And here I was, thinking that yet another column on
the digital failures of the pandemic period would signify thematic overkill.
Represented in modern tech literature as “opportunity,”
the digital conduct of public business has, in our instance, been expressed as
perpetual challenge.
Then, Monday, on account of the silly “proof of
address” requirement of a growing number of public and private sector services,
I attempted to log on to a public utility website – WASA in this case – and
found myself confronted by the online traffic jam that conspires to “time out”
especially when there is urgency attached to the transaction.
Here's the message word-for-word - the phrase
“technical error” designed, with the naïve in mind, to provide convenient
cover. The rest is all jargonistic gobbledygook meant to mamaguy and deceive: “A
technical error occurred: Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to
obtaining a connection from the pool. This may have occurred because all pooled
connections were in use and max pool size was reached.”
“Sorry, we just not ready,” would have sufficed.
For certain, the cognitive dissonance occasioned by
unfamiliarity with a life made easier through technology, is not peculiar to
hapless state services. It is there in banking, insurance, commerce, telecoms, and
other areas involving private capital, profits, and vainglorious claims to
operational superiority over the others.
You get a letter in the mail requiring that you visit
an office … with the letter you received at the address, to which it was mailed,
in your hands. Then you are asked to produce both the letter and something to
prove that this is indeed your mailing address.
It’s like that time (years ago) I had an editor who
wanted articles emailed to him accompanied by a fax and a call to confirm that
both email and fax had been sent. So, no, media have not been innocent through
all this. Hence the struggle with appropriate business models in the sector.
Additionally, though we remain under conditions of a
pandemic (whatever the COVID denialists claim), there are lessons of this
period already destined for the undercarriage of any passing bus.
Remote work, digitally composed documentation, online
forms, and a variety of other now-acceptable phenomena are (many of them)
destined to evaporate as magically as their acceptance emerged at a time of urgency
and crisis.
The “new normal” is set to become nothing more than
“normal” with a URL – “normURL”?
Bosses yearn for faces at the office. No banking is
complete without long steupsing lines. Everywhere, paper is craved to validate reality.
Bills are best paid in person for fear of online transactions that “did not go
through.”
Former public utilities minister Robert Le Hunte was
recently quoted as juxtaposing the “digital face” alongside the manual back end
of our banking sector. It’s no different in a wide variety of other instances,
including at agencies that once resided under his ministerial purview.
Given this belated epiphany on his part, I can only
imagine the pain and agony of a Cabinet without Le Hunte at this time. Had he
stayed, would we have had our digital vaccination cards by now? Would the
“proof of address” requirement have remained? If so, what would have been the
rationale?
Meanwhile, I am still not going to allow anyone to
forget that at approximately 2.20 p.m. on Thursday September 23, 2021 – in his
capacity as minister in the Office of the Prime Minister - Stuart Young announced
the possible arrival of “digital vaccination cards” in “four to six weeks.”
Two digital transformation ministers later, there is precious
little - outside of a decade and a half old legacy bequeathed by former public
administration minister Kennedy Swaratsingh – to signify a radical change in
official mindset. The emotional software to accompany hardware acquisitions.
It’s just the old normal, hyperlinked from a shiny, new
façade. Public servants know where, usually across the street, to send people
to get “photocopies” of their documents and bank tellers still need to hold
paper cheques in their hands.
I recently had cause to display my vaccination card
for admission to a restaurant. I no longer need to do so. Thankfully. Mainly
because the crapaud foot that names me on paper absolutely requires the backup
of other ID equally primordial in nature and design.
