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Anyone listening to the Webcast of Intuit's Investors Day shouldn't have been surprised when CEO Brad Smith gave the reason for two major outages his company's computer systems suffered during the summer. It was human error, and not just one error, but a series of events that Smith labeled as a "Comedy of Errors." And that's the story of many problems with computer operations - people don't do what they are supposed to do.

There are good reasons for some of this and there are bad reasons. People are busy and all of us get distracted and forget to do things, such as run a daily backup. And the best passwords, as suggested by experts, are ones that are difficult to remember. The bad reasons include employee dishonesty or incompetence or they visit adult Web sites which are notorious for being infected by malware on office computers. But whatever the reasons, things go wrong.

How does a company, even a one-person operation, make sure things work, that procedures are followed? After all, Intuit had the policies and computer systems. Last year, it opened a new data center that cost around $200 million.

Professionals tell us that the best way to ensure backups are performed is to make them automatic. Of course, that's great, unless IT forgets to install the backup software on a laptop that is used in an office docking station - I was one who finally realized that had happened and that was because previously, when my hard drive had been damaged, I found out that the automatic system hadn't backed up my files. So I started paying attention. Or backups don't get tested and they don't work when needed or are left in the office the computer and the backup burn, are damaged by water or stolen. Or, as in the case of a certain Gulf oil rig, the alarm is turned off because it sounds so often it's a problem and disregarded.

Good computing has to be a habit, like good diet and exercise programs. Companies have to make procedures as easy to follow as possible and to give employees the feeling that they have a stake in making sure things work. Think about it: your security and disaster recovery systems are only as good as your most poorly paid, poorly educated, overworked, disgruntled employee. And there have to be penalties.

And it's simply a matter that it's a job that doesn't stop. You have to start paying attention. It's not somebody else's job. It's yours.

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