Brick on Brick, Without a Plan

The Art of Communication

The art of communication is one that should never be left without nurture. It is a skill I have honed since childhood, when making myself heard, and hopefully understood, mattered.

I know the many times in my working life when being articulate, honest, truthful, clear, and detailed about ideas, events, or situations has been the difference between staying put and being walked out of the door with alacrity.

Conflict and the Power of Words

Conflict leers around the office or the workplace, where genuine engagement can easily slide into belittlement and being patronised. Both could be mistaken for compliments, only to be turned into something backhanded or used to upbraid you.

Besides that, there are the power plays and egos, where choosing your words carefully can significantly change the tone of an exchange. Drawing on a wealth of vocabulary with studied deployment is hardly putting the quality of your education to waste.

Finding the Right Analogy

When the going gets tough, and it usually does, finding the correct analogy to depict a situation becomes the best tool to deploy.

Consider a scenario where a user expected us to exhaust every avenue to determine why his anticipated long-running script terminated after two hours, even though nothing on the system had changed.

I posited that when a washing machine does not complete a wash cycle, you explore issues with the device, the water supply, or the connection to the mains; you do not ask for a building inspection.

That thought came to me as I finished taking a shower.

A Managerial and Political Issue

This afternoon, I was met with a complex managerial and political issue. For all my protestations about the guidelines, framework, and structure needed to govern a process that I felt left us exposed, all management wanted was for us to do something, anything, first, before addressing concerns that would fill reams of paper dating back to July last year.

After I had answered a series of questions, the activity was cherry-picked out of a larger case for correct procedure and directed towards a decision to be enforced.

In what I could only term a dare to challenge authority and face the consequences of stepping out of line, the manager, now assuming control where earlier they had failed to provide support, asked on the Microsoft Teams group chat:

The Challenge on Teams

"Everyone, anyone here unhappy with the approach?"

He might as well have said, "Anyone up for a fight? I'm here to bludgeon you."

I was dissatisfied, but this required tact, and there came the inspiration for another analogy.

The Bricklayer Analogy

"To put it another way, we are the bricklayers, and you want a house for which no architect has been engaged to design and no structural engineer has assessed. We are just putting brick on brick and hoping we end up with a shelter everyone can use."

As bricklayers, we know what houses should look like, but without a plan, a lot can go wrong. My job is to paint the picture; how you appreciate that work of art is beyond my ability to dictate, but the work has been done.

It will sink in somehow, and the message will not be lost in the morass of politicking and power plays.

Eloquence as Construction, Not Evasion

Let me be clear about one thing: eloquence here is not a tool of evasiveness. It is the means by which I explain and construct a clear narrative of the risk profile of an activity, one that could lead to penalties, the loss of professional reputation, or a negative impact on business operations and the user community.

Knowledge shared through such communication exposes the blind spots and pitfalls that are usually not taken into consideration.

Nor is this a matter of perfecting a process. There is no process. What we have is a range of assumptions that have not been properly tested or validated, yet are forced into implementation by expediency.

There is a further purpose to all this. By communicating in this way, one is also documenting the issues, so that when the matter of responsibility for any action arises, the points made earlier will show that management was informed and chose to act against the identified risks they had been asked to appreciate.

Experience Speaks for Itself

Many of us might hold junior roles in the multilayered hierarchy of the organisation, but never confuse our positions with a lack of maturity.

After 40 years in this business, where this is probably one of the least significant roles I have held in 30 years, I think I know a fair amount about management, and about being managed, and about getting a point across without equivocation.

We didn't just start at this yesterday.

A Google NotebookLM AI Podcast on this blog

Customer support done so badly

I asked for help

I relate below a totally failed customer support activity that I requested from my DNS provider on Friday, because I was frustrated by their inertia, their exacerbation of the problem, and as a result, it put my week out that it is taking some time to get back on an even keel.

I logged a support ticket because a change the firm had done on the backend took away the presentation of my corporate Blogger website using a domain name, they had provided me. The change was implemented in mid-March, but I just did not seem to have the time to address it, so I removed all references to my corporate website on all published material until I could properly review the issue.

