Bureaucracy

Trinidad and Tobago: Copying of IDs Continues.

~ Taran ~ Leave a comment

When I wrote about the amount of photocopies made of IDs in Trinidad and Tobago, back in 2018, I failed to look forward because as most things in Trinidad and Tobago, we are so focused on the present which looks a lot like the past in other nations.

I’d considered writing a really long article about it, but instead, I’ll just do this off the cuff.

Here’s the thing. A lawyer called me this morning and wanted me to email him copies of 2 forms of ID so that he could help his client out with something, because in dealing with a government office, they would make copies of the ID to have on file because… because Trinidad and Tobago is displaced by about 20 years of bureaucracy. This bureaucracy only persists because of those who benefit from it.

In an age where Mark Lyndersay complains that Lensa thinks he should have hair, in the very same country, maybe sending digital copies of identification around could be considered a National Security issue. Or a banking fraud issue, since banks are one of the sore points for… well, everyone.

That it’s not criminal is only because it hasn’t been outlawed yet. It is, as we would say here, doltish.

It’s amazingly simple to do, particularly with the passing inspection identification cards get in the places that make copies of them. It wouldn’t be too hard to create an ID based on a template, a few images that could be done photorealistically by AI, and making sure it’s the right dimensions.

The bureaucracy can’t get out of it’s own way.

The Process Is Underway

~ Taran ~ 2 Comments

tt_tech_growthIt took me decades to figure out something that I should have long ago. Call it naivete. When I first came back to Trinidad and Tobago, I thought my software engineering knowledge and experience would be considered worthwhile and useful, but all too often it was rejected in the need to pursue more local and deprecated technology use. It would drive me nuts.

No more. After considering the events around and surrounding what I wrote about starting with the basics, it dawned on me that the culture, at least for the last decades, demanded making it’s own mistakes. The winning bidder in technology is generally something that was marketed to the government, or which requires an allegiance to the software manufacturer in Redmond, Washington, all the while complaining about the United States.
For me, it seems technology usage lags by about 20 years behind the United States, which is becoming very awkward with the new technologies coming out faster than the crippling bureaucracy of Trinidad and Tobago can adapt – and when they adapt, it’s without learning the lessons of the last 20 years in other countries. That’s a very negative thing to write, but all too often it’s true.

Technology, though, can’t exist in a vacuum. Technology can only serve those who know how to operate it, or they get burned. Listening to a conversation today in a coffee shop, where an apparent meeting was taking place to sell tech adaptation services or something along those lines, the guy in running shorts with ear buds in was explaining to the professionally attired woman that he had saved the world with technology at other companies, and thus he knew what he was talking about.

I chuckled even though their loud conversation was annoying while I was reading because I’d see those guys for at least 3 decades sell themselves as solutions. People then buy the solutions, and then complain about the solutions, then want to fix the solutions because nobody wants to admit bad money was spent, even in a committee… until eventually they get someone who actually has some experience but they’re too broke to pay. There was a part of me that just wanted to look at them and say in a very level voice, “That’s a bunch of bullshit”, but then I remembered something very important.

It’s part of the process, and I may have been underestimating that woman’s bullshit sensor and that’s what needs to evolve. The bullshit sensor, and perhaps the bullshit feedback mechanism. Bypassing that is dangerous, and it’s a necessary part of technology growth. In fact, I’d offer that there’s quite a bit of that bovine fecal matter stuck in the cogs of bureaucracy from various fields beyond technology.

So I sat and finished my coffee, reading my book, satisfied that the process was underway, and that bullshit sensors would self-adjust or deprecate. I had no part of it and that made my day brighter.

Rebuilding Trinidad and Tobago.

~ Taran ~ Leave a comment

800px-Flag_of_Trinidad_and_Tobago.svgI have been observing fairly quietly the way things are going in Trinidad and Tobago, and it’s hard to say that things are going well by any stretch. Even Global Voices has picked up on the disconnect between politicians and the people that they allegedly serve, and even after that politicians continued speaking in quite condescending ways to the public.
In grand Trinidad and Tobago picong, the Trinidad and Tobago Express was happy to point out that coal pot sales are still slow.

The Chinese have a proverb: When you find yourself in a hole, stop digging.

Clearly those accused of leadership in the country are still digging – perhaps digging up the nation’s roads so that citizens can repair their own roads. I am not immune to a little picong myself.

Then there’s the ongoing crime issue, where the Minister of National Security Minister downplayed a shooting ‘200m from a school’ when videos were going around Whatsapp of children hiding under desks and scared – without seeming to understand that a 9mm round can go up to 3 miles, and as if a shooting even 200 meters from a school is acceptable. For those of you uncertain, it is not acceptable and should not be considered acceptable. It’s not as if schools have a special zone around them where people who are going to shoot at each other agree not to shoot. The fact that they are shooting at each other in the first place might be a hint, though I am probably not as qualified as a Minister of National Security on such things.
For years, I have sat and watched even as a $500 million dollar overpass is being built when either side of it consistently floods with heavy rains, even as another project in South Trinidad had a road collapse earlier this year – a road I once traveled daily.

People quietly talk about how Trinidad and Tobago got where it is. I have been watching, observing, not writing about each and every thing because to do that would be a full time job for groups of journalists. In this regard, I imagine that there’s steady employment – slews of editorials trying to connect the dots, with everyone trying to come up with people to blame, political sides to blame, and even broad brush attempts to come up with silver bullets for every mythical creature out there that could be to blame.

In speaking with friends, there is this shared thought that something must be done, that something needs to change. That has always been there, but there is a sense of urgency now that has inspired me to write this.

