The Social Media, The Bureaucracy And Its Implications,Part-1

I’d like to start this blog in the tone of my foreword; I do believe that the bureaucracy does some work, even though the general perception of people would suggest otherwise. I also realized that telling this story would be a bit tough without revealing my bureaucratic link I mentioned in my foreword. My bureaucratic link is my father who was a bureaucrat and he retired last year, thus giving me ample time to observe his work in the bureaucracy from a very close distance.

I’d like to divide the contents of this blog in the following parts-

· Discovering the active presence of the bureaucracy on social media through my father

· An interview with a bureaucrat who has been in the forefront of bureaucratic involvement in social media and a rundown of some of the work that has been done through social media

· The implications of the bureaucratic involvement in social media using Hofstede’s six dimensional culture theory and some inferences of my own using theories I have learnt in Public Administration.

Let’s begin by exploring my father’s side of the story. Imagine your father having a more active facebook than you do with over a thousand friends. Surprising, right? What began as a running joke among us siblings- of my father using facebook more than his children did-soon piqued my curiosity. I wondered whether my father enjoyed posting pictures and statuses on his facebook so much that his free time after office which was previously dedicated to his family now became of secondary importance to his facebook. When I confronted my father about it, he simply told me that his facebook has become another outlet for doing his work. I was taken aback by this statement and decided to take a look at his facebook. What I realized after seeing his facebook was that it wasn’t simply pictures and statuses, his facebook contained an almost daily update of his work- of him visiting different sites, attending meetings, or of awareness campaigns that his ministry was running. Even though I have been very close to the bureaucracy because of my father, I still didn’t feel that I was much involved with it as a citizen whose work the bureaucracy does. I would attribute this feeling of alienation from the bureaucracy to a lack of information about their work. It was true that my father was a bureaucrat, but very few of our conversations were about his work. My father on his facebook was more a bureaucrat and less my father, which allowed me to take a glimpse at what he did everyday at his office. (And feel slightly bad about him seeing the insane amount of workload.)

Now that we understand what my father’s facebook looked as a bureaucrat, let us move on to how he as a bureaucrat interacted with the citizens. As I write this, I realize it would be impossible to mention all the interactions he has had because they are too many in number.

One thing I’d like to mention is that my father retired before I took my Public Administration course, as such I couldn’t analyze his interactions on social media as well as I can now. This interaction that I will mention now took place a while ago but I only came to know about this after I decided to write this blog. My father’s last deputation was in the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare as a secretary. (He acted as a secretary both before the division of the ministry and after as the secretary of Ministry of Health Education and Family Welfare) While my father was attending a conference of WHO in Geneva, he saw a post in his facebook and some messages in his messenger regarding the post. This post talked about how the female students of Rangpur Medical College were living in a very uncomfortable situation in their halls due to lack of sufficient space. The messages in his messenger were from people urging him to take action regarding this. My father immediately collected the mobile number of the Principal of the medical and asked him what he was doing regarding the situation. The Principal, albeit a bit taken aback, replied that he would look into the situation and will keep my father updated about the proceedings. My father told him that he would give him three days to sort the situation out and to get the lives of the female students back to normalcy. The Principal after investigating the situation called my father and said that he didn’t need the three days and that he had already started the process of rehabilitating the students. My father also informed me that it was quite unusual for secretaries to call people up regarding issues like this and perhaps a quick solution to the problem was ensured because of the call from such a higher up. I have actually had certain other inferences from this incident as well that I will later on mention in the part of the blog where I try to use theories to have a better understanding of the interactions.

Moving on to the second incident of my father’s interaction that I want to mention is of Birangona Roma Chowdhury. This valiant survivor of our liberation war passed away on 3rd September this year, while being severely ill during the previous years. Roma Chowdhury could barely afford her medical expenses for her treatment and she refused to receive any kind of financial assistance except for the revenue she earned through the sale of her book ‘Ekatturer Jononi”. When this news caught the attention of my father on facebook, he decided to step in and after calling up the civil surgeon of Chittagong and other related officials, they managed to get Roma Chowdhury admitted in the hospital free of cost. The Birangona gifted her book to my father as a token of appreciation and she wished her book would reach out to the wider public so that everyone could know about her experiences in the liberation war.

I realize that I have mentioned rather ‘gran’ events as my father’s interaction with the social media; however the next part of my blog will shed light on how the bureaucracy has been interacting with the citizens on a day to day basis about smaller issues.

