Comments for Frictionless Business Ecosystems

Comment on Why we work with LIXI (pt. 1) by Why we work with LIXI (pt. 2) → Frictionless Business Ecosystems

Why we work with LIXI (pt. 2) → Frictionless Business Ecosystems — Sun, 21 Mar 2010 13:11:54 +0000

[...] the previous post I described how the Australian lending industry was a great example of friction-loaded business [...]

Comment on Friction: A Recap and Overview by Why we work with LIXI (pt. 1) → Frictionless Business Ecosystems

Why we work with LIXI (pt. 1) → Frictionless Business Ecosystems — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 13:18:19 +0000

[...] That’s at least nine different, operationally independent parties involved in handling your new property purchase, and clearly a classic example of a business ecosystem. Those with an eye for process efficiency will also recognise at least nine sources of transactional (Type 1) friction, not counting those activities within an organisation that may also be friction-loaded. (This, and the other forms of friction were described in the previous post.) [...]

Comment on Welcome by Friction: A Recap and Overview → Frictionless Business Ecosystems

Friction: A Recap and Overview → Frictionless Business Ecosystems — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 13:14:55 +0000

[...] the very first post on this site I described how our team’s R&D work was concerned with reducing friction in [...]

Comment on Avoiding the ‘Meltdown Scenario’ by Seeking industry validation partners → Frictionless Business Ecosystems

Seeking industry validation partners → Frictionless Business Ecosystems — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 13:35:07 +0000

[...] is piece of software that sits (non-intrusively) within a service-oriented IT environment and helps avoid the meltdown scenario, complimenting our performance modeling and simulation technology. It can sense ‘trouble’ – [...]

Comment on Business rules and forms processing by Validating your business rules → Frictionless Business Ecosystems

Validating your business rules → Frictionless Business Ecosystems — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 13:14:25 +0000

[...] the previous post I described the nascent need for business rules and their implementation in new software systems. [...]

Comment on Head in the clouds (part 1) by Dr. Anna Liu, Project Leader, NICTA Business Adaptation and Interoperation → Frictionless Business Ecosystems

Sun, 31 Jan 2010 22:57:23 +0000

[...] was only about 6 weeks ago that I reported on Anna’s position as contributed staff from UNSW (although some months earlier than that when [...]

Comment on Head in the clouds (part 1) by John Brondum

John Brondum — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 22:21:49 +0000

Companies have outsourced resources, applications and whole business units for at least a decade or more, and as such the security concerns are no difference to those of Cloud Computing . The difference is probably more a question of (perceived) control, but the real question for both is more about who has access (both in terms of regulatory and privacy) and how the access control is enforced (both IT and policy matter) than a question of where the data is hosted. Data can be hosted in Australia, but potentially equally accessible by support staff from Australia, Brazil, Ireland, China, India or anywhere else in the World – no difference (assuming fast Internet connection). Regulatory access is probably the only aspect where location plays a (significant) role.

And I also think that there is an emotional aspect to all of this – we think we know what’s ‘local’ (e.g., Australian), whereas Cloud Computing is ‘global’ and therefore inherently less known = less trustworthy.

Comment on Vested interests by Paul M.

Paul M. — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 23:06:51 +0000

Thanks Nick, and I’m sorry it’s taken me longer to follow this up than intended.
I’m certain there are more factors than the described vested interests that are sources of e-commerce (and e-health) friction. And certainly I wouldn’t want to trivialise all of the other economic, political and technical challenges with creating a straight-through processing world for personal healthcare-related data. The goal of the original piece of course was merely to highlight this one, important, source of friction.
On the issue of incentives and helping people be healthier, I would have thought the argument was simple: If an EHR system reduces to nearly zero the probability of a healthcare worker making an error with my diagnosis and treatment, then I’d pay some reasonable premium in my health insurance or Medicare levy for that.

Comment on Vested interests by Nick Carr

Nick Carr — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 03:26:41 +0000

Paul, I’m not sure about the ‘vested interests’ argument. I feel like it relies on too many disconnected parties cooperating to be plausible.

Lately I’ve been reading a bit about IT and transaction costs. To me this connection plausibly explains a why an investment in technology can sometimes increase costs rather than reduce them. I think this is where healthcare is.

http://www.instant-science.net/pub/tracost.pdf

Computerizing health transactions won’t be cheaper if the move to technology increases uncertainty. Proving security, certifying the people viewing the data and tracking everywhere data has been used and by who is actually going to be pretty hard.

Until people get an economic incentive to a) accept responsibility for managing their own EHR and b) take some risk with privacy, it is hard to see healthcare being computerized.

As an aside but along the same lines, it seems very rare for this discussion to ever focus on how computerizing will help people be healthier. Until the discussion moves from industry costs to to incentives and rewards to the consumer, I can’t see the change happening.

Comment on Vested interests by Paul M.

Paul M. — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 03:29:50 +0000

Thanks for this contribution, Brett.
I’d like to have a look at those cases. The ASX one in particular looks pertinent.
Regarding electronic conveyancing and NECS, I think we are seeing an interesting piece of technology ecosystem history being played out. I’m not qualified to comment on the ‘duplicate certificate of title’ issue of course – I gather this is something intimately familiar to conveyancers and land titles offices. But whatever the problem, if it can be resolved and the NECS successfully delivered and adopted, (yes – a lot of ‘ifs’ in there!) it has the potential to be a world class example of infrastructure reform on a whole of industry scale.