Hindustan Times ( 19 Oct ) carries following news report :
“ Adopt innovative ways to break silos in
Govt : PM “
Bureaucrats
should use technology
for delivery of better governance; ministries should not work in silos and work as a team to realise
the dream of creating New India by 2020.
This was Prime Minister Narendra Modi's missive to about 380 officials
of the rank of director and deputy secretaries with whom he interacted this
month.
“ The PM exhorted the officers to work with full
dedication towards creation of New India by 2022.
He said that silos are a big bottleneck in the functioning of
the Union government. He urged the officers to adopt innovative ways to break silos, which will
result in the speeding up
of various processes of governance," a government release said.
=======================================================
I suppose , by “ breaking silos “ , PM means :
Keep each other informed of what you are doing / working on , so that the
“ left hand knows what the right hand is doing “ and you do not end up slowing
down others’ efforts or end up working at cross purpose
Keeping
each other informed about your initiatives will , not only avoid duplicate work but
it will enable you to complement
one another and synergize
your efforts
Here
is how , we managed this ( breaking silos )
at the small Switchgear factory of L&T , way back in 60s ( call it V 1.0 ) :
·
Whenever , a manager sent out a letter ( to any outside
party ) or a memo ( to an internal department ) , he asked his secretary to
make a carbon copy , marked “ FOR CIRCULATION “
Of course , he did this only when he
considered that communication to be important enough for other Managers to know
and felt that this knowledge would help the recipient to raise questions or
guide him in his own decisions
·
Despatch
Mail Room attendant responsible for all outgoing and internal mail distribution
, would remove the copies marked “ FOR CIRCULATION “ , bunch these together , attach a CIRCULATION
SLIP carrying the names of 8 / 10 managers and deliver to the manager whose
name is right at the top
·
When the
first-named manager finishes reading all those copies , he will enter “ date read
“ against his name and place the bunch in his out-tray . And more often than
not , he will enter his own remarks / comments on any of those letters / memos
·
Mail attendant will pick up the bunch and deliver it to the
next-named manager
Utterly , Butterly , Simple !
It worked beautifully well and all of us were
in perfect SYNC ,
at all times
No doubt , when the
factory grew and we had more than 20 managers , this system broke down since it
would take a full month before the last-named manager got to read what others
had written !
But then , those were the days when :
·
Managers had secretaries ( who typed on typewriters ) and
used stapling devices
·
Managers
boasted of “ OUT and IN “ trays on their tables !
There were no computers / no internet / no Outlook
/ no Skype / no Online Collaboration softwares / no project-plans / no smart
phones / no Webex / no Whatsapp / no nothing !
To
day , every private sector manager and government officer , has access to all
the above-mentioned aids
What could be holding them off , from coming
out with VERSION 2.0
of the 50 year old process described above
?
It can be nothing more than cultivating an
attitude which says :
“
If sharing this info with my colleagues will make us move faster in providing
better governance , then I will share it . Of course , I will not share info
which must be kept secret ( even for a short while ) and which cannot be leaked
“
Dear Narendrabhai :
But how is a Govt Officer to decide :
·
Who
( which officers ) need to know about my views / thinking on this subject /
topic and therefore , must get a copy of my email ?
If you decide to appoint a Committee of
Secretaries to come up with guidelines re this ( sharing of email info to other govt officers ),
then very little is likely to happen !
They may end up setting up another “ Empowered
Committee “ !
For V 2.0 of the process which L&T followed 50 years ago , please consider
following approach :
·
Government is already working on a big push for data analytics , in order
to improve decision making .
·
Why not ask some leading software company to analyse those
millions of emails ( sent out by various govt officers over the years ) and
come up with an Artificial Intelligence based software , which will ( after
reading / interpreting the content of each outgoing email from an officer ) ,
decide , WHO all (
other govt officers ) should get a copy ( cc: ) ?
Let us call such software : IDEA { Intelligence
based Delivery of Email Alerts }
Google / Amazon / Microsoft / Apple / Facebook etc are
already using / employing similar AI based software algorithms for delivering advertisements to millions
of “ most likely interested
“ people around the World !
Let
no one tell you : This is not possible for a software to decide
Google’s AlphaGo Zero AI algorithm “ learns from scratch
and with no human help beyond being told the rules ……… because AlphaGo Zero
learns on its own from a blank state, its talents can now be turned to a host
of real-world problems
“ ( source
: Business Line / 20 Oct 2017 )
And if anyone needs convincing , CBDT has recently awarded a $ 100 Million contract
to L&T Infotech to develop a software platform ( using Semantic Web ) , to
capture “ Tax Evaders
“ , by scraping Social Media sites !
One more thing :
Do not expect the government officers to welcome
the idea of IDEA !
Most of them still believe their POWER lies in being in
possession of some such information to which , they alone are privy !