Bono Pastore = Good Shepherd

This is what we aim to be at Onega. We work with organisations to help deliver smooth IT and related services. We like working with people and machines, and fixing issues. Even better than this we like to prevent problems from happening in the first place.

Before anyone asks we're certainly not likening our clients to quadrupedal, ruminant mammals of genus Ovis, nor do we walk on water. What we are saying is that much of IT, like many other things is about procedures, routine and best practice. Watching over a flock is about patience and care. Not glamorous but important. 

In the same vein, here at Onega, we are thus planning to address a number of IT focus areas with clients during the course of 2016. The pattern we plan to set and repeat here will be as follows:

1. Identify key areas of IT that may cause risks for clients.
2. Ensure we have best practice solutions and procedures available to address these.
3. Communicate the focus area and engage with clients to address this.
4. Create and fill out appropriate checklists so that we capture any relevant information and actions.
5. Agree on a plan to resolve any issues; so that things are brought as close to optimal as practicable and document exceptions where there are good reasons why not.

During the course of these processes we well be looking at the same aspects of IT operations across multiple clients so we have the benefit of scale in the effort and the team will be well briefed on the task at hand to ensure you are getting good advice.  The outcome should be more robust systems implementations, documented procedures and policies, and documented systems and responsibilities. 

The engagement that Onega has with clients varies widely. For some clients we manage entire IT estates and systems, and for others we provide ad hoc assistance as you need us. Thus, one of the first parts of an effort is establishing the relevance of an area of IT to a client, who is responsible for this aspect and who will carry out the work and under which contract.

We fully expect that not every proposed Bono Pastore engagement will be relevant to every client so where you are happy to take care of something yourself this is documented, and where you'd like our assistance in a matter big or small we are happy to help with that. One big benefit for everyone is that the process should help make everyone aware of aspects and ensure that any ambiguity in responsibilities (or duplication of effort) is addressed and removed. 

The first pass of this series of best practice benchmarking exercises is due to start soon with DNS - Domain Name Services. This is one of the underpinnings of the Internet and something we use every day for conduct of business. Thus it is one that affects just about all clients so expect a post and for us to be in touch about this. We may even make it a podcast topic soon to go into more detail. We're mindful that we should communicate more about what we do as much of good IT, if done right, will not be seen but contributes to things 'just working'. This is ideal but far from universal so we should resist the trap of complacency just as the good shepherd keeps vigilant watch. The wolf is ever hungry but will find tonight's meal elsewhere.