Smart Nation A small matter can cause a large problem
It may seem a small matter, but it has caused a large problem of gigantic proportion.

I refer to the fear of the use of email. 

Some one or two decade ago, some "smart ass" in the government declared that email is "not safe". It can be hacked. 

So, someone in authority probably passed a regulation that forbid the use of email in government communication. The commercial sector followed this "insane practice".

What happened? 

I find it impossible to communicate with government agencies or commercial companies with email. I have to go through their "secure website". The trouble is - it is extremely troublesome and difficult. Communication is seriously hampered.

I have to go through their call center to handle official matters. Their call center cannot cope with the volume of calls. It takes half to one hour for many calls to be connected. 

I often have to spend one or two weeks for a small matter to be resolved. 

You can multiply this experience by several tens of thousand of matters that need to be attended to every day.  If each matter takes a few hours to be handled in this inefficient manner, the cost to the nation is horrendous.

Is email that unsafe? In perhaps 99.99% of the cases, it does not matter that the email communication can be hacked. Anyway, the hacker will not want to waste their time trying to hack ordinary communication. They might put in their effort to hack valuable state secrets, rather than ordinary communication.

I have dealt with many organizations outside of Singapore. They handle most of their communication with email, chat or text messages. The issues are handled promptly, satisfactorily and at a fraction of the cost that it takes for the issues to be handled by Singapore companies and government agencies. 

Singapore is extremely inefficient, wasteful and costly. 

It is strange that the fear of "hacking of emails" is a big contributor to this unsatisfactory state of affairs. 

Will PM Lee or the Smart Nation people wake up?

Do you agree that Singapore is run by idiots?

Tan Kin Lian
 

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