This pandemic has transformed many processes, private or public, into digital mode at breakneck speed, which otherwise in normal circumstances would have taken so much of time and energy in dealing with obstructionists wanting to scuttle the system. Our dependence in handling banking transactions, investments, shopping almost everything, attending professional meetings to educational classes, catching up with friends, follow religious services, all have moved rapidly from offline mode to online and the ratio just keeps moving higher in favor of digital.
So here is the question, what happens when the pandemic ends, do we go back to square one and shun the digital progress we made last year till now, or we work on a hybrid model that discourages crowding and gatherings and encourages desk work to be done from anywhere. By the time this pandemic ends, the world would have more or less figured out on the types of procedures that can be digitised and the type of work that needs manual presence on work sites.
Private companies although driven by bottom lines are compassionate and practical towards their staff, they will compare and analyse data of their productivity levels of working from anywhere or office and will take decisions accordingly in the best interest of their employees, customers and investors. Going digital for them is an option they cannot ignore for too long as competitive forces are going to drive them into making decisions fast.
The problem arises with government staff. Governments especially in states like Goa that have hired staff they don’t need and to keep them busy and fed to the brim, this digital transformation will be like a thorn in their flesh. Goa has made all the wonderful noises of single window clearance, online government services, blah blah, yet it has hardly made any dent on the corruption level in Goa, in fact corruption has become more organised and not flashy like in the past. People in government that dish out online services have become richer, while the people that avail those services such as the ordinary citizens are becoming poorer by the day.
For those who think that digitisation will bring peace of mind to the user and make life easy-peasy, should really remove this misapprehension because that’s not how government digitisation works. The digital messages honest tax payers receive from tax authorities saying your accounts don’t tally, is a perfect example of how the government has basically converted individual harassment into faceless harassment, bringing down the high expectations the government had set while introducing faceless assessment to obliterate the human interface.
Even a small transaction such as, if you have given standing instructions to your bank to pay your telephone bill automatically, it does not stop the government owned telephone company BSNL to send numerous pesky messages to inform the customer that they have raised the bill, the due date, repetitive warning message to pay on time with a caveat to ignore the message if paid, and then finally a thank you message that the bill has been paid. The customer by then is already confused and in doubt if he had really given those standing instructions to his bank. In short the customer peace of mind is messed up because BSNL never bothered to review their internal processes before making those big digital announcements. Ideally there should have been just one message to inform the customer the bill they have raised, the rest of the messages just turn out to be useless costing time, money and confusion to all parties.
No point talking big about online digital services, if on the other hand government keeps adding layer after layer to its processes. As long as we have a fat bureaucracy to feed this digital option will be just an illusion. Even if they are introduced the procedures are always going to be tinkered to keep the bureaucracy relevant and in good humor. There is a connection between going digital and reducing the size of government staff because if a particular government office tom-tom’s about going digital and also increases staff then just remember they are creating an illusion, they are increasing their footprint to harass the citizen even more. It’s not like a private company who uses digital technology at the same time hires staff because they are on growth path and hence need more staff to cater to their increasing market share.
This author by no means is suggesting that we can run the State without government workers, but we can certainly do without the file pushers who find it difficult to push files without grease being applied to their palms. In fact going the digital way was to eliminate these palm greasers out of the equation, but these palm greasers have found novel ways to not only stay relevant but to slowdown the system. During this health emergency Goa with plenty of unemployed youth could have been deployed into services that would give support to the frontline health workers, but when most of the budget used up into employing paper pushers and hurdle creators in the government machinery, it is going to become difficult to find money for workers, which are the need of the hour.
Goa needs to think really hard if the digital options we have taken and advertised with great fanfare have served their purpose. Have they improved our lives, has it brought down corruption, or reduced traffic at government offices, or reduced downtime in getting government approvals, or even reduced our consumption of paper. If the answer is a big no, then it means all these digital options are not worth the money spent to buy those computers. Going digital without eliminating unnecessary processes are just a tool in the hands of the bureaucracy to harass the citizen even more.
(The author is a business consultant)
