I was reading a couple of interesting articles in the latest issue of The Economist. That's why I subscribe to it -- every issue is just about guaranteed to have something in it that will tell me something that I didn't know, usually about someplace or something or some one that I didn't even know existed.

One item, an article titled "cold killer applications", talks about how businesses are beginning to rate the probability of financial return from the Information technology projects that they undertake. Its been no secret for years that IT projects tend to be started and run based almost entirely on the desires of the people who work in that area. It was a big deal when people started pointing out, years ago, that it didn't make sense to let these people (of whom I am one) to decide what to do, without any business oversight; it would be like letting the people who maintain the automotive fleet decide what kind of cars and trucks to buy without ever finding out what they were going to be used for. Well, apparently, that basic concept is now serving as the launching point for a better analysis of IT projects, with projects subject to not only evaluation based on when they will earn back the money spent on them, but also being subject to competition for funding, and periodic reevaluation. This is a good thing, though like any other good thing, it can be overdone -- make a political football out of funding, and unsexy but necessary infrastructure work might never happen; do a periodic review and you might find that many projects start, eat some money, and are canceled. Its not a black and white good thing, but it is still a good thing -- and I'm amazed that its still not common. But it did get me to thinking - briefly - about my own job, and how I would justify the money spent on me. I've heard it say that if you don't earn back your salary every year, then you're a net loss to the company. I know that’s not true, because there are positions -- mine's one of them - that earn no money at all, yet they're needed. But at some point it must be true.

I’m not so sure about a second article, on the large and growing problem in underfunded pensions. The concluding point of the article is that companies should not have to worry about people after they leave the employ of the company. It’s the responsibility of someone else -- possibly the government, possibly the people themselves -- to make those long term decisions, or to hire people to do it for them. I tend to agree, but I see three problems with the ‘let the people do it’ philosophy. First, many people, certainly most in the bottom part of the net-worth and earning scale, don’t have much of a clue how to value pension schemes -- and given the recent and ongoing accounting problems, scheme is frequently exactly the right word. Second, these same people can’t afford to hire someone, unless that someone is very, very cheap -- and you get what you pay for, or, at least, if you don’t pay, you don’t get much. And third, if people do make these decisions, and fail, who will have to step in as fixer of last resort? The government. So it would seem to make sense that they have some degree of involvement up front.