Apolitical

Two party political systems have a tendency to devolve into power sharing, where either side of the coin blames the other side, continuing to spin the coin that powers what is best termed as bacchanal. I generally don’t write about these things because it’s easy to get labeled in the popular ad hominem defenses that someone has a political side simply by one thing being written. In Trinidad and Tobago, we have the People’s National Movement (PNM) and the United National Congress (UNC) with very little in between – two parties that have swapped power, the UNC once under the guise of a coalition that it didn’t seem too interested in.

I know people in both parties. I know people who support either party, and generally surround myself with those that are more interested in the issues than the political soap opera of the elite.

The reality is not the politics, but the politics parades as reality for many. This is not political fodder. This is about reality.

The State Company Issue

When Caroni 1975 Ltd, the state owned sugar company, was closed, it was because it was not profitable. A mixture of incompetence of management and corruption. When Petrotrin was closed down, it was seen to be the same thing regardless of how it was described. There were no attempts to fix these issues.

We see it in the plethora of State owned Corporations. T&TEC, the national supplier of electricity, dealt with outages all over it’s network, but the most memorable one was a single tree falling causing an outage throughout Trinidad. WASA, the nation’s water and sewage company, has been plagued by lack of profitability, failing infrastructure that even recently left people without water, and has a plant down still, as far as I know, because of turbid water conditions on a river– something worthy of question on an island with a wet and dry season.
Crime has regained prominence as shootings continue, debates over legal firearms continue, and yet Trinidad and Tobago’s landed Defence Force seems to be more prominent than the Coast Guard. On a dual island nation one would expect the borders to be less permeable for guns and drugs through the efforts of a Coast Guard, yet the Defence Force seems to be the answer that both political parties have reached for every time.

Then there are the plethora of regional corporations and other state entities that one needs a special dictionary for to translate the acronyms into who is responsible for what.

It seems oddly appropriate that the only police escorts are for Members of Parliament and prisoners on the way to Court.

“How did it become this way?”, people ask, though sounding much more local with seasoned adjectives. Everyone seems to have something to say on that.

I do too.

How It Got This Way.

It can be boiled down to three things: Nepotism, corruption, and lack of diversification of the economy. Where corruption is suspected and is not present, transparency is the issue. The lack of economic diversification deserves it’s own section.

Nepotism sometimes lends itself to incompetence, sometimes to corruption, sometimes both. This has gone on for decades, and much like Putin’s equipment that failed in Ukraine, and continues to fail, the infrastructure of Trinidad and Tobago fails with a little rain. We could bring climate change into this but that’s a broader topic, a global topic, and one some dismiss outright. Yet the reality is that the nation of Trinidad and Tobago is small, and therefore nepotism is not as avoidable. It’s simply a reality that must be better balanced with transparency.

When I sat on some land I owned adjacent to what National Infrastructure and Development Corporation (NIDCO) took from me about a decade ago (still haven’t been paid for it) I watched the highway shift more than once for people to get paid even when the highway didn’t affect the land. Even as WASA ran the water line next to the highway, I saw their materials being taken for other things by other people – but I do know that there’s not much sand around that water line as was sourced for. I imagine that line will leak as the clay around it dries and is soaked in the seasons, maybe leading to larger issues later on.

I’ve watched this Diego Martin Overpass being constructed, and attended the public meetings. I took my time in one meeting and took apart what NIDCO had submitted to the Environmental Management Agency (EMA), from the clear boundaries of waterways in the project that itself stated it would not impact waterways, to the omission of the orange winged parrots and red rumped agouti in the area. It was clear the document was copied and pasted from other documents, with part of it claiming an increase in traffic while also pointing out that the population in the area was declining. At the meetings, there was no one advocating the $500 million overpass. The fact that they took the land that people in the environs were told would be a park and a swimming pool to honor George Bovell for the overpass pleased no one in the area that I could tell. No one stood up in a public meeting and said, “We want this!”, but many asked serious questions that were never quite answered.

When it rains heavily these days, the Diego Martin Highway on either side of the overpass sees flooding. In my mind, that would have been the thing to spend the $TT500m on.

When I was on the Board of Victoria Keyes – a volunteer position I resigned when I saw the politics entering the management of the Housing Development Corporation’s (HDC) leased property – I had dealings with the contractors and there were verbal promises made, but it’s apparent since Victoria Keyes to date has no concurrent lease, that the residents there, and in the adjacent Powder Magazine would have little to no say. The lessor, HDC, and NIDCO, two state run enterprises, will do what they will behind closed doors.

There is a pattern of this, almost fractal in nature, and I imagine administrating this must be a nightmare. It certainly creates many of them.

These are just some hints as to the larger picture, where the government is the largest employer in the country through a number of state enterprises. To speak ill of the government if you work for the government would be career limiting regardless of which political party is dominant and which is in opposition, though at least one person characterized as a blogger seems to sometimes do so, but in doing so has raised more questions. There is a need for more transparency, but that transparency must not be considered biased – a curse the media itself has been accused of by politicians and vagrants alike.

The reality is that both parties are responsible for where we are, and those that try to fill in the middle are dismissed out of sheer inertia.

Trinidad and Tobago is the victim of it’s choices. A better choice has yet to evolve.

Lack of Diversification of the Economy.
The issue of Crime is an issue of economy. The economic disparity in Trinidad and Tobago is not something that is discussed politely, and perhaps it should not be spoken of politely. Regardless, the reality is that the socioeconomics related to geographic areas combined with the government’s decades of failure has lead to less options for those young souls looking for their place in the world. I was fortunate not that I had good socioeconomic status – I did not – but I had opportunity and I was able to leverage it.