When I told my father I wanted to write a blog about bureaucracy and social media, he told me that I should contact one certain bureaucrat who can enlighten me about the issue more than anyone can. I interviewed Mr. Mahbub Kabir Milon, Additional Secretary, a member of Bangladesh Food Safety Authority a few days ago and a big part of my understanding of the bureaucratic interaction with the social media is due to this interview.

My interview focused more on understanding why the bureaucracy suddenly decided they would start using social media- given their reputation of being secretive, unresponsive and resistant towards change. I could have focused more on what work the bureaucracy has done on the social media (which I feel like I am not as well aware of as someone writing a blog on the topic should be), but I chose not to and so I would really appreciate it if everyone would try to find out about the different instances where social media has helped the bureaucracy to be more active. That being said, I do know about a few instances that I have learnt through the interview. Another thing that I focused on was how the reaction to this usage of social media was, not every bureaucrat uses social media- so how do they react to other bureaucrats who do and what stops the inactive bureaucrats on social media from getting involved? I, in some parts, also focused on the reaction from other involved parties- such as the citizens, about the bureaucrats getting up close and personal with them on social media.

I will not be analyzing the interview in chronological order since our conversation was kind of all over the place. The first part of the interview that I would like to analyze is where it all began- the first incident where Mr.Mahbub Kabir Milon used social media as a tool to do his bureaucratic duties. Over the last few years, we have all come across at least one facebook status or news about university students or young adults losing their lives as they swam a little farther into the depth The Bay Of Bengal and drowned.A few years ago, this incident occurred to a group of students of AUST and our interviewee found it through a post on facebook. After doing his research, he realized that this incident happened because we did not have fencing/netting around the Bay of Bengal that would prevent people from surpassing the safe limits. This netting was present in all the other seas/ oceans of the world. Our interviewee decided to take action. Even though the mentioned problem did not fall under his deputation, he decided to contact the Ministry of Civil Aviation and Tourism and make them aware about this problem. After days of him trying to persuade the authority to take action ( through procedures that he mentioned but I didn’t understand because I am not well versed in bureaucratic jargon), he finally managed to get a portion of budget reserved for putting nets around the Bay of Bengal. However, his endeavor did not ultimately succeed because we did not have experts required for providing technical support and hiring foreign experts would well cross the given budget. Our interviewee mentioned that he tried to find experts who were willing to work at a low cost or for free using his facebook as well, by reaching out to people through a facebook post.

According to our interviewee, this incident was of huge importance as it changed the course of the way he worked as a bureaucrat and introduced a new chapter in his life that would make him deeply involved with the social media. Indeed, this incident is important as it in a way is symbolic of the changes that are needed for bringing out an active and interactive bureaucrat, the kind of bureaucrat everyone has been desperately wanting in the blog posts. I will analyze this incident in details in the later part of the blog as well and this incident itself will help us understand certain other interactions our interviewee has had using social media.

When I said that I am not fully aware of everything the bureaucracy has done using the social media, a part of it stemmed from the amount of work done. Given the limited time I had, I couldn’t skim through everything that they had one on social media.However, I will give links of two facebook groups that I know of where the bureaucracy is seen interacting with the public-

Public Service Help Group-https://www.facebook.com/groups/1613130885679315/

Bangladesh Railway Fan Club Association (B.R.F.C.A.)- https://www.facebook.com/groups/BRFCA/

The work of Public Service Help Group is as self-explanatory as the name of the group- any citizen of Bangladesh can post here seeking help and the bureaucrats will respond to their queries. You don’t know who to reach out to correct your voter ID card? Ask here. You don’t know how to correct a mistake in a form? Ask here. You don’t know why it’s taking so long to get a certain government service? Ask here and someone will answer.

I found the second group rather interesting and I have been following them on facebook for a while. This group is actually not the official page of Bangladesh Railway and it is run by the public- people like you and me. On this page, regular updates of all the trains that are running in Bangladesh are posted- by the passengers. So you can know which train is on time, which train will be running late, which train is travelling though which place right at this moment and so much more. Our interviewee has done something amazing regarding the Railway sector and even though it may not be relevant to social media (or it might be because his interest in railway may have increased from using this group), I will still mention it here. The train drivers run the trains from the hot engine rooms and as such they spend their time in unbelievable discomfort due to the heat of the engines. Mr.Mahbub Kabir Milon raised a proposal for making the rooms air conditioned. He faced opposition from others as they said that the drivers might fall asleep if they are too comfortable.Mr.Milon refuted this point by mentioning that if pilots, drivers of cars don’t fall asleep, then this worry is invalid and thus he ensured that there were A.Cs in the train engine rooms.

