Fear of technology

omen80

Hi, has anyone else noticed that public sector offices tend to steer clear of using technology in general. Everything is kept on file, in a filing cabinet.
If the various departments could just log in to a database with your pps number and see what benefits you're already on, where you live, tax info etc..it would make life a lot easier for themselves. This bullsh*t of having to get a letter from one dept to give to another dept is plain ridiculous. And besides, it would help prevent a lot of people from frauding the system.

I applied for 2 jobs recently in the public sector and both said that email applications will not be accepted. I mean, come on, it's 2011, get with the times.




(Not sure what forum to put this in mods so move it if you have to...)

jackiebaron

Well, set up a company to computerise the whole shebang. Millions to be made.

HellFireClub

It's known as "for the file", and the whole purpose of it is to keep people in paper pushing jobs and to obstruct any progress with using IT to make a workplace more efficient as the PS have decided that they are cooperating with absolutely nothing until their pay that was cut, has been restored.

Here's a little task for you... Try picking up the phone and ringing a social welfare office...

omen80

HellFireClub wrote: »

It's known as "for the file", and the whole purpose of it is to keep people in paper pushing jobs and to obstruct any progress with using IT to make a workplace more efficient as the PS have decided that they are cooperating with absolutely nothing until their pay that was cut, has been restored.

That's one possible reason. However if there was no recession and no pay cuts, I still don't think they would have progressed onto using a proper IT system yet.

shoegirl

omen80 wrote: »

Hi, has anyone else noticed that public sector offices tend to steer clear of using technology in general. Everything is kept on file, in a filing cabinet.
If the various departments could just log in to a database with your pps number and see what benefits you're already on, where you live, tax info etc..it would make life a lot easier for themselves. This bullsh*t of having to get a letter from one dept to give to another dept is plain ridiculous. And besides, it would help prevent a lot of people from frauding the system.

They can and they do. The reason for the morbid terror of IT is because it would entirely displace an army of low skilled clerical staff at grades 3/4 who would have little chance of getting jobs elsewhere. I think much of it is tacit awareness rather than explicit realisation that their jobs could be automated but for example, a lot of the work done by (to give an excellent example) medical secretaries in the HSE could be wiped out in one fell swoop by a combination of automated scheduling, web based transfer of appointments and automated telephone and inbound message handling systems. Even their old fashioned dictation is now doable by software packages.

This is what NHSIT originally set out to achieve.
Remove letter based appointments - automate patient records with access from surgeries to hospitals. Then automate scheduling (would trash Ireland's bad habits of prioritising private patients in mixed practice hospitals) and finally eliminate most telephone receptions by putting in voice based decision systems. It would wipe out at least 70% of all of this group.

In fairness, the universities moved to electronic scheduling years ago - even DIT, who had by far the most complex schedule, were succesful in achieving this. The health service and other pure state services are terrified of technology as they realise how much of a threat it is to their jobs.

Sad thing is, so many poor deluded souls doing a lot of these routine decision based jobs really do think they are "high skilled."

shoegirl

jackiebaron wrote: »

Well, set up a company to computerise the whole shebang. Millions to be made.

You would think so but the same staff who are likely to be displaced will do everything in their power to obstruct progress, usually by winning over powerful stakeholders whose refusal to comply will stymie change. The best example of this is the high number of doctors in the UK who refused to even go on training for NHSIT - there was no threat to their jobs, but many didn't want to lose their administrative staff as they would have to handle "electronic paperwork" themselves.

Delancey

Having worked in the public service I can say that the dominant thought of staff at ALL levels is that of ABCDEF ( Always Be Covered , Don't Ever Forget ).
This ass-covering mentality has given rise to a school of thought that says '' If it's not written down then it never happened '' - hence everything written and stored on hard copy.