Since I became aware of the larger world around the end of my teenage years, every government has mentioned ‘diversifying the economy’. This gives my personal experience being that of 35 years. I imagine it could be more but I can write only what I know. That was an exciting period to grow up in, as personal computers became prominent throughout the world. I went on to become a Software Engineer for roughly 26 of those 35 years, working abroad since no jobs were available in the country. While many believe that Canada, the United States and the UK are the lands of milk and honey, they are really the lands of milking cows and beekeeping – you work hard. You generally don’t get paid enough and you spend much of what you earn on keeping the ability to earn. This is not to say that some money is not used irresponsibly by individuals, or that bad choices aren’t made, but those are also learning opportunities and in retrospect, experience.

The secret of Silicon Valley isn’t it’s successes, but the constant failures that build experience in those that work there. Trinidad and Tobago, if it chooses to, can do much.

At one point, a senior engineer at Honeywell asked me what I was doing working since what he planned to do for his retirement was to buy some land in the Caribbean and retire here. That conversation echoed in my mind for decades because the Internet had come into being, and what one can do in one country one can also do in another when it came to software. Unfortunately, the plans for Trinidad and Tobago to become an Internet hub, as I understand it, were neglected by the government, while the banks did nothing of worth to allow for credit card transactions online. Even now I’m fairly certain that it’s not that easy. PayPal doesn’t like the Caribbean that much other than accepting money from it. When I spoke with banks in the United States and Canada, they said they had issues with money laundering from Trinidad and Tobago and that’s why they didn’t like dealing with the banks.

I’d like to think that has improved. I can’t say I see results of improvement, but like everyone, I am subject to availability bias and look forward to being proven wrong.

When ‘businessmen’ are spoken of, you’ll rarely find those that export, instead finding a definite bias toward importation. That Trinidad and Tobago could be exporting software and other intellectual property, the metaphorical oil of the last decades, has been a thought tickled now and then but never taken seriously.

Is it the brain drain as people leave the country for better pastures where they can advance based on merit? Is it the crime situation that has, despite claims otherwise, been a prominent issue since the 1990s with only mild breaks in between? Is it the steady stream of developed nation media projecting promises and attracting bright minds?Is it that the opportunity some seek simply cannot be found in Trinidad and Tobago? It’s likely all of those and more; everyone who leaves will have their own reasons and broad brushes neglect the details.

In casting one’s eyes around the Caribbean, it’s easy to see economies of smaller islands with smaller populations rapidly diversifying, and the largest English speaking island, Jamaica, has certainly made it’s own strides in areas. I’m not well enough researched on these things to say whether they are better or worse, to project what the outcomes will be. What I can say is that these nations are trying to do something. They seem to be doing more than making announcements.

Problem Solving

Governments around the world are very good at announcing how much money they will throw at a problem to make it go away. Trinidad and Tobago does much the same, and it also has this propensity toward creating Yet More Bureaucracy. At no point does anyone seem to think in an era of technology that perhaps less bureaucracy would be a good idea, maybe because that may threaten income for those that profit from it.

Bureaucracies maintain a status quo and they are quite good at it. Enlightened self-interest within bureaucratic systems assures that the resistance to change is granular. Someone recently asked me about the relatively new Ministry of Digital Transformation and I laughed from the gut. Since the 1980s I have worked on ‘digital transformation’ in it’s various iterations and it never required a Ministry, but to show that something is being done, bureaucrats create new bureaucracies. It is the way of things, and it is beguiling. That the existing Ministries simply did not take on digital transformation as a long term project within their own Ministries is a bit disturbing. What have they been doing for decades? We can see what they haven’t been doing.

Political administrations have changed during those decades. What changes less often than the politicians, which rarely change in Trinidad and Tobago? The bureaucracies.

People of Trinidad and Tobago have a lot of ideas outside of politics to fix things and, as can be found on social media and in the press, there is an increasing amount of self-help in this regard. In this regard, I do hope that the new Ministry of Digital Transformation finds success, yet having watched various iterations attempting to solve the same problem, I fear it will end up not doing so. Why? Because that paradigm has not shown much success.

So how does all of this get solved?  What we do know is that doing more of the same will get more of the same, and it seems we’re saturated with the same. It’s time for Trinidad and Tobago to throw the politics and associated narratives under the broken down electric bus (it will be a news story sooner or later) and create new narratives, more sustainable narratives that permit for progress rather than simple change.

Closing

Oddly enough, while stationary in traffic yesterday, my vehicle got rubbed the wrong way and so, we went to the police station to do our reports. It was, even the police mentioned, rare that two adults who had an accident were as friendly as the two of us ended up being about the whole matter. Insurance will take care of the stupid stuff, more than likely, but standing up there we took the time to actually meet each other. While the young policeman dutifully filled out the report, asking questions and seeking clarifications, we spoke about life in Trinidad and Tobago. We were both amused that a police vehicle was behind him and saw the whole thing but did not stop.

It was a bit much, really, the questioning, the handwritten form the officer dutifully filled out without a computer in sight. This was my first time doing one, so I was interested in the whole process because it’s my nature to try to understand these things. One question stood out, where each of us were asked if we were left or right handed.

The policemen both hid smiles when, upon the other gentleman revealing he was left-handed, I pointed at him with a smile and exclaimed, “Ahah!”, as if it had some bearing on what happened. It, of course, did not and everyone standing within 5 feet of that form knew that.