Asking with clear concerns

My support ticket was written thus:

I had my company blog at http://www.forakin.com/ which is a redirection for http://forakin.blogspot.com for years until a change was made to your back-end systems.

Since that change, anytime I visit my blog, I get the following error:

Welcome to www.forakin.com, a site recently created using our clustered Linux web hosting. If you’re seeing this page instead of your website, please replace or remove the default index.php from your public_html directory. (Screenshot attached.)

I have no idea what to do here because I did not have to create an index.php file when I created my website and the redirection from here, I believe it is a file in the TSOHost environment which I did find but still could not resolve the issue.

Note: Also, I use forakin.com as my Microsoft Azure domain with my email managed within Azure / Microsoft 365 and cannot afford for any changes to the domain to affect my email services.

Expectation: How do I get my Google Blogger website to show again when referenced as forakin.com?

The error I reported.

Think like your customer

The error I was getting when I visited my website, I could not fix even after I accessed the said file on the hosting service portal, this apart from the fact that I did nothing in Linux or with the service provider apart from entering a few DNS records to redirect my custom domain to my blog.

Fundamentally, the change had no guidance for users who do not normally tinker with Linux and all I wanted was for this issue to be fixed.

However, despite the narrative of my issue, the note attached was quite particular, whilst I wanted a problem solved, I had a core dependency on that domain name, the business email that I could not afford to lose, and I clearly stated that I do not want any changes made that would affect my email service.

Despite my expectation of a resolution, my thinking was my note would stay paramount in the mind of whoever took up the issue to help resolve it. I was wrong.

This matter goes to the heart of understanding what it is to give customer support in the Information Technology and Computing world. It is not enough to understand and comprehend the problem being stated with the wherewithal to resolve the issue. Much as a customer will have expectations, once a concern or requirement is raised, nothing whatsoever should be done to impair the quality of service the customer is trying to retain as the issue is being resolved.

A fix or a fudge?

On Saturday morning, I received an update from a customer support person, and this is what he said:

Thank you for getting in touch on that matter!

I checked your account, and it seems like the problem was coming from the DNS conflict, I fixed it, but could you clarify from where should the website load from?

Could you please confirm where you host your emails because it currently shows they are with Outlook?

If you have any further questions or concerns, we will remain available.

There is a lot in this response that might not be seen without carefully reading it. He said, “I fixed it.” No, it was not fixed, and his assessment that it was a DNS conflict was strange because no changes had been done to my custom DNS records for well over a year, and everything website and email was working until the change in mid-March when I lost access to my website.

I already stated where I was loading my website from in my support ticket, all he had to do was click on both URLs to see what results. He had somewhat attempted a quick fix, with no attention to detail or verification of the consequence of his action.

Indeed, my emails were hosted with Outlook, he would have seen the DNS records indicating that and that service was what I expressly said should not be affected by what they do.

Like I said, my website was not working after the fix, rather it was showing another error. However, what also happened was I was no longer able to receive emails on my business email account. Much as I was able to send from it with my email client, no emails were received.

Hey! I’ve lost my email service

I updated my support ticket with my new observations and concerns, this time asking that they either revert what was done or resolve everything and particularly the email service that was lost.

Another customer support agent, instead of reading what I had written, responded on Monday morning:

In terms for the emails related to forakin.com, you need to contact Microsoft as they are the email providers and not us.

They should be able to assist you a lot further into this as they will see any errors that appear.

If you need further assistance, feel free to contact us.

Not our problem, dear

Well, no, I do not need to contact Microsoft when in fact it is what your customer support agent did that lost me the email service. I was incandescent with rage but had to keep my cool as I tried to assess the situation.

I visited the Microsoft 365 portal to check my domain configuration and what I could see on the Microsoft end was that it was expecting to read some DNS records from my DNS hosting provider, and it was getting something else. Their assessment of the issue was that some DNS entries were wrong.

Therefore, if a member of staff with my DNS hosting provider was tinkering with settings on my account and fixing a DNS conflict that until I received the first response was working, the responsibility for the issue lay with my DNS hosting provider, but what I was met with was lethargy, inertia, and a total lack of consideration. It was in all terms a total failure of change management and customer support.