Another group I found out is this- Public Service Innovation Bangladesh

https://www.facebook.com/groups/publicserviceinnovationblog/

A recent work that Mr.Milon has been busy with is putting A+,A,B stickers on restaurants to indicate the level of safety of these restaurants. More details about this work can be found on his post in Public Service Innovation Group.

I would highly encourage everyone to go through facebook and find out the work the bureaucracy is doing because I feel like I have only reached to the tip of the iceberg.

Now that I have gone through my somewhat limited knowledge of the work the bureaucracy has been doing in social media, I will move towards more not-so-apparent issues like- whether every bureaucrat is welcoming social media and using it, whether you will get an answer from all the concerned bureaucrats in the groups I mentioned, how the public has been reacting to this phenomenon of social media, how the higher ups ( from the older generation) in the bureaucracy have been behaving, whether it’s a given to expect younger bureaucrats to be more accepting of social media, and what obstacles come in the way of bureaucrats using social media.

A very important point that Mr.Milon raised in the interview was that in many cases he worked on, he had to step out from his own jurisdiction and reach out to other ministries who were concerned with the problem. In other words, not all the problems that he actively worked to solve fell under his deputation. A key reason for this is-the news, posts on social media are about a multitude of problems and it is quite obvious that not all problems will be related to a specific bureaucrat’s work. This situation can raise two points for us-

· Should a bureaucrat who sees a problem on facebook that is out of his deputation respond to it?

· Given that a bureaucrat does respond and brings the problem to the attention of the concerned authority, how does that authority react?

If we tried to seek the answer to these two questions using Mr.Milon’s experience, here is what he had to say:

According to Mr.Milon, he entered the civil service with an intention of contributing to the people’s welfare using his full capacity. He also believes that he is not an exception, there are many officers who believe in the same philosophy and that they are here to help the people.Mr.Milon said that his many experiences- starting from the AUST incident to all the problems he has worked on later, has proved this side of the bureaucracy to him.

The first incident we mentioned, Mr.Milon responded to a problem that was not under his deputation. He did so because the problem deeply bothered him. He reached out to the relevant ministries and surprisingly, he got a positive response. This positive response made Mr.Milon realize that it was worth at least taking a shot to reach out to concerned authorities. This is what has kept Mr.Milon going, the hope that perhaps the response will be positive, even though he has been going out of his own way and sorting problems that he is not exactly bound to.So,if we asked Mr.Milon whether a bureaucrat who sees a problem that doesn’t concern his ministry should respond to it or not, he’d say he should as it is always worth a try. As for the second question, when Mr.Milon from a different ministry seeks the help of another Ministry, what the response is like-Mr.Milon said that more often than not, the responses have been in his favor and this has consolidated his belief that some bureaucrats are definitely interested to help the people.

However, Mr.Milon mentions that his observations are case-specific. He has not always gotten a positive response when he sought help of the concerned ministries for a problem he found through social media. The process of seeking help of another ministry is also extremely complicated and the traditional rules in place do not always facilitate this communication. Mr.Milon mentioned that even as an additional secretary, it is quite difficult for him to reach out to his own secretary regarding a problem as the rules do not allow it. Hence, this situation makes us realize that for a bureaucrat to respond to an unrelated problem and to seek out help of other ministries both are not very easy.

Staying in line of how all responses are not positive, Mr.Milon mentions how not every bureaucrat is eager to use social media to answer the queries of the public. He observes that a lot of the posts that are posted on Public Service Help group do not pertain to his own ministry and yet more often than not, he is the one answering to those queries. While Mr.Milon wishes that his co-workers would be a bit more interactive, he finds them only liking his posts and not bothering to comment and express their own viewpoints. Another surprising discovery I made through the interview is that the younger bureaucrats who are better versed in the use of technology are not always eager to utilize it for public help. In fact, Mr.Milon mentions that some of the staunchest criticism he has received are from the comparatively younger officers, who have even used facebook to mock him for being overly enthusiastic about problems that do not concern his ministry. Mr.Milon mentions that he has faced this kind of criticism in general as well, where people have cautioned him to not lose his position by being too nosy. However, Mr.Milon also mentions that sometimes his critics change to his admirers when they see him succeeding and they get encouraged to follow his footsteps. As for people’s response, Mr.Milon mentions that it has been positive so far and in many ways brought the once secretive and unresponsive bureaucracy closer to the citizens.