I found this a suitable metaphor to end this with on many different levels.

First, the our dominant hand had nothing to do with the accident itself, but was a question on the form that no one seems to have interrogated in some time – I would suggest a rubber hose and a bright light. Secondly, technology could have expedited the work for the officer, which would have allowed for more parking at the police station for the need to make the report in the first place and for him to be doing something else. Last, but not least, the police vehicle that was behind him could well have stopped and handled the whole thing in much shorter time, if only the way of doing things were subject to change.

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter if the government is left or right handed. It doesn’t matter how many announcements and pronouncements are made, and the length of the speeches has nothing to do with the results. It’s about the results, the solutions, and the ability to see those solutions through beyond election cycles. In this regard, Trinidad and Tobago needs to create a new narrative, and in my mind, that new narrative cannot come from those steeped in the old narratives.

The media, social and traditional, has a major part to play in that, from the seasoned journalists to the news editors to the social media postings.

Left or right hand matters not. Use both. It’s not as if there’s much time.

Digitized Paper Processes of Trinidad and Tobago

~ Taran ~ 1 Comment

Computerize THIS.It drives me a bit nuts when I have to deal with some things in Trinidad and Tobago. When I signed up for electronic billing for Water (WASA) and for Electricity (T&TEC), not to mention Internet (Amplia), I foolishly expected a process that was not reliant on paper.

How foolish of me. I have to print these bills and take them somewhere to pay them, which isn’t really an electronic transaction at all – it just saves these companies money so that they don’t have to bill me for sending me a paper bill, and also, it allows me independence from the local post (TTPost) from sending me my bills late.

Bureaucracy / Bürokratie IITo add insult to injury, the bills don’t just print on one page – they require… 2 pages. Why? Because it’s the same bill that they used to mail to me… and experimentation has shown that, no, I can’t just go with one page. I require both pages to pay the bill.

I’m sure that there are educated people hiding behind this somewhere, but it does their education a disservice to come up with systems that are hardly intelligent. It’s reminiscent of the United States in the 1990s, when some people would not let their fax machines out of their clenched fists.

PaperworkThis goes beyond bill payment – which, of course, is cursed by lack of online payment options for the masses, causing people to lose hours of productivity so that they can stand in a line to create a paper trail. Nevermind the photocopies of identification that still go on.

On a trip to the bank today to deal with paying some maintenance fees, I half-joked to the teller that trips to the bank were like visiting another country. Stamp! Stamp!

Papers, please. Reason for transaction? What’s your dog’s mother’s maiden name? How long was your stay?

Last week, a woman stood before me, not long ago, modem in hand – trying to return it to bMobile – her 5th attempt, which she had documented well with her phone and envelopes full of paper. Why so much trouble? Did you need to ask?

It should be as simple as returning the modem, which they then check the serial number of – it then becomes clear that you’re no longer using it, or should, and be pretty much the disconnection of your account unless you have another modem you purchased yourself and they are already aware of it. But this is not the process.

All of these are symptomatic of people simply adding technology to a paper process – par for the course of a bureaucracy educated beyond it’s intelligence level.

One day, it may aspire to achieve to mediocrity. We’re waiting.

Trinidad and Tobago Flooding 2018: Observations on Government (Pt 2)

~ Taran ~ 2 Comments

800px-Flag_of_Trinidad_and_Tobago.svgIn Part I related to the 2018 flooding in Trinidad and Tobago, I was very upbeat about how the community was handling things, and here, now, I will be less upbeat – but not as a matter of politics. The government response is a symptom of a lack of preparedness for a disaster at this scale.

When I write of ‘this scale’, too, this is not as large a disaster as we have seen in the past internationally with earthquakes or hurricanes or tsunamis or typhoons or… and yet, the reality is that for anyone affected or responding to any disaster, it’s huge. It’s emotional, it’s frustrating, and well intentioned people want to do more and expect governments to do more.

It’s clear that the government of Trinidad and Tobago is overwhelmed at this time. While many people only heard a part of what the Prime Minister of Grenada commented on the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago’s statement that Trinidad and Tobago was not accepting aid at this time, they did not hear the key to it all: Logistics. The Government of Trinidad and Tobago cannot handle the logistics of disbursing more aid at this time according to Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, Dr. Keith Rowley.

In essence, a flood of aid might be wasted, and the sane thing to do is to hold off on asking for assistance until what is needed is actually identified. This is common sense, but it’s common sense that leaves people when they are flooded with imagery of homes underwater, of people who have lost all but the love of their brothers and sisters.

In the end, while unpopular, the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago was honest about the capacity of government to handle the situation – something which has been neglected for decades. People have been uttering, “God is a Trini” for as long as I can remember, a testament to faith that Trinidad and Tobago alone had some form of relationship with a superior being. God simply doesn’t handle logistics when the… water… hits the fan.

Flash Flood South of Couva
Flash flood on the highway near Couva, Trinidad, 2008

I’m critical of government, apolitically. I have been publicly critical of one Minister flying around in an airplane instead of being at his desk, among others, and I have been critical of the Trinidad and Tobago Office of Disaster Preparedness and Management (ODPM) for years.

It was only a year ago when we had to deal with Tropical Storm Brett and it’s fallout – and I wrote some things in that context a year ago that have apparently not been addressed. Flash flooding is not new in Trinidad and Tobago.

