Noughts

For the six months, some policies have been passed in my company which has greatly inconvenienced us. The workload ballooned but the manpower shrunk. It’s pretty frustrating at times, having to jump through hoops to do some simple things. It’s even worse when you have to jump through hoops to do what I think are stupid things. And just because you’ve jumped those hoops before, they think it is ok for you to jump through another set of hoops, because they ASSUME you can do it again. But it isn’t the same set of hoops. This time they’re barbed and set on fire and you need to jump through them twice as fast. But hey, they say, hoops are hoops. Yeah, it’s not called a dog’s life for nothing.

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Eating your own dog food

Still on the subject of dogs, policy-makers need to eat their own dog food. What, no proper meal? Not even a slice of Gardenia? Well, I’m not exactly suggesting that we feed them dog food, though I have a fantasy of stuffing it down their throats at times. As Joel Spolsky explains,

Eating your own dog food is the quaint name that we in the computer industry give to the process of actually using your own product.

Eating your own dog food is an important process during policy formulation. It is as someone said, it’s nothing to them if they can’t feel the pain. When they feel the kind of impact their policies will cause, hopefully they will be more discerning and refine them. Something like what HDB’s CEO and senior managers do:

At the Housing Development Board (HDB), its chief executive officer and senior managers lead by example in addition to rewarding and publicising good service performance. During its annual Quality Service Day, for example, they will personally man front-line counters at HDB Hub and branch offices.

Knowing how your dog food comes about

This deals with the implementation of a policy. By that I mean mean that policy-makers should communicate with people who implement them. It’s like if you’re getting the same old brand of dog food all the time, don’t expect that special can of mint-flavoured dog food with cherries in it to have the same kind of availability. In other words, don’t dismiss that just it’s just a piece of ice floating on the water when there could be an iceberg underneath. Don’t set deadlines according to your own whims and fancies or some unfounded assumptions when you can check with those who know the ground conditions better.

 Change is not always the constant

In the end I guess it’s difficult to change the mindset and the culture of those policymakers I’m referring to. I guess this problem will continue to dog me.

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I’ve been following the news on falling public transport use , and I think of IP routing to a website. It’s the same analogy we always use in network classes. We’ve got so many packets going into the pipe, trying to reach the same server that at some point, the network becomes congested. The traffic is bursty, the network is congested only at certain times, like rush hour traffic. So what do you do, assuming the server can handle greater load just fine?

A few things come to mind, buying more bandwidth, improve latency, adding more routers to prevent bottle-necks, data compression. It’s analogous to expanding roads, get faster cars or increase speed limits, build more roads, and using public transport in the transport context. But there are many constraints, such as how much land do we want to use to build roads in land-scarce Singapore? How much more accidents are we willing to risk in exchange for faster cars and higher speed limits? How many people can we squeeze onto MRT trains and SBS buses before they feel uncomfortable?

Or we can Akamaize our website. Basically that means distributing the content of the website to other servers elsewhere on the network so that clients don’t have to get all of the content from one server. Different parts of the network are being used instead as the hosts are located differently. Are we seeing this happening in Singapore’s road system? A little, but future developments will compound the problem. Ng Ka Yen states the problem clearly.

MORNING traffic patterns in Singapore are lopsided, with too much traffic rushing from the north to the south, and too much from the east to the west.

We cannot add burdens to these patterns forever. Adopting traffic minimisation and traffic diversion strategies is critical, and perhaps the only way to tackle long-term traffic problems.

In a few years, the integrated resort (IR) at Marina Bay alone will create 10,000 jobs and stimulate thousands more in other businesses in the area.

And do not forget that demand for office space in the Central Business District is always high, despite higher rents there.

Singapore Management University (SMU) is another big traffic generator.

A few kilometres away, the IR at Sentosa will generate as many jobs and tourist traffic as its Marina Bay counterpart.

There is so much development in the south, it’s going to be a traffic nightmare. It’s almost like taking two steps backward after the implementing the idea of regional centres.

How are we going to avoid this concentration? A related question is, can we put our regional centres to greater use to localize traffic usage? Of course, we’re going to have to put more jobs, schools (especially universities), entertainment and recreational facilities elsewhere. The government has to find some way to make these places attractive to businesses and users. I think given the present state of technology in Singapore and our progress towards a wireless island, we can go so far as to say that we can eliminate some of this traffic altogether via telecommuting.As Thomas L. Friedman describes in his book, Indians are already doing so much work (tutoring, doing accounts, coding, etc) from the US and Europe via telecommuting, so I don’t see it as a big problem here. There are worries about security and work performance, but these can be overcome with proper education.

A factor worth investigating is why do Singaporeans buy cars. Is it because it’s a dream, it’s a need, it’s a symbol of success, public transport doesn’t meet their requirements, etc? If it is to fulfill a psychological need, then improving public transport is probably not going to make these car-owners use public transport. Our hope is that the young no longer subscribes to such views like owning a car is necessary to be successful.

There are other solutions worth considering. Elia Diodati toys with the idea of express train service, but the cost of installing additional tracks seem forbidding. There are express buses, which I’m not sure of their effectiveness. I’ve written a suggestion to SBS about their express bus service not stopping at a particular MRT station but I’ve not received any feedback. I’m not sure how popular car-pooling is in Singapore, but such a culture can be encouraged. Or how about company-sponsored transport or private transport companies providing bus services, like what they do in Science Park or some industrial areas?

A more holistic approach is needed to solve our transport issues, because these issues also involve urban planning, our working and lifestyle approaches and the social and economic value we place on car-ownership.

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