Automation: Antidote for Bangladesh

Who not knows - Corruption is the Poison - paled our motherland and each day getting more visible in smallest vein of Her. I am not going to write here any poetry or story with beautiful literature. Rather I just want to put some logic to make this title words clear to you.

What can wash away corruption...?




I have asked this question to one of Teachers. He replied "If everyone does his responsibility with honesty than there would be no corruption." . But this biblical terms could bot satisfy me as it arises another question - how can everyone be responsible?



I asked a young university student and he replied "We have to be more patriotic, we have to awake. Look to our neighbor country India, how they prospering." . But this emotional loudness also can not give me any solution as it again raises question - how can we be patriotic?

I have asked one of my known political leaders and his answer was " We have to change ourselves, If you change then watching you others will be changed." . another biblical line...

I have asked a liberation warrior of our nation and his urge is " We need another great leader". Sound to me more emotional and again I have the question - how can we get such leader?


I have asked this question to people of several profession at several places but my how was not leaving me. Then one day I have asked this question to a Old Rikshawala and he answered straight forward " why to blame thieves if you keep your doors open". I dont know why but this answer touched me. Yes I found its true. There are scopes available everywhere and that is why we can minimize our electrical and other bills, we can make less our taxes.. bla bla in all section there are huge scopes to hide information or change information.

Ok! but now I have another question poking me is - why are there so many scopes to do so? Just a bit giving pressure in my head I found the answer and it is there is lacking of transparency in processes not to external people even in internal organization people.

Oh! its Transparency. you may think now this writer is so dumb that he took lot time to understand that Transparency can kill corruption. May be it took long time for me to understand this but I am happy, I understood this. But still the the same question laughs - how can transparency be achieved?

Lets find out first how people in the system hiding or customizing information after taking bribes.

Its basically starts from reserving positions in queue.
When we go to any Govt. organization for taking services what we face normally ... we have to face a guard or clerk who will normally ignore you or not listen to you until you go close to him and whisper in low voice please help me and give him some bribe. Then suddenly you will become a VIP person and will get second or third position in queue.

We know how this can be stopped. Its simple automation, so many banks and fast food shops are using already token counters . You can take a serial token from a place or machine where serials can not be manipulated and whenever service provider pushes a button that he is done with one person the service serial number increases on a screen and this way it comes your turn. I think everyone has seen this and also satisfied with this if the system is maintained properly.

Basically what I want to say is, its possible when we are not letting the process to be tempered in its life cycle by any external interaction. I can say it more simply in two lines

" Service consumer himself can initiate the process"
" No manipulation in a running process"

But its not possible in current situation as the processes are in the hands of some people and its paused, altered or stopped whenever they want by imposing some law codes and modifying records to meet those law codes.

We need separations between Process and Users of the process (organization employees). Now there are too much dependency of on employees. Sometime to me they appear as gods in their territory.

I am using the word "Process" here several times. All are well known with this term. It is the thing which drives a function to an end and meets the function goal. And thanks to God its not human who can take bribes and modify things.

Processes are normally composed of several small events. Events one by one completes a process. Each event may need some information (we normally say input) and do work on that and passes the information with some extension to next event. Like if you want to visit a doctor:

Function: Visiting Doctor

Events:
1. reserve a appointment ( input:information is your name and number, output: serial number, time)
2. call of your serial (input: your serial number, output: our presence)
3. visit the doctor (input: diagnosis, output: prescription)
4. pay the fees ( input: amount , output: receipt) it could 2nd event in some cases.

or doing a simple complaint in a complain Center:

Function : Doing a Complaint
Events:
1. Get a serial number to do a complain
2. Call of your serial
3. Get the complain form
4. Fill the form
5. Submit it
6. Take receipt and reference number

These events can be organized or decorated in several ways to get better output but whatever it is, to do a complaint it should not take more than 10 minutes but in Bangladesh I myself has
spoiled more than 2 hours to do so. And most ambiguous part it took 10 minutes just to pull attention of the clerk who will talk to me and also there is no form rather I had to buy paper from a store and write an application with carbon paper then submit it and then the clerk found I need to put more information in my application then again re-write it , meanwhile the clerk got disappeared then i had to wait then when he arrived I submitted .. he sealed and gave me the paper that was written with carbon paper and its my proof copy. huh! And its going on year after year.

Now ask me where I went to complaint. Yes the answer is Police Department and it was because I lost my Id card and I went to do a simple General Diary which took my nearly two and half hours.

to be continued ...