It’s getting worse – scientists agree on climate change though politicians do not; the complexity of climate change is lost on many. Sea levels are rising. We’ve been seeing increased rainfall in parts of the world, droughts in others.

red-house---colourSystems do not change quickly. When I wrote about Brett last year in Trinidad and Tobago, I didn’t expect an immediate change – but I did expect at least a few things to change. The ODPM still has a useless app, it’s still ponderously slow to respond for such a small organization in a small country… it’s a bit like a mouse that lacks agility, slamming into walls with the precision of a meteorite. And it’s a symptom of larger issues that plague Trinidad and Tobago.

So no, the government of Trinidad and Tobago doesn’t get a free pass, but the present government needs to turn decades of lack of exercise of this arm of government to deal with things – as well as other things, which I’ll get to in a later post.

The global economy isn’t waiting for Trinidad and Tobago.

Neither is nature.

How many photocopies of ID, T&T?

~ Taran ~ 5 Comments

Computerize THIS.Everywhere I go these days in Trinidad and Tobago, it seems someone wants to photocopy two forms of my identification.

My bank has multiple copies. Lawyers have multiple copies. The government has multiple copies – and guess who issues identification? Water (WASA), Electricity (T&TEC)… the list goes on.

And everywhere that there are photocopies of my identification, people I don’t know have access to them. How can I possibly trust a system that allows anyone photocopies of identification in files?

You want to see two forms of identification – fair enough. You don’t trust the people who are seeing them, so you have them photocopied – now, you clearly don’t trust these people, but you ask the individual to trust them with access to the same photocopies.

There seems to be a special part of the Amazon Forest dedicated to this need for everyone to have photocopies of everyone else’s identification here in Trinidad and Tobago.

It’s just asking for identity theft, or corruption – because those photocopies can be… photocopied… and then they can be photocopied… and since these systems require photocopies… who knows what all these photocopies will be used for?

It’s outrageous. Processes that require photocopies of identification are severely outdated.

I’d even say that they should be made illegal.

Please photocopy this post and hand it to people who are photocopying your identification.

Wanting Things To Work.

~ Taran ~ 3 Comments

A Technology Society Ponders Bureaucracy
A wonderful metaphor of a frustrated technology society that keeps hitting it’s shin on bureaucracy. 

The fun part of this article is that you can replace “Trinidad and Tobago” with just about every country I have lived in or visited and have it be understood. It’s a global issue. 

It’s been a long week for me here in Trinidad and Tobago, yet along the way I met kindred spirits of all varieties.

When I went to one government office, I found that there were no numbers and that people were called as the security guard dictated. Fortunately, she dictated in a way that benefited me, but I do not know that it was fair.  I was done in record time, largely because of things I had done with the office in 2011 to turn the bureaucracy against itself in a loop, in a hope it would be fixed. It hasn’t been fixed, of course, but my prior work and explanation – and I daresay my sincerity – got me out of there in less than an hour.

The next day, I would take the form from that office to Yet Another Government Office after researching the appropriate website as to the requirements. I almost got it done that day – the office required 2 forms of ID, the website said ‘some form of ID’, and I was stalled for a day. The next day, I dutifully returned bearing two forms of ID and some other unrequired documentation to smooth things over. In less than an hour, a complicated process that stymies people for weeks was begun.

I know how those systems work and how they don’t. I have insight. And in both of those cases, I spoke with customer service representatives who were as frustrated with the process as I was and who made a crappy process work right. Whether it works out, I should know within a week.

That’s Not So Bad.

If this sounds like it was easy, it may seem that way on the surface – but it wasn’t as easy as it should be. It wasn’t as easy as it could be. Dealing with government offices, paying bills, visiting the bank – these things are unpredictable. People end up losing hours of work in government offices all over the country. The offices will argue that the people weren’t prepared, or didn’t listen, and some even treat them so. Some people are simply idiots – I found a few sitting around me here and there on their umpteenth time speaking with the same people over and over again but not actually listening.

There’s the way things probably should work, and then there’s the way things really work. It’s that thing that maybe should be called cognitive dissonance I am writing about.

The least stressful way of dealing with things is largely by understanding reality and dealing with it. And yet, decades of doing that here in Trinidad and Tobago have not given any improvement – I will argue that it enables it. I was heartened, though, that a new generation is entering these government offices and that they understand it – empathize – from their side of the desk as well. I thanked them for that.

We Want Things To Work.

We live in a world where, thanks to the Internet, we can see things wrong faster than they can be fixed by the snaggle-toothed gears of bureaucracy. Many systems around the world are outdated by so much that it boggles the mind. For me at times, it’s a special kind of Hell where, as someone who has designed systems, I cringe inwardly even as I keep a smile on my face. Getting angry doesn’t make things better, allowing it to stay the same doesn’t make things better… but here and there some strategic poking might work.

Not everyone can do that. Not everyone can stand up to a system and stare it down with a smile. Most of us get frustrated, angry, depressed… either we are beaten, or we rage against the machine.

Neither works.

To fix the mechanisms of society, we need to not only understand how things work well beyond social-media (read: armchair) discussion, but be able to push things the way that we think they should go. A smile here, a joke there, standing up for yourself yet being flexible enough to get what you need out of the system.

That’s what made it a long week.

Those two offices alone, while I spent less than 2 hours altogether at them, required driving for 2 hours. It required researching things as best I could, it required roughly a decade’s worth of sorted documentation. It required patience that the world as it is pushed onto the shoulders of a once young and passionate man who raged against the machine… until he realized what he was doing wasn’t working.

Until he realized that he needed it to work now instead of when things were done ‘right’ at some point in an unforeseeable future.

