Yesterday when I was watching the news, lo and behold, there was another story about the e-Health imbroglio. This time it was about a consultant not having a contract setting out terms and deliverables. Why was this raised? Well because she had completed the work and then it was identified that she couldn't get paid because no contract existed between e-Health and this individual.
Cut to the final scene....after multiple emails back and forth between senior level people, it was finally decided that as she had done the work, regardless of whether a contract existed she was to be paid.
This is a regular practice in private sector and I'm sure that if one looked hard enough (or maybe even not so hard) you'd find it in public as well. And the pitfalls are enormous.
I have been decrying this for years (and have a flat forehead from
banging my head against the wall) trying to get people to understand the massive risk undertaken. For example, if there is no contract, there is no confidentiality. If there is no contract, intellectual property is swinging in the wind. If there is no contract, if the services/goods do not perform what they were supposed to...too bad, the organization is on the hook to pay. If there is no contract, the organization maintains all the liability associated with the performance of the goods and services....And so on.
I have seen the bad and the ugly of this situation. Now on the other hand...many contracts are way too onerous and take too long to negotiate, about piddly, non-meaning things, which are in a contract just because (perhaps to make sure lawyers get paid). So simplification of contracts should occur too -- shouldn't be a one size fits all scenario.
And what other lesson was learned by this most recent issue at e-Health? That talking to colleagues is better than emailing, because emails can come back to haunt you!
Cut to the final scene....after multiple emails back and forth between senior level people, it was finally decided that as she had done the work, regardless of whether a contract existed she was to be paid.
This is a regular practice in private sector and I'm sure that if one looked hard enough (or maybe even not so hard) you'd find it in public as well. And the pitfalls are enormous.
I have been decrying this for years (and have a flat forehead from
banging my head against the wall) trying to get people to understand the massive risk undertaken. For example, if there is no contract, there is no confidentiality. If there is no contract, intellectual property is swinging in the wind. If there is no contract, if the services/goods do not perform what they were supposed to...too bad, the organization is on the hook to pay. If there is no contract, the organization maintains all the liability associated with the performance of the goods and services....And so on.I have seen the bad and the ugly of this situation. Now on the other hand...many contracts are way too onerous and take too long to negotiate, about piddly, non-meaning things, which are in a contract just because (perhaps to make sure lawyers get paid). So simplification of contracts should occur too -- shouldn't be a one size fits all scenario.
And what other lesson was learned by this most recent issue at e-Health? That talking to colleagues is better than emailing, because emails can come back to haunt you!
1 comment:
"...talking to colleagues is better than emailing, because emails can come back to haunt you!"
Not if destroy the back-ups as well as the originals. The former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney is now the Patron Saint of Destroying Email.
He managed to 'disappear' at least hundreds of thousands of emails, which were legally supposed to be retained as part of the G.W. Bush Presidential Record.
Somehow I'm not exactly astonished to discover people associated with the Ontario government haven't yet clued in to email and computers.
After all, this was e-Health, as in electronic-Health, right?
-=[ breaks up laughing ]=-
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