Ike Señeres
IT is ironic to note that are using social networking services (SNS) heavily, and yet most of our government agencies are hardly using it. No, I do not mean government use of SNS to communicate with the general public, because many government agencies are doing that already. What I mean is the use of SNS among government agencies, so that they could communicate with each other. As I understand this, this behaviour is already happening among private sector companies, and in fact, specialized software for corporate social networking has already been developed. It is said that in Japan, teams are already collaborating across companies to jointly create new products.
It would be fair to say that government employees who are already used to using SNS in their own private capacities would find it easy to use the same for their official communications. That may be easier said than done however, because there could be some practical concerns, among which are security and accountability. Before going any further however, we have to take note that there appears to be very little use of official corporate email between and among offices, much less the use of mail groups. Aside from that there appears to be very little use of workgroup computing as well.
It has been said that art is the reflection of society, and in that sense, it could be said that if there is very little interpersonal collaboration among government people offline, then there is no reason to expect that they would collaborate more aggressively online. In fairness however, perhaps we could not put the blame too much the individual employees who are not collaborating too much, but instead we could blame it on the government departments, agencies, bureaus and instrumentalities that are more concerned about protecting their turfs more than serving the public.
Just to put this discussion in the right perspective, we should also take note that more or less, at least half of official communications in the government offices are still done through paper memos rather than via electronic mail. In that sense, it could be said that instead of workgroup computing or mail groups, the government offices are now still using carbon copies (actually extra printouts or photo copies) just to be able to get the concerned officials within the loop, so to speak. This is a behaviour that could change with workgroup computing or mail groups, but we seem to be too far from that.
It could be said that in the past and up to now, there has been a high incidence of collaboration between government agencies via voice calls, but the problem with that approach is the lack of documentation that could be recognized as the data trail. As it usually happens, voice calls are followed up or are covered with memos thereafter, thus making the communication official. As it is also happening now however, there are already software products that could already document voice and video calls, thus eliminating the need for written documentation. This latter approach however is affected by corporate policies as to whether or not electronic evidence is already admissible.
In theory, based on the Electronic Commerce Act (ECA), electronic evidence in the form of voice, video and email logs are already acceptable; therefore it is no longer necessary to follow these up or to cover these with memos. In this sense, it could be said that the major hindrance to automation is the insistence of many government agencies to recognize or to admit only the paper evidence in the form of memos, rather than the electronic evidence. Somehow, someway, something has to be done in order for these government agencies to accept the fact that there is now supposed to be data parity between paper evidence and electronic evidence.
Even without mentioning certain brand names, it could already be said that there are software products in the market that could already be used for the purpose of electronic collaboration or social networking between and among government agencies, and these are available either as component parts that still have to be integrated, or as readily available bundled solutions. Even if there is no lack of solutions however, there seems to be a lack of appreciation as to how these could be used, not so much for the convenience of individual users, but for the purpose of improving public services.
Again in order to put this discussion in the right perspective, it should be said that according to Madam Chitang Nakpil, “Technology is just a better way of doing things”. What she probably meant is that even without technology, we could still do things as we used to, except that we could not do these any better. To paraphrase her in my own way, I would say that Information and Communications Technology (ICT) is just a tool that could be used to do our work faster, better and cheaper. Towards that end however, I will again say that we should not really use ICT for our own sake, but for the sake of the public that we are sworn to serve.
For all intents and purposes, it could be said that any and all SNS could already be used for electronic collaboration and social networking could already be used by any and all government agencies in order to improve their services to the general public. If they choose to do that, they really do not have to spend anything, because these services are all offered for free. However, if they are concerned about security and accountability, they have the option of putting up their own internal systems that would be fully encrypted and fully secure.
There was a time when it could be said that inter-agency collaboration via voice calls would already be enough. Nowadays however, collaboration between government agencies via video conferencing has become very easy and very affordable. While some providers are offering their technologies for outright sale, there are many providers that are offering the same technologies on a subscription basis only, and the billing is on a per use fee basis only. As it is now, there is really no excuse anymore for not using these technologies, except for the refusal to try something new to try “a better way of doing things”.
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