I think no one group of professionals is more sensitive to the tacit agreement society has made with technology than ours. Tech plays a significant role in modern society and has had a profound impact on how people live, work, and communicate.

Another of those impacts is how, or if, we become educated. 

The Des Moines Public Schools canceled classes for Tuesday, January 10th due to a cyber security incident. Earlier on Monday, the district experienced an internet outage across its campuses due to unusual activity on the network and took the network offline as a preemptive measure.

The impact: Many of the technology tools needed for both classroom learning and the management and operation of the school district are not available at this time.

In our profession, these things are nightmare fuel, and we feel for the good folks of Des Moines.

On any day, small problems can become big problems causing systemic failure. This occurs when a small problem is part of a larger system, and the failure of that small part leads to the failure of the entire system, highlighting the need for us to be involved in a number of projects and business areas.

And systemic failures, though unavoidable at times, are the reason we continue to work diligently to craft plans and workarounds of the continued operation of our organizations.