I work for a contracting company that has some major work for a utility company. It involves research and design work.
Everything is locked behind their VPN. As a computer guy (whose streamlined process internally within the contracted company), I can understand the reasoning, but know there is always room for improvement.
The issue comes into play when we run into abnormal distances. The current process forces contractors to use fielders to gather the data. Other steps include ROW issues that takes time.
The intention I had was via the utility's GIS Program to use a nearest neighbor tool to allow better foresight. I end requesting if just the pole number and location data could be extracted (since the GIS program doesn't have the feature), asking if it would be ok without comprising security.
That email apparently hit a nerve with the utility companies GIS supervisor. The supervisors' interpretation was, “even the pole location and ID are considered sensitive”.
An IT called me about the situation and I explained (even mentioning the technical manual on the program mentions it being built-in). To my defense, the “out of the box” thinking is appreciated the by IT Guy, and he's onboard with the concept.
Talking with some other people, they agree with the absurdly that “if they can walk up to a pole, gather its ID, and run a tape measure to the next pole, it not sensitive”.
TLDR; asked about a better way to work with data (without comprising security, get yelled at for asking, as if I was comprising security)