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Dear Sacha,
I hope the new year finds you well and safe.
Safety.
It's also a word we have thrown at us all too often, lately. So
often, in fact, that it isn't difficult to become desensitized.
You really have to wonder whether you should write most people off as
alarmists or whether you really should consider becoming
paranoid. Unfortunately, people wouldn't be throwing around
"safety" so freely if it weren't important.
So, today, rather throw more safety facts at you I'd like to invite you to a little thought exercise.
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| What is Safety? |
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A thought exercise
That is the question. What is safety?
The
context, naturally, is online safety. Specifically, safety
concerning bids submitted electronically. It is one of the
biggest sticking points about going completely online for many many
people and departments, so the question is, "How does one make
e-bidding safe?"
The trick to answering this question isn't in
knowing the available technology. Technology is a means to an
end. You need to define that end. Once you have done that
you can look for the technology needed to achieve your goal.
One of the first things you'll want is a way for the e-bid to reach you safetly. We'll look at this by way of a tangent.
Consider
the automobile. The patent for the first car was given out in
1886. The basic item that allows you reach your destination
safely in a car is the seat belt. The first seat belts were
advocated in 1930 and the first state to make seat belts a requirement
was California, in 1954. These early belts, especially the lap
belt, definitely had their problems. The three-point seat belt we
know today didn't come into use until the 1970s.
The 1970s. Nearly a century after the first patent for an automobile was issued.
Today
things move a little quicker. Nonetheless, secure sockets layer
(SSL) wasn't developed until 1994 and its problems were not ironed out
until 1996. Now, try to remember the first time you heard of SSL
(or encryption on the Internet, in general) and how much longer it was
before you understood what it was, much less wanted to see it
used. SSL, like the seat belt, gets the message from one place to
another securely.
Today everyone knows about this basic security
precaution. But that is precisely what it is: a basic
standard. It is good, certainly, but is it good enough for what
you want? This deserves some thought.
The next thing to
consider is what to do with the e-bid once it has been safely
delivered. Do you want it to be an e-mail that sits in someone's
inbox? Is that good enough? Is it safe enough?
This
is where the real thinking needs to begin. Ideally the e-bids
should be just as safe once they arrive as they were while getting
there - perhaps an electronic version of a lockbox or safe. Once
you've determined the best way to keep the e-bids safe, you can work
backwards to figure out how the bids should be delivered. E-mail
is easy and everyone knows how to use it, but it may not be (very
probably isn't) the best way to go about it.
The best way may ultimately be a system, such as the ElectronicTender System (ETS) is. After all, if safety and security were easy everyone would already be doing it.
Of
course the ETS is only one possible solution, even if it is the best on
demand solution currently available. You may well think of
something even better, and if you do I encourage you to let me
know! Any ideas you have can only help us to improve our own.
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Identifying
a need is the best way to effect change. A thought exercise like
this, if you'd like to do it properly, will take time. With a few
minutes here and there it may take days or even weeks to reach a
complete answer, but this is an answer we need sooner or later.
The world is going online, and dragging the event out longer than it
must is going to hurt much more than it'll help.
Sincerely,
Sacha Hartmann
YSER Inc.
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