Is the Internet Official?

Last week I heard of a lady working for large Malawian organisation being less than enthusiastic to perform her duties as per her new job description. Reason? The job description had been communicated to her by email. "I got the job description by email," she challenged, adding, "Is that official?"

Whatever anybody may say about the Internet or its applications such as email, we cannot deny its dominance over traditional means of communication. Postal services are shrinking at an alarming rate the world over because of the Internet. Postal service providers are having to diversity into new areas such as financial services, stationery, courier, to mention but a few, as a survival strategy.

It is therefore alarming, to say the least, that anybody in this day and age can question the legtimacy of communication sent via email. It probably exposes some deep-rooted inflexibility on the part of those having doubts as to whether communication sent by email is official.

Some people have serious misgivings about tasks performed with the aid of a computer. I know of a seasoned accountant who spent his working life producing financial statements manually. A younger accountant once submitted computer generated statements to him. He literally spent many hours meticulously adding up all the figures all over again, just in case the machine, being inhuman, might have made a mistake.

Today, huge volumes of business are transacted over the Internet. You can conduct banking business, do some purchasing, conduct interviews, hire staff.... the list is endless, over the Internet. Recently I signed a contract with the University of Texas, USA, to do a certain job, proceeded to do the job, forwarded a report, and sent my invoice afterwards, all by email. If that is not official, what is?

Of course, the Internet is a free-for-all, anything-goes environment. One needs to carefully evaluate the information one gets via the Internet. The criteria for the evaluation would include, but would not be limited to, authority, accuracy, objectivity, currency and coverage.

By way of summary, while it is possible and indeed easy to get garbage from the Internet, if used correctly, this medium will yield very valuable, accurate and credible information. To carelessly trash it as unofficial is to throw out the baby with the bath water.