Use ICT technologies to make public service more efficient

BY utilising information and communications technology (ICT), even some that are decades old, Government could ensure that the public service becomes much more efficient.

Senior Business Executive, George Connolly, recently noted the above while calling for a comprehensive and forward looking ICT policy that speaks to a proper regulatory and legislative framework.

Whilst delivering the latest DLP Lunchtime Lecture on the topic, “Technology – A Key To Diversity In Barbados’ Economy”, at Democratic Labour Party Headquarters, George Street, Belleville, St. Michael, Connolly stated that the last concerted move by the Barbados Government was back in 2010 when Government approved a National ICT Plan, but never fully shared it with the public. Barbadians, he said, would have heard of two initiatives – the Electronic Single Window, as well as the BRA – the Barbados Revenue Authority.

Connolly, in using an example, further noted that the Barbados Postal Service is one area in which the country could benefit from the use of ICTs. Stressing that most Barbadians only get bills and statements now and the occasional postcard, Connolly noted however that at the General Post Office, about 40 persons are used to sort mail into pigeonholes for a full day, every day of the week, when there is technology that can be used to reduce that task, to an activity that takes just one hour.

“The General Post Office has a room that is called The Mail Room… There is an army of people who take their shoes off, put on socks so they don’t soil the mail when they step on it, who take the bags of mail that come and pour it on the ground into a pile. They then wade through it and (sort it for the various post offices),” he said.

“These are people that we have trained from three years old in schools, nursery school, primary school, secondary school and we are using them to do a job that a four-year-old could do. Read an address and put it into a box. I call it cruel and unusual punishment for a person who has any kind of intellect, but that is what we do with about 40 people every day,” Connolly lamented.

Connolly added that back in 2008, he however offered a solution to the then Postmaster General Joel Brathwaite, that could take all that mail and sort it within an hour.

“This machine sorts it into every single person in the household. So if you have 10 people in the house, everyone has a serial number … and that machine is over 40 years old. That technology is over 40 years old, but we are a developed country and that’s what we are doing with our knowledge workers,” Connolly commented. (RSM)