Things get better, but it takes a moderate voice to make it happen. Yelling makes you hoarse and assures no one will listen to you. Allowing it to go on unchecked makes you an enabler. To affect change, a clear and human voice needs to be heard.

If only you could explain that to those that rage against the machine… or enable it by their silence.

And still, there’s that young man in me that wants to rage ineffectively against the machine.. which is why I wrote about it for me. Maybe you’ll benefit. 

On Trinidad and Tobago, Policing and Crime

~ Taran ~ 1 Comment

I’m no expert on Law Enforcement. I am, however, a lifelong student of systems with experience ranging from agriculture to medicine, business to the military, and of different cultures. I’m sure I’ll aggravate some people with this, maybe these are the right people to be aggravated.

It’s difficult to live in Trinidad and Tobago and not consider crime. To the simple, it is simple, to the political, it’s politics, and there’s little difference between those two. How crime is considered by the populace affects crime itself – it affects the approaches, it affects the way things are implemented, it affects what is actually considered crime outside of the police service and justice systems. There are so many perspectives on it that, on a slow grey morning, I find the time to explore some of them with you, gentle reader.

The Broad Strokes: The Context

In his January 4th, 2018 Bitdepth, Mark Lyndersay mentions the pronounced dichotomy and the grey in between when it comes to how people see crime in Trinidad and Tobago:

…There are at least two societies active in T&T, one committed to all the lovely sentiments that church-going, law abiding citizens are supposed to abide by and another that LOLs at that type of thinking before stuffing a pistol into their cargo pants and going off to demand what they want…

This is, of course, a brief explanation that is accurate in being vague. It’s exactly right. Speaking for myself, as someone who is not church-going, I fall more closely to the first group than the last. And, because of the nature of Trinidad and Tobago, I end up drinking beer now and then around some more close to the latter at local bars. The street knows who the criminals are, and a balance is there between self-preservation and being an extreme law-abiding member of the South Oropouche Police Council for me.

It’s also interesting to note that Mark Lyndersay and I look at things differently in that we’re generally in different circles garnering the perspectives of different people in different ways. This is one of the many reasons I value what he thinks.

And yet, we can talk about crime in Trinidad and Tobago and come to similar conclusions. In fact, most people have very similar thoughts. I’m just taking the time to go deeper into my perspective.

In Trinidad and Tobago, like other places, there is a veil of what remains unspoken in most company. You just don’t talk about certain things, mainly because you don’t know who you’re talking to will talk to with your name attached. I’ve seen it come back and bite others soundly not in their posterior but in their neck over the years – why would decades of experience relent to yet another attempt by

The same is true of at least some members of the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service (TTPS) that I encounter as well. With whispers of corruption echoing through the country beyond what occupies the traditional media, there’s a hard balance to be struck between the police service and the communities that they police. Trust is the core issue, but there is something more endemic: The criminals themselves are ‘law enforcement’ oftheir own areas, sometimes more so than the TTPS, but with their own local ‘laws’.

This leads to the ‘Community Leader’ label that has been applied by politicians for those that operate toward the darker side of grey. The only thing keeping some politicians from those labels are the Laws which don’t necessarily reflect Ethics in society; that so many politicians are lawyers is something that I consider now and then. Community Leaders know each other for what they are, some are just law abiding but have as fluid of ethics as their understanding of Law permits.

This didn’t all just happen one day. It didn’t happen because those without ethics woke up one morning and decided to go on sociopathic or psychopathic sprees; seeds do not grow in soil that is not suited for them.

Socioeconomics

Having came and left Trinidad and Tobago quite a few times over the decades, I have the luxury of snapshots that allow me to see some differences more easily. The poor, as they are, have always been poor. However, people living outside of their means seems to have escalated more. This is not just in Trinidad and Tobago; it’s global, but the degree here in a small island nation is a little more tangible and seems to have accelerated more quickly than other places I have seen.

Why? Well, the most obvious issue is that the economy is arguably not as diversified as it used to be. The sugar cane industry was lost due to government and private industry inefficiencies on a broad canvas of a decrease in demand in sugar due to different sources for sugar, such as corn. Generally, other businesses have been about importing things and reselling them locally; this does well when oil prices are high but it also developed an economical infrastructure that is crippled when oil prices are low. Factor in outright corruption and theft by people sitting comfortably abroad on their ill-gotten gains, and you have what we have now.

Because there was unemployment, the answer was having people cut grass and paint stones white. This was disguised under different acronyms attributed to different political parties by some. This work, sadly, became a means of income near enough to that of a recent University graduate to make it worthy of comparison. Factor in the national pastime of alcohol and politics, like everywhere else, and you find people doing less than more. The minimum wage, something I don’t really agree with in principle due to it’s easily being gamed, is hard pressed to keep abreast of the cost of living.

It seems that there are more single parents, it seems that there are more parents where both partners work to support the family. I write ‘seems’ because there’s really no publicly accessible statistics of worth that I know of; another issue that keeps coming back in my writings.

Because there seems to be more parents working to support their children, there’s less time effectively being spent with children. The moral majority, which is neither, will likely indicate that there are more children having children. Again, I have no statistics. Maybe that’s true, maybe that’s not, but it does seem like the nurture is increasingly required of primary and secondary school education systems whose ability to nurture has become more handicapped. Further, I’d say that the curriculum isn’t as challenging as when I went to school in Trinidad and Tobago – but I am biased and admit that openly.

Meanwhile, one of the other national pastimes of the country is leaving the country. This is what is termed as ‘brain drain’; as someone who could fall into that category, I can say that opportunity in this country is limited – it’s not so much about one’s ability to do things as much as knowing the right people and having enough letters behind your name to make you seem plausible to people who don’t know anything about what it is you do. Even in this downturned global economy, there does seem to be better opportunity for the young to go abroad than to stay… here. The system feeds itself by starving itself.