Maybe it’s just the culture there

This was further complicated by the fact that no one could determine what the supposed DNS conflict was nor was there any documentation of exactly what was done that could be reverted.

The culture in the organisation was becoming evident.

1. A lack of controls in the organisation that documents or considers customer engagement, apart from the fact that they had withdrawn telephone support for either live chat or support ticket registration.
2. A lack of attention to detail where customer concerns are paramount, requiring the customer to be first informed of the consequences of any action to be taken before the action is implemented
3. A poor grasp of comprehending and reading up on all the material and communication between the customer and any agent before acting or responding.
4. No proper escalation processes where a poorly executed activity can be reviewed and remediation towards reversion or forward resolution.
5. A tendency to engage in back-and-forth communication without any sense of responsibility for their actions.
6. Any absence of enduring team cohesion that allows other agents to know what one agent has done, especially, when that action has caused other issues.
7. In fact, I did also write to the head of the organisation about my issue, well, they just pay lip service to customer service and enablement, but the reality is far from the intentions expressed.

I provided additional information with screenshots and data that needed to be entered in my custom DNS records table, even though from my perspective on the DNS provider’s portal, everything seemed correct.

However, I could not persuade my DNS provider’s agents to enter these DNS records, they all were requiring me to clean up after the mess that one of their agents had created by totally ignoring my note.

By Tuesday morning, it became evident that whatever I was trying to do on the DNS provider’s portal was not working. This might have been because that part of the portal even though it was displaying my changes was not saving the same changes.

For all that time, Microsoft 365 was indicating to me that no changes were being observed from the entries on my DNS provider’s side to match the entries it was expecting.

Not all rotten apples

Eventually, I initiated a new Live Chat session where the very helpful agent said the DNS records were propagating, but when I checked, they were not the expected DNS records. I was then able to persuade the agent to enter the 5 records needed to restore my email service and device registration service in Microsoft Endpoint Manager.

Once those were done on Tuesday afternoon, my email service was restored and by then I was no more interested to getting my corporate website back up on forakin.com, I could not go through another ordeal like that, I began the process of moving my corporate website to forakin.org that is hosted by another DNS provider.

Now that I think of it, I might well consider moving forakin.com to this other DNS provider.

It was all unnecessary

It must be said, this issue could have been resolved on Monday morning if any of the customer support team cared. I provided them with the full details of the DNS records that needed to be entered to be matched to what Microsoft 365 was expecting and each time, rather than act, they asked me to do it myself.

A few hours after my email service was restored, I got another update on my support ticket asking for the DNS entries I had already provided and this after the update that the issue had been resolved. What did I say earlier, they do not read the full thread of communication before they act, it is appalling.

This time I had to update the subject and state as the first line in my response, “Please, close this ticket.” After which I explained why it should be closed. It is evident that if an organisation cannot take responsibility for the actions they have undertaken, it is quite unnecessary waiting for an apology from them.

It is my hope that customer service in that organisation improves, however, if I have to face another technical support situation, I will rather take my custom elsewhere. No one should ever have to face the level of ineptitude I experience, and this is the case with someone who has been in the industry for over 3 decades. I hate to think of what people who have no IT experience have to face, it just does not bear thinking of.

Personal website

Business website – I hope to start putting more up there.

The onerous protocols of CoVID

Everything for the outing

Before you leave your home, you don a mask whilst having at least one to spare, just in case the ear straps break, or you just need to replace it because of some mishap. You will be refused entry to any establishment without a mask; besides, it is now an offence to be without a mask covering both your nose and mouth when in a public space.

As you arrive at a place, you can expect the following activities which begin with sanitising your hands, the many times you do this can present a dermatological crisis. Then a scanning gun is pointed at you to take your body temperature. I have registered as low as 34.3⁰ Celsius, but this might be due to environmental factors than being poikilothermic.

Document your existence

Forms to fill, your name and phone number, where you are staying, your passport number, whether you have had symptoms, who you might have encountered that had symptoms, if you have been at a rave and then you swear by any religious tome of choice to be truthful and only be true.

Leaving the country comes with other requirements, all the places you stayed at, then went to for whatever duration, when you arrived and when you are leaving, your destination address, your next of kin with contact details. Not forgetting, you must have taken a SARS-CoV-2 test which should be negative, or you are going nowhere. The protocols of CoVID are myriads and I look forward to 10 days of quarantine.

