently
committed to compliance ( !! ), Ashton feels that the gain is greater
than the pain. “We have just completed a data center review. The thing that came out of it was that we have
tons of information but very little knowledge. There is a lot of partial and inaccurate data in our
systems." Ashton also talked of now having to invest in bringing
together disconnected "silos" of information that had just developed
over time, without planning. Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein is now
investing in cataloging and integrating this information to make it useful.
We don’t really decide to have parties to get the house cleaned up. But
it is a nice side-effect. Are readers finding good side-effects of
Sarbanes-Oxley compliance?