The centralization of the Trinidad and Tobago budget, too, is a little disturbing. On one hand, the government decides how to support those who supply something locally – for example, chicken – versus those who import. Where money influences politics and businesses that import with more influence, local suppliers are forced to compete at a global level within a limited economy. I don’t know if this is a good or bad thing, but I do know that I’m uncomfortable with a system so easily corrupted controlling such things.

The government now, with less in it’s coffers every year, wants to tax those who are earning less more to compensate for decades of poor planning and lack of diversification. It means less for the government to spend on things to correct the problems that the government created in the first place with bad policy and lack of diversification. Those who like talking about politics will now bring out their knives to stab at their opponents – but really, both sides of the political soap opera contributed and the political discussion simply keeps the easily distracted… easily distracted.

Public servants act like they’re doing you a favor sometimes; in some cases you can find tax-free businesses running to allow people to get through the rampant bureaucracy and poor customer service to get simple things done. Bribery is an open secret. Poor customer service is noted by at least one Minister publicly. This translates to time and money losses for citizens for things already paid for by the citizens of Trinidad and Tobago; in some cases these losses are necessary to avoid penalties and fines that are at least as antiquated as the processes involved.

On the ground, people are not happy with the government – and it’s not a matter of politics if you tune out the politicians. Right now, the national discussion is about how many murders there have been for the year already – more than New York City – and protests in various areas related to infrastructure. One more humorous protest even seems to have worked… so far.

This is, sadly, a result of systems that have worked exactly as designed – except with the perimeters well outside of what the systems were designed for.

Porous borders

I listened as a policeman formerly stationed in Cedros lamented to me that there were 25 points of entry and Trinidad and Tobago Coast Guard support has to happen through calling Port of Spain. All manner of things make their way through the borders on an twin island Republic which boasts a Defence Force on land and a Coast Guard at sea – the former assisting the Police, the latter the Police cannot seem to work with. On islands. I’m no expert, but I would think having rapid response vessels in key areas might cut down on illegal trafficking – from guns to drugs, from people to animals.

Politics

I am amused every time someone laments that whoever is the Prime Minister is at fault for crime – and I write that because indirectly, they are in some ways, but the expectation seems to be that the sitting Prime Minister should don a spandex outfit and go fight crime themselves. There’s a reason, aside from not wanting to see anyone in politics wearing spandex, that this does not happen.

The second politicians directly control the police services, or other matters of national security, and they do so without appropriate checks and balances there is the potential for abuse. Don’t like your Opposition? To the Gulag! Don’t like journalists? To the Gulag! Don’t like someone for any reason? To the Gulag!

So, directly, politicians can’t be blamed for such things. And while we have had Ministers of National Security over the year and all sorts of toys bought by the government to support them, they are little more than figureheads. The problem is so well entrenched that it will not be removed overnight – and, as I pointed out above, the larger view of the nation requires that across the board, policies must be implemented that mitigate socioeconomic issues as well as access to government services.

Silver Bullet?

There is no silver bullet. There is no way to deal with this overnight; this goes well beyond simply ‘fighting crime’ but dealing with the issues that create the fertile ground in which it grows. We live in a connected world now, where the Internet allows people to see things faster than any leader can steer through – but steer they must. The delays of antiquated bureaucracies need to be streamlined with common sense and appropriate technology usage (what we’ve seen so far in technology leaves much to be desired).

It boils down to trust – not trust in politicians, we change those like diapers, but trust in systems of governance.

Net Neutrality and Trinidad and Tobago

~ Taran ~ 2 Comments

Internet Innovation is The Goose That Laid the Golden EggThe global debate on Net Neutrality persists and the consequences are writ large for consumers everywhere.

Yet, there’s almost no interest in the Net Neutrality issues arising lately – I spent my time advocating for it to the uncaring masses who are more intent on other things that they believe are more important.

It is important though. Very important.

David Pogue of Scientific American has a great summarization of the net neutrality debate. I suppose the core of the problems happening over the heads of those in the world – not just the United States – is how the FCC classifies things in an antiquated system rather than create a new classification. The lines between being a provider of telecommunications and providing telecommunication services are said to be blurred, but the reality is that they no longer exist. The people who own the infrastructure are competing with those that don’t.

Businesses that do not own the infrastructure are at a disadvantage. They can be squeezed out by those who do own the infrastructure, effectively monopolizing user services. The end user – us, all of us – doesn’t get the variety that it would otherwise have when those that control the infrastructure can make sure that their services can run faster than their competitors. That’s the core of the issue for users.

The Local Context.

In Trinidad and Tobago and likely throughout the Caribbean, Digicel is cheering the repeal of what was called Network Neutrality (I could say it wasn’t for a variety of reasons). Their premise is actually quite real – they are rolling out infrastructure in the region at a cost, and shouldn’t they get their cost back? Of course they should, why would anyone invest in something that they don’t get paid back for? There is no digital philanthropy here, and Trinidad and Tobago’s National ICT Plans have always pushed broadband penetration, enough so that I’m surprised an over-exuberant feminist hasn’t accused the phrasing of misogyny.

Others in the local context of telecommunications have been relatively silent so far – perhaps wisely so – despite the fact that we’re connected to the U.S. pretty directly economically, through Internet connections, and through other things.

