Speeding up bureaucracy in the Ukrainian Government? Get computers!

What year are we in?  Ah yes – 2012.

Aside from the huge amounts of completely unnecessary bureaucracy crammed into every orifice of Ukrainian life, one of the more frustrating factors is the fact that most of it takes place on paper.  A time delay multiplier of huge proportions when considering anything of any importance has to go through the bottleneck that is Kyiv.

Completed documents needing “registering” in some dank, dusty, dull administrative bunker somewhere in Kyiv, completely unchanged since Leonid Brezhnev last visited (other than Presidential portraits on the wall sporadically changing as years pass by)  can take more than a week to even reach Kyiv from the provinces and far flung regions of Ukraine.

Needless to say they can take yet another week to return, all too often with a note stating more, previously unknown and never before demanded documents are required.  It can take the best part of a year for a simple document to go through this process and be received fully signed, stamped, recorded and officially recongised both in Kyiv and the relevant local governmental body.

That is not to say there aren’t those new fangled computer thingys in every governmental, regional or local administrative office.  There are.  And they work.  I know they work as they all have up and running social chat systems in full flow when you walk in, be it ICQ, VKontake, MSN, Yahoo, Facebook, twitter or any other I may have missed.

You are often faced with an annoyed look from a disgruntled employee who must leave their chat conversation to deal with you and hand you a small, pulped, flattened and pre-printed  rain forest for manual completion.

Therefore, you can imagine my surprise when I read that the RADA, governmental ministries and departments are going computerised!  Not only is it the intention to remove paper and the slow dissemination by way of drivers delivering bundles of paper around different premises in Kyiv, Ukraine has past the point of thinking about it and are actively testing the system prior to full implementation!

Of course I am not sure that this move has anything to do with efficiency (by way of speed) per se, it may well be a way to simply cut the wage and pension bill in the long term by laying off the drivers who trundle around delivering tonnes and tonnes of paper between departments and ministries each year.

It may also mean redundancy for those permanently employed to shred anything  that will compromise any politician and an end to part-time shredders on stand-by when governments and presidents change as results of elections begin to become clear.  All incriminating evidence must be shredded, lost, burnt, misfiled etc in a short space of time in such circumstances obviously.

All nefarious deals encrypted on their very own black intranet – Sounds good!

The question is, will this computerisation nonsense really catch on?  If so, is there a possibility it will be “rolled out” and the provinces and regions be able to “register” documents in Kyiv at the touch of a button with the unique reference numbers necessary?  Would such devolving of power to local governance be allowed?

Also, is it possible to look authoritative and ministerial without a huge bundle of paper under your arm everywhere you go?  What about “image”?  Public perception is a necessary evil when in the public eye and it is necessary to look officious, academic and over-worked.  Can you really do that as a Ukrainian politician or high ranking State official without bundles of paper under your arm, or holding the system to ransom because currently only you can allocate a “registration number”?

Would Ukraine feel the same if the bureaucracy and administration went computerised?  After all Ukraine has never been  a black and white binary nation.  It has always worked in many shades of nefarious grey.

Should there be a grass roots campaign to keep all administrative State computers solely for social media enjoyment of government employees?