Reforms should curb duplication
Reforms has become one of the most commonly used terms in the country ever since President Peter Mutharika appointed Vice-President Saulos Chilima to chair the Public Service Reforms Commission.
Essentially, the public service or civil service reforms seek to improve the conditions of service and professionalism of the public sector besides developing national capacity to resuscitate economic growth. In their spirit, the reforms also aim at creating benchmarks through which performance in the sector can be measured.
It is no secret that most public institutions leave a lot to be desired in terms of service delivery. Every time one visits a public institution to seek a service, most of which one pays for, thereby contributing non-tax revenue to the public purse, the responsible officers behave as if they were doing one a favour. They want to make a simple transaction appear complicated simply to induce a bribe from the service-seeker.
I believe service delivery at some public institutions can improve with harmonisation of data collection.
In this age of information and communications technology (ICT), I find it irritating and a duplication to be asked to have my finger prints (biometric data) at the Directorate of Road Traffic and Safety Services and queue to provide the same data at the Department of Immigration and the Malawi Electoral Commission (MEC) during voter registration.
Then, as if that is not enough, the same public sector will, when national identity cards (IDs) are rolled out, expect you and me to provide fingerprints data through the National Registration Bureau.
Time is money. This duplication is a waste of people’s time, especially in a country where “network” disappears at will at public institutions in the middle of a transaction.
Biometric data is derived from measuring and analysis of people’s physical or biological attributes such as facial, voice and fingerprint scans for record keeping or security purposes.
Given this loose definition, of biometric data, my expectation is that government agencies, notably Road Traffic, National Registration Bureau, Immigration and MEC should harmonise what they have i.e. in their data capture system. That way, we will save people’s time.
For example, if one had their fingerprints captured at Immigration, when they go to either of the other agencies requiring the same, such details should be accessed at the click of a button without having to physically go through the same tiresome process over and over again.
Harmonisation of such seemingly small but critical processes means a lot to people. I would, therefore, urge the reforms team to facilitate creation of a one-stop-data capture centre that will link service providers the way the National Switch has done with commercial banks nationwide.
