Computerization 20 years forward, information 30 years backward
Islands Business, 15 March 2013.
By Professor Wadan Narsey
The public readily engage in a heated debate on politics, while ignoring changes silently taking place in something as mundane as the “public availability of information”. Yet the latter can be far more important for our people’s welfare than exciting politics.
In every Pacific country, computerization (both hardware and software) has charged ahead over the last two decades. Computer prices have plummeted; processing power and storage capacity has increased a billion times; a small lap-top is the equivalent of a roomful of computers forty years ago; there are amazing software applications; and the Internet and mobile revolutions give access to the world’s libraries and information.
Word-processing allows reports to be written, corrected, formatted, spell-checked and printed.
Spread-sheets, with more than a million rows and 16 thousand columns of data, make complex mathematical, financial, logical and graphical functions, so easy, menu driven, requiring just a few clicks.
Database software allows for the easy menu-driven processing of massive amounts of data, once the domain only of bureaus of statistics and armies of statisticians who had to write complex programs.
All this “firepower” is available for the price of a good TV set or a gold necklace or a holiday abroad.
So why is it that for most government departments,
(a) the real information provided has gone backward s– in some cases by more than 30 years?
(b) their websites are colourful and glossy, but provide very little real information?
(c) already printed public information, is not provided through websites in a ready-to-use form?
The Fiji examples I give here (some bad and some good) are relevant for other PICs as well, as also may be an initiative I suggest.
Ministry of Labour
A few years ago, as part of my ECREA study on Just Wages for Fiji, I read through 40 years of Annual Reports by the Ministry of Labour. I was dismayed by one unexpected aspect – the massive deterioration over the four decades of real information provided.
In the (colonial) sixties and post-independence seventies, the Ministry of Labour (and most Government ministries) did not have access to their own computers for analyzing data, tabulating or report writing.
Data was analyzed using calculators, while Annual Reports were typed on manual typewriters, by “typists” (remember that extinct species?).
Yet those early Annual Reports were full of useful comprehensive data and analysis.
Not any more. Have a look at recent Ministry of Labour Reports (they are all available in the Fiji National University Library).
The actual production of most government Annual Reports are now outsourced to private companies, who take whatever data and text they are given by the Ministry, and turn out beautiful glossy reports.
They are full of strategic plans, visions, missions, philosophies, etc., but devoid of any real information, which the public really need to understand what is happening in that area, or to assess the ministry’s work by their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
Like all government departments, Labour also has a glossy website, full of corporate plans, press releases, speeches and photos of Ministers, and wonderful enunciations of “spiritual values”.
But this website contains little useful information pertaining to the terms and conditions of work actually done by Fiji’s employees which is what the Ministry of Labor should be concerned about.
The last Annual Labour Report on their website is for 2007 (five years ago), and even that, astonishingly, gives you just the front cover!
Yet the Ministry of Labour (and all its branches throughout Fiji) is full of computers, software and data, all available for analysis.
It has dozens of staff with degrees, diplomas and certificates, which should enable them to analyze the data and present solid analytical useful reports for the stakeholders. Yet they don’t. Their regional data is not even collated centrally despite their usefulness.
Does this Ministry of Labour think that taxpayers who pay their salaries, are not entitled to such relevant information? This is certainly not what I would expect from the current Minister, a former CEO of TPAF and a good USP graduate.
Researchers could do a PhD analyzing the “empty” KPIs in the Ministry of Labour’s Corporate Plans.
They are a typical example of “managerial revolutions” that nearly all Fiji’s government departments have been taken through in the last two decades (often by donors), converting genuinely productive technical people into paper shuffling and meeting-attending “managers”, of this and that.
Many other such departments
Have a look at the Department of Police, which also does not put on its website any real time series information on crimes, suicides etc., although press releases often selectively quote some statistic or two.
The data is all there of course, within the Department, but sitting on someone’s desk or computer.
Even when requested (as I recently did for information on suicides and attempted suicides in 2010 and 2011), why do those in power refuse to give the data to the public, let alone make it freely available to anyone who wants it, on their website? The frequent response is: Sir, what do you want it for? I will have to ask my superiors. I will call you back. (They never do.)
Are decisions being consciously made by those in power, to deny the public the relevant data, in case it throws their performance in a bad light?
Or are they simply unaware that giving the public all relevant data (that does not divulge individual information) is a necessary condition for their government to claim to be open, transparent and accountable to the tax-payers?
There could be several PhD theses, examining the websites of all government departments, for their usefulness, transparency and accountability, given the information that they all have or should have, that the public should be made aware of.
The Fiji National Provident Fund
The Fiji National Provident Fund is another sad example of a public organization which has gone backwards as a provider of data and useful information. This regression has even more serious implications for public welfare, given the centrality of FNPF to Fiji people’s lives and economy.
Once upon a time, the FNPF Annual Reports and website used to have numerous useful data series on the operations of the FNPF – its membership profile, contributions, investments, earnings, etc.
It is dismaying that most of this information has now been removed from the FNPF website and most are not even available in their Annual Reports.
Why has the FNPF removed all this information from their website, in a period when massive restructuring of pensions and fund investment is taking place, with major implications for the welfare of FNPF contributors and pensioners?
Was it a decision by the Board or the management? Or both, given how their functions have been astonishingly merged in recent years? (another PhD).
This trend of deliberate reduction of information for the public, suggests that the FNPF is being very frugal with the truth when it claims to be transparent and accountable to their members. Continue reading →
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