Pagasa website needs redesign

Above are screenshots of two government weather websites. The left one is our own Pagasa website http://www.pagasa.dost.gov.ph/. The right is Australia's Bureau of Meteorology http://www.bom.gov.au/.

The Pagasa website is cluttered and crammed -- no visible handles to find information. The climate information is written in technical language, unfriendly to the average reader, whom Pagasa should probably target in the first place.

To view Pagasa weather reports, you have to download details on PDF. Go ahead try a PDF report, like this one: http://www.pagasa.dost.gov.ph/wb/fcst/bulletin.pdf

If you're too lazy to download, I enclosed a screenshot for you. Here's the weather Pagasa report in all its ALL CAPs glory, good luck reading it:

Pagasa, please improve your website design. 

Organizing post-calamity chaos

After calamities like Ondoy and Sendong, we could now make out a pattern in the way we respond to disasters, particularly our online response through social media like Facebook and Twitter. It is not a good pattern. 

It is characterized by chaos and disorganization. Ironically, we've used online tools to coordinate other tasks both mundane (eg, organizing reunions through Facebook or egroups) and challenging (eg, coordinating protests and starting flash mobs). Somehow we keep missing to use these same tools more effectively for disasters.

I'm aware of several online projects in the past that are relevant to this issue, but it's safe to say that these aren't really doing much. Perhaps the problem is that these efforts always start after a calamity and are never sustained till the next disaster strikes. There is hardly any pre-calamity activity or plan or program and although the issue points clearly towards government or the lack of it in these times, I'd also put equal blame on us mere citizens for not pushing enough to get a response from our government and private leaders.  

There has to be a better way to orchestrate/coordinate relief efforts in our country. I hope this blog entry inspires many of us to start discussing this problem so that we begin more concrete actions.

Why orchestrate/coordinate our efforts?

Solving this problem will have great benefits: 

1. Coordination will help reduce/eliminate wasteful, duplicated efforts.
2. It will help us help better. If we knew what calamity victims really needed, we could maximize our donations by focusing on those real needs.  
3. Because of the above benefits, we could respond more quickly, more efficiently and more effectively to help  calamity victims. 

The effort sounds daunting. Is there really a solution? 

The elements of the solution are already in our hands:

1. We have people willing to give help (donate): money, relief goods, volunteer time, etc.
2. We have people willing to deliver help: shipping companies, private individuals, foundations and NGOs.
3. We have people willing to go out there and rescue people.
4. We have social media and we are already using social media to do the first 2 elements.
5. There are various online, open source, and free platforms like Sahana and even Google Docs/Maps to facilitate the orchestration.

Got any ideas? Please comment.

* * * Pahabol * * * 


In the rush to publish this, I forgot to add that in the elements of the solution, we lack an important category: people who view all the activities from a broader perspective and help orchestrate the efforts.

Discombobulated UnionBank

I had to deposit at UnionBank in Shaw, Pasig City today. I took my number (62 in the queue) and discovered that the teller was currently processing #52. Good I thought. Just 10 people before me. It was 12:00 pm. There was only one teller serving us. My number said "Single Transactions," meaning, this was their express lane.

By 12:20, I still wasn't served. The lone teller was only processing #53. More customers were arriving since this was lunch time.

Then a second teller arrived at 12:30. Good, I thought. The second teller started calling and processing 54, then 55. Then she stopped and started doing something else. She and the other teller even had the gall to engage in light banter with customer 54 who apparently they knew.

So now, both tellers were doing something else, in front of the queue of customers, oblivious. The manager appeared three times, only to get some papers from the tellers, also oblivious.

Customers beside me were sleeping, tolerant of what was happening. This is very Pinoy. But I hadn't eaten and I needed to be elsewhere and my process improvement skills were screaming in my head.

By 12: 50, I've had enough. I approached the manager and asked if they had no express lane and that I've waited for almost an hour. The manager, to her credit, apologized and gave an excuse that they were processing too many checks. I was going to retort, "I don't care about your checks, just process my deposit." But I stifled it since she offered me a solution. She said she'd just take my deposit, issue me a receipt and have it processed by today. I agreed and left.

Clearly, the management at this particular branch had no regard for its customers. Since it was lunch break, the disregard was all the more pronounced. I am sure many of the customers waiting in line had not eaten lunch.

Lessons for bank managers:

• Observe the arrival of customers especially at peak hours like lunch and coffee break.
• If a line gets longer than 3 people, then get the other tellers to help. (In fact, there were more tellers at the back, just chatting up people at New Accounts.)
• Assign batch tasks (processing several transactions) to tellers hidden from the customer's view. It is atrocious to make tellers do these unrelated tasks right in front of the customers waiting in line. Probably, the tellers at New Accounts should have been assigned the batch tasks instead.
• Focus on the customers and the flow of transactions. 
• UnionBank in this branch had about 20 chairs occupying most of the space. If anything, this is a sign that your processing time for each customer is too long such that you have to provide seats for this number of customers!

Ideas for Reducing Bus Accidents

I've been on a personal campaign to decrease bus accidents ever since a reckless driver crashed his bus into my car. Unfortunately, it's tough to get reforms because these bus companies can pay off the authorities or use their clout (some of these are owned by police and military officers).

It had to take the death of a celebrity to wake us up. That's good enough for me.

If government is really intent on stopping this menace, it could do the following:

1. Revoke the permit of any bus company whose bus kills people.
2. Revoke permits of bus operators who figure in two minor accidents (eg, scrapes, etc).
3. Make a monthly report of number of people killed in traffic accidents, naming the bus companies involved in these mishaps.
4. Require annual inspection of buses, including a review of permits and driver's licenses. Scratches, dents, etc in the buses should mean suspension of the company.