Thought Picnic: Welcomed into a changing world of work

Reading much about it all

The welcoming party had neither sound nor sight, but in the confines of my email inbox with the burgeoning volumes of documentation that were the materials of any intensive induction.

All half a century of documents in all, I was about to be inculcated and indoctrinated, by the time I had finished poring over them and signed the requisite documents, I should have been acculturated into the organisation, not noticeably dissimilar from others.

In the majority of the day past and today, finding and linking references, my beady eye sometimes finding agreement and contradiction, obsolescence, acquiescence, and supersedence whilst resisting the pedantry of identifying and notifying of my observations.

An altered life at work

Yet, in these times, we are not in the normal circumstances that allow for face-to-face meetings, we are remote, away, at home, interacting through media to set up new relationships. Agents distant but involved, managers commanding and effective, specialists implementing solutions from afar impacting the run of the organisation, changing it from within.

The new world of work would no more be at desks but through screens, comportment, decency, and presentation making up for communication where the subtleties of traditional interaction with the reading of body language along with reactions is lost. To demonstrate import, intention, and passion, nuance would demand a better use of words and mannerisms. We are feeling our way into this new experience and I think it would be interesting.

South Africa: Tourist shops full of bric-a-brac and no useful brochures

In company for moments

I would have wanted to reflect more and write a lot more on my last trip to South Africa which has the uniquely amazing complement of spending it in the companionship of my partner.

Many things in life can probably be enjoyed alone, but nothing beats the sharing of experiences and moments with a soulmate. The times we visited places and observed, nature, placement, event or exhibit from different or similar perspectives then commented to each other with interest, engagement and involvement were too many to mention.

Many beautiful places to see

The City Sightseeing Tour of Johannesburg was the beginning of shared experiences that were not just between us, the many pictures taken of the locations around the Constitution Hill all into Soweto and back, made for an eventful and unforgettable day.

After our day out at Zoo Lake, there were visits to the Walter Sisulu National Botanical Gardens, Lilliesleaf Farm that gave rise to the Rivonia Trial, Hartbeespoort Aerial Cableway onto the Magaliesberg Mountains overlooking the Hartbeespoort Dam and then the Ditsong National Museum of Natural History in Pretoria.

I don’t want tatty bric-a-brac

All these locations seemed to have shops for souvenirs, African goods and bric-a-brac, however, they were all lacking in essential carefully curated brochures or books about the locations we were at. The gardens, the farm, the dam and museum all had oodles of information about nature and exhibits, many panels of information that you could read throughout the site, and except if you were snapping away with your camera, more than half what was observed would probably be forgotten.

The purpose of a site location brochure or book is not only to document every aspect of the broadly tourist location but also to give background and context to all the features on display. This is a job that can be given to academia in South Africa and I think they would enthusiastically engage to help in this regard.

I want to leave these locations with experiences, sometimes I cannot see everything, having a brochure or guide in at least English and some other languages can make any visit a rewarding and educational experience as one reads up on the detail of where one has gone.

This must be a critical project

The shops did not serve any of the tourist locations well, even when I had previously gone to the Voortrekker Monument near Pretoria or the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden in Cape Town, there was a dearth of useful information to take away beyond the on-location experience.

Having travelled around the world and seen that even museums and tourist locations put some work into producing brochures, books, manuals or guides. It is my solemn advice to whoever is in charge of Tourism in South Africa to make this a critical deliverable with the utmost alacrity.

The memories I captured can be found on my other blog.

Blog - Cherishing the gift of precious moments

Thought Picnic: Fan, shit and table

Like Line-Management 101

One of the functions of a line-manager is to know how to ensure that the skills pool does not suffer the inconvenience of indispensability.

It is important that a team has experts, knowledgeable people whom we can trust to get things done, yet, it is essential that the expert does not become someone we cannot do without.

That means, there should be someone else able to do whatever the expert does, maybe not as neatly or as quickly, maybe needing some help and guidance, though not necessarily poise to replace the expert, only being there to backfill if necessary.

