I was checking out some end-of-year blog postings last week – reviews of 2004, forecasts for 2005, that sort of thing. John Battelle’s was worth reading, as was John Blossom’s. I don’t have any specific predictions but I will highlight something that struck me at the time and now seems even more pertinent. Perhaps it was a slow news day, but on December 14th the lead article in the New York Times was about Google’s plan to digitize university library collections. The second lead in the Times that day was about how Bernard Kerik was poorly vetted by the White House as a nominee for Homeland Security Secretary. So one article covered the continuing improvement and innovation in information and research tools and the other article covered the fact that with all the information and tools available, the White House couldn’t figure out that a well-known public figure wasn’t clean.
The poor vetting was an embarrassment for the White House. A similar circumstance, however, could spell financial disaster for a financial institution or professional services firm. While some recent discussions with Alacra customers have touched on better ways to conduct background checks for compliance and Know Your Customer programs, I think that this problem will take center stage this year. There will be more and better tools and content developed to assist in the vetting process and librarians and researchers will be re-deployed to ensure that nothing is missed.
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