If Only It Were True
Here’s an interesting article with two important GPS tracking issues rolled into one….
MIAMI — Florida’s child welfare workers will soon be carrying Global Positioning System devices, similar to ones carried by UPS employees to track packages, (emphasis added) to electronically update case information during home visits and show they were made. The touch-screen devices will track the amount of time caseworkers spend with each family and provide a photographic record of children in state care, officials said Thursday. It will also provide proof that caseworkers went to the homes — a few have lied about that in the past, resulting in death and injury to children… Full Florida caseworker GPS article here.
Issue one is a great story that deserves a hat tip to Governor Crist and the state of Florida, which has been a leader in using GPS tracking to make government more efficient and citizens safer and better served. This initiative will ‘catch’ the few caseworkers who goofed off or neglect their jobs, and will make life better for the vast majority who want to do a good job, by automating the collection of job-related data and proving the who, what where and hen of great job performance.
Issue two, however is the part I highlighted in red, however. if only it were true. We’ve reached the point now where any handheld device seems to be taken as a GPS device by the news media and the public in general … it’s nice in a way … but totally incorrect and leads to a lot of wasted time and motion in business, raising the costs of doing business to everyone.
The handheld’s carried by UPS (and FedEx) delivery persons are not GPS tracking devices, and the fact that major delivery companies have steadfastly refused to move to this technology coast them … and use users … millions. When a UP driver scans the code on your package, what gets recorded is the date and time of the delivery and/or signature event. But the location? Not part of the equation.
As one who has driven many a weary mile trying to find delivered packages taken to the wrong address … or wasted many an hour when I should have been on the road waiting for a package whose location data was "On truck for delivery" at 8 am, and finally came to the door at 5 or 6 pm, I really can’t understand why these companies, otherwise leaders in technology have steadfastly refused to enter "real" location data into their business equation.
These companies affix a bar coded label to your package at the time it is turned in for shipment. After the first scan the package enters the system with a location listed as the office you turned the package in to. From there on, the package passes through certain gateways where it again scanned, showing the major stops along the way. But once the package is released to the local delivery driver you have no clue as to where the package is until it reaches your door … if, in fact it does reach your door.
You really haven’t lived the realities of small business until you have an installation crew, ready to depart on an evening flight for a scheduled installation the following morning … non-refundable tickets in hand, hotel reservations made, rental car waiting, etc. and then seen the USP status of the thousands of dollars of product they were waiting for change to delivered … when in fact it hasn’t been delivered to your office at all … but instead went to a different address miles away.
This happens, sadly, more often than you might think, and yet the newspapers, TV stations, etc. give the package companies free false advertising that convinces the general public of a lie … that the package is being GPS tracked. Sad.