Hello all,
I'm working for a government agency dealign with... well, doesn't matter what, but it's the kind of stuff that has a certain political sensibilty, and it's enough "political" to have my boss (or actually my bosses bosses boss) appear on TV about every other day.
Not me of course. I have nothing to do with this. I just take care of the web site. I wouldn't like to appear on TV because that would involve wearing a suit and tie - and more generally not stuttering when infront of a camera. Well, but back to the topic.
Today I was asked to make a change to a page that was actually part of an online application and thus not handled by us but by a different department (they don't seem to trust us to be too tech-savy over here, so we only get the simple stuff, and they are generally perceived as a bit elitist and sometimes arrogant... well, I wouldn't mind working for THAT department though. As long as it doesn't involve giving Interviews, that is..)
All these applications are using a complex rights management system (after all, security is realy high priority here!) and any kind of changes in access rights involve a complicated bureaucratic procedure, which includes filling out forms, having them signed by your superior, your superior's superior, and sometimes even bringing in a letter of good conduct from your local police station first (no kidding!). Of course there was a"single-sign-on" implemented, so you don't have to enter your password hundreds of time each day (or remember hundreds of passwords), but generally, security was not only written with a capital "S" but also a capital "E", "C", "U", "R", "I", "T" and even "Y"!
So I reckoned, the easiest way to make the change would be to find out who is in charge of that particular page, and then try to make an appointment, and bringing the prepared HTML-Code to be pasted in with me. Bad luck, of course, if the person has already left, or is on sick leave, or in holidays, or whatever..
The guy from the help desk took an easier route:
> Use the following logins and pass to access it:
> Login: xxxx [my superior's login name]
> Password: xxxx [appearently his password]
Uh, cool... so much power in the hand of a simple Web Developer...