Infinite Path

It seems that the government’s new swine flu information site buckled under the pressure of millions of users on its first day since its launch. Nine million people logged onto the site in the first hour and the site crashed almost instantly.

It would appear that even the government cannot access resources powerful enough to cope with that sort of extreme usage.

It is thought that the flu pandemic will level out over the summer months before coming back with a vengeance in the autumn and winter.

If this is the case, will sufficient technology provision be made to enable the government to cope with what will almost certainly be even more pressure on the information sites?

Technology simply has to work hard in this sort of scenario. Systems and processes have to be watertight, especially if the health service wants to limit actual human contact as much as possible. The government and any other organisations involved in planning of this sort must make good use of what is available and ensure that, where possible, problems don’t occur.

In a world where our technology dependence is at such a level that we expect the delivery of information to be lightning-quick, it is essential that our services can live up to expectations.

The sophisticated technology available to us allows for information to be shared easily, processes to be well-managed, and people to have their exact moves mapped out. However, if we become complacent and the technology fails, our dependence will lead to panic, hysteria and major errors because we simply don’t know how to cope without it.