Three barriers to human service
There are a number of barriers in an organization or any business setting that mitigates the efficiency of the entire human resource in an organization. These barriers in essence affect the daily activities of an organization, a factor that contributes to reduction in the production rate of these organizations.
Barriers influence a wide range of the organization spheres such as: planning, empowerment and even funding of the organization in question. An organization strategic planning committee or any other relevant body responsible for overseeing these issues is thus obliged to find the best possible solution to these inherent barriers of human service.
Technology came in handy to aid in the process of dealing with barriers to effective service delivery. Use of technology can increase or decrease the efficiency of a company depending on how it is employed to solve these problems (Patterson, 2000).
The modern world has almost entirely adopted technology in various fields of human service. If used effectively, technology can eliminate or reduce significantly any barriers to human services that may be eminent in the course of duty. Technology can thus enhance resilience from any difficulty that may result in a business setting.
This paper will succinctly and exhaustively select and discuss three barriers to human service that are evident in any organization’s setting. These barriers are; privacy to health information, fiscal planning and communication respectively. The paper will further discuss the weaknesses of these barriers and their possible solution using technology.
Privacy of health information
Despite the fact that technology has aided medicine development in the recent past, the challenge has been about the new system that will see the mapping of patient private information in the Internet.
According to Chinna (2005) the aim of this decision is based on the fact that making patients medical history readily available in the Internet will ease a doctor’s work in case of illness. The information will provide details of the patient’s medical status and diseases that they have suffered from in the past. This in the end will reduce the doctor’s workload of accessing the medical history of patients.
The overall effect of availing such medical details on the Internet is a reduction of the cost of health care and increased life expectancy of the country’s population. According to critics however, availability of such information will ultimately infringe on the patients rights to privacy. Insurance companies can use information available on the Internet to calculate amounts of premium to charge their clients. Such information on the Internet can also be used maliciously by ill intended people in other areas of economy.
Fiscal planning
Fiscal planning is one of the most important and sensitive area in all organizations. Financial scandals and unethical presentation of financial information to the public, is a gross violation of auditing standards. It is evident that shareholders base their decision on information presented to them by the auditors.
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (Wrugler, 2004) was passed as a result of increasing financial related scandals like the Enron and Tyco international companies. These companies downplayed their financial status and hence misled the public on their decision making process.
Absolute financial disclosure, corporate ethics and social responsibility were the aim of this enactment. Despite this federal enactment, financial scandals are still on the rise in several sectors of the economy, a factor that is becoming an inherent barrier to human service.
Communication
The most fundamental basis of any organization or any other business entity is proper communication within and without the company’s premises. Communication bridges the gap created by geographical location of an individual or a company. In that sense, the development of communication over the past centuries has been the priority of man as the world grows towards a common global economy. Communication will always be used to break any barriers of human service as it has been done in the past.
Despite the recent development of communication, there has been a rising concern of security and privacy of the communication channels that are being employed. A good example is the developed Wireless Local Area Network. Hackers and adversaries can easily interrupt the communication medium which is normally the air in this case. This is more often done by employing home made Base Station (BS) equipment able to intercept the range of frequencies being transmitted over a given area.
A number of password cracker software at the disposal of these adversaries enables eavesdropping without any difficulty. The other most employed medium of communication is the router; (a layer three switches) normally employed in Internetworking and is thus global in its implementation. Configuration of these routers that carry important information may be altered and information being transmitted by the device compromised.
Use of technology to overcome these barriers
Technology can be employed in the solution of these human barriers discussed above. There are a number of steps that can be taken with the help of technology to solve these problems. These steps are detailed in the next deliberation.
Privacy of health information
The health information of patients is important in the prevention and administration of medication. Such information should however not be made public, a state that infringes on the privacy of the patient. Technology can be employed to ensure that the provided information about a patient is barred from public viewing.
One step to realize this is using private websites to store this information. In this case, password and username can only be accessed by the patients and their physicians. Secure servers with Linux based firewalls can be a secure place for this kind of private information. Proper authentication by encryption of the data bundle transmitting this information will also be imperative in ensuring that the information is absolutely secure (Jon, 2005).
Fiscal planning
The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and the case of Enron and Tyco International are just but a few examples of how poor fiscal management in a country can alter the decision making process of the public. The then president Bush Walker was forced to pass the act to safeguard the public interest and promote transparency and ethical revelation of vital financial details of any company in the United States. Technology can however be put in use in to ensure that such cases do not occur in future.
Technology can be used in a number of ways in to ensure ethical revelation of a company’s financial status. The government can keep track of the daily financial status of all the companies in the United States in a real time basis. This can be done by creating a database of all the companies in the stock exchange.
After creation of the database, a link of the financial histories and the current trends of these companies can then be availed to the government database. Any financial changes that occur in the stock exchange or at an annual presentation of the 10-K fiscal statement can be subsequently recorded and monitored. Real time updated software can be developed using the modern designing equipment like the PHP and Python tools.
The software will be customized to ease the task of the end user by making it more interactive and easy to use. A government representative that will be accessing the software will be able to report any case of unscrupulous transaction or an attempt to manipulate financial documents. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act will take its course in such situation to ensure that justice is done to the public.
Communication
Despite the fact that communication is vital to the wellbeing of a company or any organization responsible for the provision of human service, its breach is fatal. Its violation can not only act as a barrier to communication and subsequent provision of human service but also a security compromise.
It is thus important to ensure that all communication protocols necessary in the communication process are secured. The use of the router responsible for routing information and should be properly configured and the intended users (Internet Protocol) IP be identified and the message delivered.
This will ensure that the recipient of information is the intended receiver. On the other hand, the use of network monitoring hardware and software combination should be enhanced to detect and stop network IP trackers. A more intense scrabbling of the IP header containing vital information should be done using software designed for this purpose to ensure that the information is properly concealed and confidential if it falls on the hand of the hackers.
The use of Wireless Local Area Network in an organization should be properly scrambled and password authenticated to limit the network to the right people. The information being transmitted by air should be encapsulated and encrypted with intense signal protection guide that interferes with a foreign signal frequency being transmitted to the wireless antenna.
The emerging signal should in essence be compressed to a frequency range outside the range of wireless network without compromising on the integrity and the quality of the signal being transmitted. The foreign signal searcher will therefore detect an invalid frequency and thus fail to maliciously intercept the signal.
Conclusion
As evidently discussed in this paper, there are three barriers to human services discussed in-depth. These barriers which can be solved through technology are: health privacy, fiscal planning and communication. This paper has succinctly and exhaustively discussed these barriers to human service and provided adequate measures to take in order to improve human service through technology. Technology can be used to improve communication privacy, health information privacy and up to date fiscal planning as discussed in details.
References
Chinna, N.(2005). The Impact of the Internet on Health care services. Journal of American Academy of Business. 7( 2) 247-252.
Jon, M & James, P. (2005, August 1). The risks of healthcare IT. Modern Healthcare. 35(31), 1-22. Retrieved from ProQuest database.
Patterson, D. A. (2000). Personal computer applications in the social services. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Wrugler, D. (2004). Technology and human service (9th ed.).California: F.A. Patrick’s Company.