Continuing Line-Management 101

Part of this line-manager activity is having the resource to get a job that usually gets done by their team available when that job needs to be done, with caveats obviously about the alacrity and finesse. One often needful element is to ensure that the experts document all their procedures and processes, should in case, someone needs to act in the expert’s stead.

A line-manager would have somewhat failed in their responsibility if at the point of need, they have failed to adequately provide resource to fulfil a requirement that all they have is excuses that would adversely affect an operational activity.

Fan, shit and no table – Line-Management failure

At this point, the shit might well hit the fan in an uncomfortable escalation, the line-manager having poorly provided for the consequence, in not having a table to hide under when the shit starts flying.

Sometime ago in an exchange with a colleague, I wrote a rather tersely worded email when it seemed to be looking for who to blame rather than take responsibility for what he was tasked to do. “I cover my arse by doing my job rather than by looking for someone to blame, you should try to do that too.”

The response was a protest, but he had not hiding place, he was exposed just as a line-manager can be exposed by avoidable personnel management flaws.

So there …

Nigeria: Football, Age Determination and Record Keeping

Page to age rage

As the FIFA Under-17 World Cup 2013 plays away in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) we find ourselves being ambivalent about the players my other footballing country of Nigeria has fielded. I support England be reason of birth and the Netherlands having lived there for 12 years. [Wikipedia]

We as fans of a football loving country are always taken by the amazing performance of our players, as somewhere in our minds we wonder whether the players are really as young as they state they are.

In 2008, David Moyes, then Everton manager made this comment about Yakubu Aiyegbeni, “He's only 25, albeit a Nigerian 25, and so if that is his age he's still got a good few years ahead of him.” [BBC News]

Whatever he might have been alluding to, he created the perception probably long held that some Nigerian players might well be many years older than the ages presented in their contractual documents.

Age fraud and overwhelming successes

Age fraud in association football is well documented in Africa and Asia, Nigeria was even suspended and sanctioned for fielding over-aged players in certain FIFA tournaments. [Wikipedia]

Nigeria is the most successful team in the U-17 World Cup tournament having been in six finals, winning three, followed by Brazil in five finals, winning two, but we must come to a stage where we are confident that we are playing on a level field without taking advantage of our opponents.

We must be in the eligible age range and what should show is our football talent and prowess in our taking the laurels. This however is not to take away from the successes of teams past and the pride we have in all their victories.

Some science to the rescue

In 2009, FIFA introduced the mandatory use of Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) which apparently has 99% accuracy in determining how old a person is up until the age of 17 after which it is difficult for medical expertise to determine the age that accurately. [BBC Sport]

The MRI system of age determination checks the grade of ossification/fusion in the distal radius [bones at the wrist] where fusion suggests the subject is above the age of 17 and thereby ineligible to compete in the FIFA Under-17 World Cup tournament. [NIH] [BBC Sport]

Courtesy of Wikipedia [Source]

Many African countries first rejected this age determination process, but it is the best science could do for countries that have poor documentation processes that have no proper trust or verification systems to ascertain the provenance or authenticity of birth certificates or declarations. [BBC News]

My scepticism is predicated on whether our kind of physiology is catered for and whether the scanners are calibrated to account to possible racial differences in bone structure, environment, diet and other factors. However, this is the best system we have to rely on now.

A poor record-keeping culture

We do not have proper systems to register life births in hospitals or maternity homes, our municipalities have poor record keeping systems for the registration of births, of marriages and of deaths; beyond which there is no centralised archiving system to maintain such information if acquired.

What we have adopted is a system of swearing affidavits, many of which are taken on self-recognisance given the weight of a notary public and then rubber stamped by the judicial arm of government.

These poor archiving systems permeate all works life; in government, in the private sector and in academia. There was an instance where a PhD holder from a reputable institution in the UK had to present all certificates he had acquired dating back to primary school after a 25-year career, with him approaching 50 to take up an appointment in Nigeria.

I dare say that white Africans are far ahead on the record keeping and documentation front; in another world, they would probably be able to produce enough documentary evidence to lay claim to anything even if acquired fraudulently by their forebears.

