At the height of the pandemic lockdown, I bought a turntable to both play and to digitise old vinyl records that lay languishing in boxes in my cupboard.
Sadly, while the experience brought much joy, it also reminded
me why some of us still describe mostly irritating, repetitive admonitions as
being akin to experiencing a “stuck record.”
My digital native musician son had, of course, known the
idiom, but acquired first-hand knowledge of it while we played the Mighty
Shadow’s ‘Keep On Dancin’ – gifted to my late father by the calypso genius
himself in 1991 but which was not very well preserved.
Being like a “stuck record” signals a defect – accumulated
dust or grime or, worse, a terminal crack or scratch. Used as an extended
metaphor, though, it can point to the necessity of repeated mention of a
recurring offensive/negative act or condition.
All of this is to blunt retorts to my insistence on
reminding people that the digital era has long been upon us. And even as a
child of the analogue generation, I am committed to the unprecedented
advantages of the current period, despite our seemingly collective refusal to
grasp them.
Almost every week I have been finding space to mention,
either in passing or substantively, that our country is missing the point of
all of this and as a consequence the situation remains, in important areas of
private and public life, chronically damaged, unfixed, or simply “out of
order.”
For instance, it did not appear to bother many that for
more than a week, the government’s ttconnect service, “the easy road to access
info on All Government Services” remained, without explanation or apology, “out
of order.”
Some smarty-pants is going to suggest that only “some”
services were unavailable, and that it was still possible to stand in line
under cloudy skies on the street to transact business with slothful government
agencies.
Well, why the fuss? Among the key functions of the service,
is to make life easier for people interested in conducting their tax affairs
online while optimising the prospects for more efficient collection of taxes …
which fuel the economy and keep things rolling by also paying the people
responsible for keeping ttconnect functional!
Monday’s delayed apology from ttconnect included typically
vague tech gobbledygook that’s, at minimum, disrespectful to those even with
half-knowledge of how these things work. “Be assured, our technical teams have
been working tirelessly to restore the portal’s accessibility and the
NORMALNESS it provides.”
There was no indication of resolution time, or what
precisely this “normalness” means. People who know about such stuff would tell
you that for something as important as this, durable redundancies and rigorous
implementation plans are expected to be par for the course.
As appalling as it is, this is not a unique or narrow
national experience. There appears to be a high level of cognitive dissonance
each time both public and private sector bosses are called upon to employ
digital solutions to make life easier for clients/citizens. It calls for
enlightened recognition of both processes and outcomes.
Digital vaccine cards were conceived, bungled and expired in
one seamless flight of fancy spanning months and months.
Meanwhile, glitzy digital entry points almost routinely
lead to bureaucratic mazes occupied by paper, signatures, office visits, more
paper, parking spaces, frustration, “photocopies available across the street”, “download,
print, sign, scan and email.”
The digital facades are everywhere in the private sector
too. Now that strict pandemic measures are being lifted, processes that furtively
approached digital terrain are now retreating to the “normalness” we appear to
love.
Where, in banking, insurance, retail is there real evidence
of a commitment to embrace digital opportunity following a period when it
remained, in many instances, the sole path?
Many chosen options at that time now lie haplessly “out of
order.” In a society where so many things are in need of repair and so much is
left undone or incomplete, this is an irresistible descriptor of our resistance
to the tools of modernity.
Moving from “Driver’s Permit” to “Driver’s Licence”, for
example, is not among even the least evident indications of digitally driven
change. That it can be shamelessly promoted as such by a government ministry
for which “out of order” is the norm speaks volumes.
Absolutely no apologies, therefore, for being a stuck
record on this. Or am I being out of order?
