For some reason, I found myself on CNN.com today - I normally avoid "the news" like the plague.
One post that caught my eye unexpectedly was an article titled "Tape shows woman dying on waiting room floor" - which is an incredibly disturbing article. (photo source via CNN and WABC)
That the staff could be so negligent as to let a woman die in the waiting room (having been waiting nearly 24 hours, mind you) is one thing, and clearly some major changes needs to occur at this facility.
To the topic at hand however, what are the potential problems of dealing with inauthentic/false content?
Well, in this case, not only did staff (allegedly, I suppose) ignore a dying/dead woman, they altered/falsified the records of her actions/status to try to cover it up.
"Contrary to what was recorded from four different angles by the hospital's video cameras, the patient's medical records say that at 6 a.m., she got up and went to the bathroom, and at 6:20 a.m. she was 'sitting quietly in waiting room' -- more than 10 minutes since she last moved and 48 minutes after she fell to the floor."
Wow.
Do YOUR systems support verifiable, tamper-proof audit trails? Are you synchronizing the date/timestamps of related systems, such as in this case, video surveillance? In many cases, it would be unnecessary to go to such lengths, and in such dire situations as this example, but I certainly hope that the footage and records in this case can withstand scrutiny and bring justice and extreme change in this broken facility.
Can people back-date contracts in your organization? Invoices? E-mail messages? If you needed to roll-back your entire system to a certain point in time to see exactly what offers were made to who and when, could you do it? When it comes down to it, can you trust your employees, and the systems they use, to do the right thing? I hope so.