What it means, though, is that applications not owned by local providers – Digicel and bMobile mainly, since the most common data usage is through mobile phones, is that they could create competing applications to… for example… WhatsApp, and make WhatsApp undependable in the same twist. And of course, since these same providers have to report to the government by Law, will give away the encrypted anonymity that seems to only hide poor political commentary and bad pornography. Maybe there’s more to it than that, but I haven’t been added to the LOLCats group (please, don’t invite me).

It means local startup companies will have to get the blessings of those who own the infrastructure and maintain a relationship with them – practically at gunpoint.

Yet Digicel makes a valid point: Why invest in infrastructure if you don’t get paid for it?

The debate is much more nuanced than what is presented – arguably, by design. Show me a Member or Parliament, though, who has taken a stance on network neutrality. They don’t really care too much, and that National ICT plan doesn’t address it in any way. It makes us completely dependent on our own legislation, and our own legislation – despite some bold and debatable efforts by the present government – is not fast, is not as comprehensive as they might like to think, and is going to require more intellectual capital to debate and enforce than anyone seems interested in mustering.

We’re along for the ride in Trinidad and Tobago, hoping for a water taxi but instead getting a ferry to Tobago in a country that should be making strides toward progress… not stagnation. It should be making bold moves – debatable moves – that push the envelope for local talent to strike it’s colours boldly on an infrastructure being built rather than making a mockery of it by making it consumption only with no regard to using it for creating foreign exchange (we can talk about those banks another time, right?).

We could be using our infrastructure to leverage foreign exchange income, subsidizing it’s roll out while diversifying the economy. That’s not what we’re doing, and that’s why Network Neutrality is not even discussed outside of Digicel Press Releases.

The Study Of What Others Do.

~ Taran ~ Leave a comment

Taran Rampersad
Courtesy Mark Lyndersay, LyndersayDigital

I hate having my picture taken. Over the years, I have found the best defense from cameras is to hold one. This has weakened in a day and age where every phone has a camera, and everyone wants to be seen with someone – but Mark Lyndersay needed a picture of me for TechNewsTT, where the majority of my writing has been published this year outside of my own websites.

In going to his studio, it was a rare glimpse for me into the world of professional photography. It was clear to me almost immediately, this amateur photographer, that it would take me at least a decade to do the editing I watched Mark do quickly, about how he managed his photos, and about why he did the things he did  – a matter of simple experience that cannot be replaced with meetings and requirements discovery.

You see, I had been thinking of writing my own photo management software in Python – something to automate a lot of things. I had briefly considered this when I had begun selling some of my prints in Florida, and it was latent in my mind as a project to ‘get to’. In conversation with Sarita Rampersad, another professional photographer (unrelated), I had asked her what she used last year and why. It was clear that it would take more than a passing effort on my part to build something more useful than the tools she was using. The visit to Mark’s studio underlined this.

The Roots.

Reflecting on this on the way home, I went back to the very core of how I started working with technology. From an early age, I was encouraged – by rote and by whip, as it were – to observe what was being done to understand how it was being done. This was the root of the family business, the now gone Rampersad’s Electrical Engineering, a company that was built on fixing industrial electro-mechanical equipment with clients ranging from the U.S. Navy to someone who just needed their water pump repaired (Even WASA).

This background served me well over the years, and understandably frustrated managers and CEOs. Knowing the context of how things were used allowed for for useful processes and code; it allowed for things to become more efficient and allowed things to be written to last instead of a constant evolution of, “Wouldn’t it be nice if?”. In a world of agile processes, the closest thing to this is the DevOps iteration of Agile which even people who practice Agile haven’t heard of (because they are soundly in the Agile Cave).

DevOps is a form of Agile where every stakeholder is directly involved. And that, to me, is also a problem because of the implicit hierarchies and office (if only office) politics is involved. It’s a bleeding mess of tissue to sew together to form a frankensystem, but at least that frankensystem is closer to what people actually need. Assuming, of course, they understand what they need.

To me, it boils down to studying what other people do.

Observe, Analyze, Communicate, Build.

When I started as an ‘apprentice’ programmer, this was drilled into me by an Uncle who was a Systems Analyst, and ‘allowed’ me to write the code for projects that he was working on. He didn’t boil it down to observe, analyze, communicate and build; I refined that myself over the course of the years.

No matter the process, it all boils down to someone able to bridge how people work/play to get something done to understand what is needed, and how to make their lives easier through automation and information structure. Observing people do their jobs is important, analyzing it secondary, but the most important part is the one thing that an AI cannot yet do: Communicate, the process of listening, speaking (or writing, or…), and then feedback. This process is most important. In priority of importance, software engineering and I believe any form of process or structural engineering is:

  1. Communication
  2. Observation
  3. Analysis
  4. Build

This is not the order in which things are done, of course, but the emphasis that is most important in understanding how present systems work and how future systems should work.

So often over the years, I’ve seen software engineers relegated to the role of code monkeys with emphasis only on ‘Build’, when the most important parts are about ‘building what is needed’. This is where business analysts got introduced somewhere along the way, but they too are put into silos. This is underlined by HR departments focusing only on the ability to ‘build’, where analysts are expected to be a different sort of role. When these roles were split, I cannot say, but to be both is something that is too large and round to fit in small square holes of the modern enterprise.

It is lost, eroded, and there is a part of me that wonders if this is a good thing. Studying what other people do has allowed me to do so many things within and without technology, and it worries me that in a future where AI will be taking over the ‘Build’ that software engineers aren’t being required to focus more on the soft skills that they will need in the coming years.

Sure, the AI can build it – but is ‘it’ what needs to be built?