Radical Meldrew

Suburbs

Common Sense Distributor

Yes technology has indeed made us reliant on various IT driven reporting processes and mechanisms. This was acceptable at the time of its introduction....most people understood the process before IT took over these tasks. A few years down the line however, we get box ticking, button pushers who now have no requirement to understand the process other than 'do this every morning' and everything will be fine. When it suddenly isn't fine.....panic ensues.
As you suggested - IT is an aide to, not a replacement of, the human factor. We should always strive to maintain the capability to manually intervene and add a contingency plan to the overall process to prevent any IT dependency which is a single point of failure. Unfortunately modern day management have short-sightedly taken this option away by deliberately deploying poorly trained staff because they are cheap and easy to keep under control. When their technological crutch gives way there is a resigned no can do attitude from almost everyone, "It's broke and IT are working on it...OK?" is all you get from the button pushers and "Let's wait and see, I think we can trust IT to deliver" from management. IT and their systems instantly become the scapegoat when in fact it's the lack of forethought from the business administrators that really should be taking the bulk of the criticism.