Of Dinosaurs & PCs

Stolen from Evening Weekly
Original article by Inaya. A. Shareef
Came across this article while searching through Haveeru website. This is funny as heck. Never knew Haveeru had it in them to put stuff like this up. Or maybe they didn't get it... in which case it makes it even funnier.


Don’t stop me if you’ve heard this one before… trust me, this is different. And it really happened… and continues to happen.

A computer technician at a Government office gets a call early in the morning. It’s a very worried and impatient senior level official, and he is complaining that his PC is not responding and despite all his efforts the computer screen remained blank. He goes on to complain about the inconsistency and the unreliability of computers nowadays and how it was much easier and more reliable when back in his time human hands had done everything. After patiently listening to the senior official the technician promises to look into the problem immediately.

When the technician arrives at the scene of the faulty PC the senior official throws an accusing glare towards the PC, which indeed looks stubbornly blank and unresponsive. The technician gives the PC a once over and, while the senior official rants in the background about the capriciousness of the technology of this new age, calmly presses the POWER button on the PC. The PC immediately responds and starts booting up. Problem solved.

Unfortunately for the young technician who was among the many professionals hired in a rush following the computerization of government offices, this was just one of the most common ailments that they had to deal with on a daily basis.

Other disorders include losing a year’s work in a blink of an eye, thanks to the liberal use of the Delete key (“hmmm… I wonder what this button does”), failure to mail attachments (“I did attack it to the mail”), and failure to receive mails (“You mean I have to run Outlook to recieve mail?”), failure to print (“What do you mean there is no printer installed, it’s right there in front of the PC!”), failure to follow links in emails (“So where is this interesting news you talked about? There’s just a line of gibberish there!”), difficulties in saving files and documents in respective folders (“Is this program stupid? Why doesn’t it know the proper place to save documents?”), and so forth.

Now you might wonder why I am talking about this now. After all it wasn’t just yesterday that computers were introduced to the country. It wasn’t just yesterday that people were trained to handle basic office software to enable them to change their workplace into a paperless working environment. Let’s just say that I like to tickle a sleeping dragon, or as is more appropriate in this case, a sleeping dinosaur.

The other day I saw on the news that the Government was trying to create a gigantic computer network between all Government offices all over the country. It is supposed to expedite the current procedures and daily work of all offices, create easy accessibility for public and familiarization with rules and regulations, and a whole lot of other benefits. I’ve heard that Singapore was one of the few countries in the world with such a system that actually works for the benefit of the people. But then Singapore also has the youngest civil servants force in the world. About a decade ago, they had decided that enough was enough and retired all the dinosaurs that were just warming the cushy seats in the Government offices.

Obviously, we have not yet even begun to retire the old dinosaurs. More than half of the civil servants can barely take a step without assistance and then have a hard time remembering why they took that step in the first place. They cling on with rheumatic fingers to the old rules from a bygone and obsolete era, trying to make it work in an environment that has passed them by.

So how would handing over this new technology to the hands of these people make any difference? Or more importantly how is handing this new technology to people who will never trust it or make use of it going to make any difference?

Just for argument sake, let me show you how it works in an office with a dinosaur as your boss. Since almost every Government has a website or email addresses for its employees, your day starts with checking mails. Their day starts with being jolted from their age-induced sleep in the middle of a senior staff meeting. They are shocked to find themselves sitting with fellow dinosaurs and they wonder briefly whether they had got lost on their journey to the Lost Valley. But I digress… the younger senior level officials talk about changing existing policies for the benefit of the people; this is worrying news for the dinosaurs. After all, the Ice Age is nothing to be laughed at.

They see it as the public encroaching on their god-given right to confuse and delay any procedure for as long as they are breathing. The younger officials talk about transparency and accountability, the dinosaurs haven’t really understood these terms and consider them blasphemy. In the end, due to sheer number of the herd, the dinosaurs trample all over the younger officials and emerge victorious from yet another meeting that could have been disastrous for their kind.

However, it is only at these meetings that they have been able to get a foothold. All over the office, technology and new ideas have taken away their previous hold on power. The younger staffs are quite efficient in their work and finish whatever task they are given within minutes and come back for more. They find things that have been delayed for ages and try to find solutions.

The dinosaurs find this activity and efficiency quite unbecoming of a Government office. After all, the public can wait while they make new rules to find ways to delay every single procedure.

After a couple of hours discussing the good old days with the rest of the herd over a cup of tea and some short eats, he tramples back to his air-conditioned office and faces the state-of-the-art computer sitting prettily on his desk. Feeling quite important and powerful, he turns on the PC and busies himself playing Solitaire or indulging in less respectable activities involving websites where women dress in very revealing attire or frequently don’t dress at all. After all, that’s the only interesting thing that his computer does. There is always something wrong with his PC that doesn’t allow him to work on it like the other staff.

Emails and documents that are shared on a common server for all office personnel are printed out or photocopied a million times, because he keeps losing his copies, and takes up a considerable space on his expansive dark mahogany desk. He needs a secretary to type his letters, even though he has his own PC. He needs another staff to check his mail and answer them, because email program is always on strike. In short, to complete the work of one senior level executive dinosaur there are three or four secretaries or clerks that takes up space, resources and wastes time.

The way I see it, establishing a high tech computer system network is not the only way to expedite government work. We need to get rid of these dinosaurs and replace them with staff that can do the work of two or three people quite efficiently. Remember the story about the bull in the china shop. Same principle applies here; dinosaurs and computers don’t mix very well either. They are both from two very different eras. One has long gone extinct and the other is still on the evolution ladder, getting bigger, faster and better every day.