New columnist Walter May takes a sideways look at technology.

We live in an increasingly IT dominated world.  Popular opinion suggests we are liberated by being connected 24/7, constantly in touch via laptops, iPads and smart phones (according to a recent report from Ofcom one third of UK adults now use smartphones).  On-demand, on-the-move seems to be the mantra of the 21st century generation and a small percentage of us baby boomers.

Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are the platforms on which we build our professional and social lives.  Increasingly we are also watching internet TV via mobile devices using the BBC’s iPlayer, etc.

Happily and seemingly with little of no restraint, we give up our personal details and information on our likes and dislikes, needs and wants to those unseen, unknown data analysts who categorise each of us via some demographic algorithm or criteria that feed ads and other promotions aimed at appealing to our purchasing preferences.

Whilst we accept that this is the price we pay for free access to the world of the internet and popular TV, there are other areas of our personal IT world that impact us in less obvious ways.

Have you ever been frustrated by trying to meet a deadline only to find your PC runs incredibly slow or locks up, ultimately resulting in a complete reboot in the hope that the problem goes away? We shrug our shoulders until the next time we are forced to do the same, no wiser than before.

Why is it that external processes such as updates and other intrusive, even sinister, applications are given higher priority use of your computer memory and disk space, leaving you increasingly frustrated waiting for a response from a web page or a painfully slow graphics application? Are you left thinking, “it’s my computer, I paid for it and I seem to have little say on how it is being used”?

Ever felt someone, somewhere is creating this situation for commercial gain?

If poor customer service or product failure can be confidently attributed to the supplier, then that organisation will suffer the consequences in terms of a lowering of turnover and profit. However, in the network and increasingly ‘cloud’ dominated application environment, we cannot easily assess good or poor service or attribute blame when things go wrong.

Is the problem related to the hardware, software, network, ISP, virus, spyware, etc?  It sometimes feels like you are a victim of a conspiracy to force premature replacement of a perfectly functioning product. If you think that’s a little far fetched, remember the millennium bug?

The fear of IT meltdown at midnight on December 31st 1999 forced the biggest IT investment ever seen. Application software providers and IT consultants cashed in, in a big way, as every responsible business the world over scrambled to replace their business critical systems and migrate their data. Once the date had passed without incident, IT Directors breathed a sigh of relief, patted themselves on the back and moved on – not wanting to reflect on if the threat was real or an IT industry con.

Can anything be done to remedy the progressively poor performance of your PC?  Investing in tune-up software, in my experience, suggests not.

We all know who stands to gain when a 2 to 4 year old PC stops performing to the point where increasing frustration and declining personal productivity forces you to buy a new one.

Is it always wise to switch off automatic updates (surrendering the benefits of additional functionality and a shiny new interface) and/or disable your resource-hungry anti-virus software, or are we too risk averse when it comes to our IT dependent world?

The call for openness and transparency is being echoed in many aspects of our daily lives (banking, politics, media) so let’s end the fear, uncertainty and doubt regarding how our personal networked PC’s (which an increasing number of home-based self-employed people are relying on for their income) are being utilised to the benefit of others, often to the computer owner’s detriment and cost.

I for one would like more control on how my critically important gateway to the outside world is used with easy-to-use and understand management tools to ensure I maximise my personal productivity and return on investment.

I am always amazed to hear of air crash victims so badly mutilated that they have to be identified by their dental records. What I cannot understand is if they don’t know who you are, how do they know who your dentist is?

This analysis is rather tentatively linked to the issue of health, in particular why small businesses are affected more than others when staff go sick.

For labour-intensive small businesses, the biggest single efficiency improvement available is likely to be the reduction of sickness absence. Yet many small firms overlook its importance and fail to put in place sufficiently robust systems to reduce ill health absenteeism.

The vast majority of sickness absence – 80 per cent of it – relates to short-term episodes, caused by such things as colds, coughs, flu and minor back pains. The cost of illness absenteeism averages £476 per employee, or a loss of £12 billion to the national economy.

At present, the provision of sickness certification for illness lasting more than a week remains part of a GP’s contractual duties. But research just published by the British Medical Journal shows just how halfheartedly and inaccurately GPs fulfill the task.

Key research conclusions show that GPs have a conflict of interest between their roles as patient advocate and benefits gatekeeper, that different doctors adopt greatly varying approaches to their role.

Almost all doctors interviewed in the study spoke of the underlying conflict of interest, with most believing that their patient loyalty outweighs any responsibility for reliable certification.

Many suggested that refusing to provide a sickness certificate to a patient would put them in a very difficult position. One GP, not unique, spoke of adopting ‘no discrimination at all’, providing certificates to anyone who wanted one.

These findings were backed by the editor of Doctor magazine, who was quoted by the BBC as saying that he knew of one surgery which had a pile of signed sickness certificates waiting on the reception desk to be handed out to any patient who wanted one.

The approach of doctors is underpinned by a common resentment at having to do the job of sickness certification at all. Their representative body, the British Medical Association, has long campaigned for the task to be moved away from GPs, enabling them to be freed up to see and treat those patients who genuinely need help.

The act of seeing a GP when a patient has merely a bad cold or the flu can be counter-productive – they may just need to stay in bed for a day, but struggling into a doctor’s practice may make them more ill, or spread the virus.

From the employer’s point of view, the current process might be considered worse than useless. It provides them with often false information on the health of an employee, while perhaps encouraging staff not to return quickly simply because they have, in effect, a doctor’s permission to take a week or two off work.

In future, sickness certification could form part of the role of occupational health centres, many of which could be based within larger workplaces.

Employers such as Peugeot and Coca Cola have already expressed interest in hosting centres with certification responsibilities, in which company doctors will decide whether an employee is fit to work. Small firms might join independent services, some of which may even operate within existing GP practices – but run by nurses who are occupational health specialists. Some £10 million is being set aside to finance pilot occupational health centres.

Such a change would not only provide employers with more accurate information, but would also improve communication between the certificate issuer and employer.