The fun in record keeping

I watch programmes on British television like "Who Do You Think You Are?" and I am always impressed with how researchers could trawl through archives going back centuries to piece together genealogies, ancestries and histories. We probably have just the adulterated and sometimes exaggerated or fabled oral histories to go by – we need to pay more heed to record keeping and documentation.

The idea that our sports ambassadors have to be herded like cattle through MRI scan turnstiles to determine the ages of the participants is degrading enough, if not disgraceful, but we brought this ignominious exercise upon ourselves.

We must address this now

The FIFA U-16 World Championship founded in 1985 and then renamed to FIFA U-17 World Cup has been running for 28 years. We should have learnt the lessons by now to ensure any new entrants to the competition have a good paper trail of birth certificates, medical histories, school reports and other supporting documentation not to have to suffer the indignities of an MRI scan.

This must be integral to our health policy, our education policy and other population census documentation and government planning policies. We need to get to a stage where the writing on any document emerging from our countries is worth the paper it is written on and accepted as authentic by any verification or certification organisation anywhere in the world.

Redefining our culture with the FOI Act

This was published this morning as my first blog for the Daily Times of Nigeria under the title Redefining our culture with the FOI Act and it highlights how our culture of documentation and archiving will have to change.

A duty to all

The signing of the Freedom of Information Act 2011 by President Goodluck Jonathan has been lauded by many especially the media as a major development for Nigeria democracy.

It is however important that we do not lose the real changes that this development might bring to the Nigerian information gathering and sharing space.

There is no doubt that with this Act the media now has the duty and responsibility to seek after fact, ensure they obtain the truth, conduct intelligent and thorough analysis of data as well as strive to make our more representative democracy borne of the 2011 elections more accountable and responsive to the needs of the general populace.

Document and catalogue

This Act demands a number of changes to the way all public institutions do their business; they must fully document information about all their activities, operations and businesses, and in doing so, the information must be organised to facilitate public access.

By extension, it might mean that all written material, files, folders, records stored on various devices, cards, forms, maps, plans, graphs, charts, drawings, photographs, films, images, negatives, microfilm and much more dumped in all recesses of organisations will have to be retrieved, committed to some sort of electronic archive and catalogued, it might mean that each major department hire an archivist or librarian to handle these matters.

Along with this will come the need to properly classify the information into openly accessible public domain material and different levels of access depending on the needs for secrecy, privacy, confidentiality, importance and seriousness, though the Official Secrets Act does not provide a blanket cover for public interest material and the onus of the burden of proof is now on the public institution to justify why access to information is declined.

Efficiency and security

The 7-day limit granted by the Act to produce information requested under the Act means the cataloguing process needs to become more efficient; backlogs of requests need to be prevented so as to avoid sanctions and penalties on the officials of the public institutions.

The matter of electronic documentation also means that many of the poorly designed Internet websites, homepages and databases would need a radical revamp; it can also present the opportunity to process FOI requests through an electronic kiosk system facilitating even faster access to the information being requested.

Checks and balances would then need to be implemented to ensure that information does not get altered illegally; that information provided is not falsified or denial of access to certain bits of information are not as a result of the destruction of the same; it could be the beginning of e-government in Nigeria.

Use judiciously

The biggest responsibility that this Act confers on all Nigerians is first that of trust and then the need to verify, sources, information and detail, the need to commit to getting the whole truth whilst eschewing sensationalism, speculation and rumour.

I hope that those who use this Act will do so judiciously, without malice and with every sense of purpose for the betterment of our democracy; its abuse will only confirm the fears that kept the bill moribund for years in the legislative pipeline.

Nigeria: Why Poor Countries Are Poor

Why Poor Countries Are Poor

It is important that people who are involved in the development in developing countries recognise the task ahead of them and the difficulties they face.

When I read the chapter “Why Poor Countries Are Poor”, in the Undercover Economist, I was taken aback by both the insight and truth of the things the author say.

I found an online version of “Why Poor Countries Are Poor” which I implore you to read.

The role of bureaucracies

There are many issues I cannot address here but one interesting issue is the role of bureaucracies in stifling development, progress and economic growth.

Corruption is exacerbated by the layers and hoops of unnecessary bureaucratic requirements that simply keep pen-pushers and deadwood in their positions of unwarranted privilege as enemies of change – people need to get things done and the only way to smooth out any activity is to grease grubby palms.

All certificates ever had

One interesting example of this useless bureaucracy is the story of someone who has had most of his education in Europe which includes a PhD from a reputable university along with 2 Masters degrees in different but related disciplines, a smattering of certificates and professional qualifications, almost countless.

He had recently been appointed to a senior directorial role in the government sector in Nigeria and he has been asked to produce all certificates he has ever had since he was in primary school.

So, after a 30-year career, you need to find the yellowing pages of teacher opinions when he was in primary and secondary school to do a job his peers already think he is well qualified for.

Documentation and searches

We have bureaucracies in the West, but also structures and institutions that work after a fashion and we recognise that the highest qualification attained might be the person satisfied the requirements for being granted that qualification, preceded by the person having satisfied the entry requirements for that course and all that down the line.

Another thing is the way we document and computerise records such that the search for any information or confirmation of any detail is at the behest of the enquirer rather than the giver of the information.

Unfortunately, these structures are disjointed in Nigeria, there is very poor record keeping that most legal deeds have to be given as sworn affidavits with no corroborative authority apart from the hope that the person has been truthful.

In those circumstances, one may not question too strongly the need for all certificates going back to the birth certificate.

Now, this is ridiculous

I was however thrown when I heard they also want the birth certificates of the parents; they have been long dead and were born sometime in the 1910s or 1920s, probably a tree was planted when they were born as was when my father was born, but birth registration and certificates?

What you may ask does the birth certificate of parents have to do with someone satisfying the requirements for job and being vetted to assume that position?

The birth certificate of the principal would if registered at birth have contained the names and professions of the parents, that should suffice, but bureaucracies breed mountains of useless data accumulated for no other purpose than to give mandarins and bureaucrats undue relevance and power to oppress or inconvenience the citizenry without helping anyone.

The best thing any government of a developing country can do is reduce layers of bureaucracy, bureaucratic irrelevance and the people who feed that system – time to register companies, accumulation of unnecessary information, provide access to relevant economic data without strictures and nip all sources of patronage in the bud.

Insincerity of a non-purpose

A cause without a rebel

As one comes to the end of another project, one is in a quandary about how much has been achieved in the last few months.

My suspicions of the sincerity of purpose linger without respite.

As one was hired to help introduce a best practice methodology for a scheme that was implemented by personnel whose knowledge and experiences of an earlier version beclouded their ability to see the new features of the later.

That is excusable until the pressure of usage reveals tell-tale signs a sophisticated old version or a poorly implemented new version.

That management had identified part of the problem was significant and laudable, at least that is why one was hired.

Sacred cows for roast beef

However, once the job started of analysis and recommendation, endless meetings of consensus seeking validation stifled progress mostly through the resistance of the earlier implementers whose sacred cows were about to be massacred.

My candid opinion was that the system as it was could be improved upon and there was no need for a radical overhaul and design.

Others were hell-bent on a complete redesign, whilst the incumbents had the agenda of trying to revalidate their failing implementation time and time again by bringing in the vendor to vet all documents.

In the end, we have a repository of position documents, logged hours of debate and analysis but changed not one single thing – 5 months down the line.

Just talking the talk ONLY!

My questioning of the sincerity of purpose stems from the fact that a rationalisation is already happening without having put anything in place.

It looks like management is seeking to have some modicum of due-diligence done but have no intention of implementing any change.

Meanwhile, the lessons one has learnt would go far and can be codified into the following lessons.

• Never offer your organisation up to be an early-adopter of any technology; you end up having to do it all over again 18 months down the line.
• Master the technology at hand before implementing alternatives, other experts might wonder at your lack of fundamental knowledge.
• Just because you are good at an automation process does not mean it would work for all applications.
• The debate about implementing technologies once concluded at management level in terms of strategy and financing should be left to experts to carry forward.
• Once a technology is adopted, decisions should have expert delivery not democratic consensus.

Documentation is not completion

There are more lessons to learn in terms of the pace of change, but there is a delusion that documentation is fulfilment rather than it being the first part of an agreed process.

It is very likely that this time next year, the same old issues would still be the issues being discussed.