Note that I singled out buses here but these could also apply to other public utility vehicle operators.

The Streets Are The City (a Sort of Manifesto)

Dear Filipinos,

Like you, I want less stress when I go to work. I want clean streets. I want streets without danger of getting crashed by motorcycles, tricycles, jeepneys or buses, even if I'm driving defensively. I would like better streets. No more arrogant police escorts banging their hands on the side of my car to let them squeeze in and make way for an egotistic Congressman or Mayor. I want peaceful streets.

I know this is possible because it was this way when I was a kid. Thanks to President Noy's salvo against wang-wangs, lately, I no longer have been waking up to the blaring sirens of the Mayor's car at 2:00 am (when there's no need for it). I hope our government could sustain this.

Because if it does, it will then show the rest of us that our leaders could share with us the frustration of traffic and that they could respect our sleep time too. Because then if our leaders could show the example of simple road courtesy, then the drivers of the motorcycles, tricycles, jeepneys or buses would then start to show courtesy too. I think it's as simple as that.

This morning I heard a siren and was happy to find out it was an ambulance. I am hopeful for change.

Ballot Design - 2010 Elections

What is the most important vote in the 2010 elections? It's the vote for the President and Vice President, of course. But examine the ballot for the elections and you don't see this reflected on the ballot real estate. (See picture, below).

I've added colored shading to dramatize the problem. The yellow shading is about 10% of ballot space used for the President and VP lists. In contrast, the orange shade represents about 70% of ballot space devoted to the Party Lists.

Other seemingly "small" things aggravated the problem further (and some suggested solutions):

• The font used cramped the small boxes and made the names difficult to read. Instead of a tall, thin font, Times New Roman may have been sufficient.
• Compare the President and VP boxes to those for the Party Lists. The latter had less characters, so the boxes had more white space. This means the Party List boxes could have been smaller. The freed-up white space could then be reallocated to the President and VP boxes.
• There's also white space after Manny Villar's name. This could have further been redistributed.
• The oval was too small, while the pen nib used was too big. Either improve the oval or nib, or next time, give the voter three practice ovals at the top of the ballot, just for practice-shading.

A note on redistributing white space. Smartmatic may argue that alignment is important to help the software make a more accurate count. I agree but disagree.

Alignment is indeed an issue (so I agree) but it is a trivial issue in terms of building software that could accurately count the votes on a ballot. This could have been easily solved by creating appropriate markings on the ballot to tell the software to start counting here, but stop counting there (for example). In short, software should be more tolerant of user quirks.

So one important lesson here is, in creating the ballot, the focus should be on the voters and how they would use the ballots. The electronic voting system should make the ballot as foolproof as possible. It should focus on preventing users (like Erap Estrada) from making wrong moves (like failing to vote for your own Vice President). That error is more costly.

Instead, what COMELEC/Smartmatic did was create their own ideal, easy-to-print-and-scan version of their ballot and forced everyone to adjust.

Design thinking -- or the lack of it -- played an important role in the Philippine 2010 elections.

Improving the customer experience of tech companies the Philippines

My wife and I are going through one of the most harrowing experiences in Manila -- getting a DSL internet connection. As I write this, my wife just finished queueing up for more than one hour at the PLDT office in Megamall.

She was 10th in line when she started. There were only two people serving the long line and since each customer took an average of 20 minutes to process, I estimated she would be served only after 3.33 hours. Had it not been for some customers abandoning the queue, she would have waited this long.

The irony of this is that we chose a more expensive DSL plan (Plan 1299). Had we chosen the lowest plan (Plan 990), we wouldn't have had to wait in line. PLDT required us to pay before they installed our line. In contrast, if we chose Plan 990, PLDT would have installed the line without requiring us to pay first. It does not make sense.

For a difference of P 300.00, we were required to wait in line. Did meeting face-to-face with the customer representative add value to the experience? Nope. They didn't ask my wife any questions (everything was already captured in the application form); nor did they give any new information, not even what to expect next.

It would have been easier if PLDT required no initial payments at all and just billed us after the first month -- the same way as Plan 990. Clearly, the people who designed the process did not talk to each other. In effect they are punishing customers needlessly.

I was texting with Malou, the service agent who was handling our application. I told her, could we just change our plan to 990? Her reply was not helpful. She said that they would have to "deactivate" my plan 1299 (I thought it wasn't activated yet?) and apply for plan 990 separately, which would take up more time.

Her message was framed in such a way as to put the fault on me for being fickle in choosing a plan. I couldn't help but compare how someone from Australia would have handled this. An Australian tech service provider would have said, "Not a problem." And went on fixing it right there. And this would have taken much faster to process, compared to the two weeks waiting time giver or take 3-5 days promised by PLDT.

I would like to ask the owners, managers and employees of PLDT if they themselves are willing to put up with this kind of service quality. Many of us Pinoys think we can compete in the global tech services market. But unless our tech service providers put the customers back at the center of their processes, we will never quite make it there.

It's about the little things

I just downloaded a PDF file containing scanned documents -- needed to copy some information off it. The page I was reading was rotated 90 degrees to the left. I was about to start the usual series of menu clicks to rotate the page when I realized I could do a multi-touch gesture on my touchpad. So I put two fingers and twisted to the right, and the image rotated.

Being able to do that gave me lots of joy. In Pinoy, we would call it, "mababaw ang kaligayahan" (closest interpretation: "too easy to please"). But recoiling from my guilty pleasure, I realized that this is what design thinking should be about. It's the little things that matter.

When I switched to a Mac, this became a mantra for me. "It's the little things." Tortured by complicated steps and commands in Windows (apart from the fact that I had to scan for trojans and malware every night), it was the little things that made the difference in the end.

Little things like having to answer ridiculous technical questions in Windows whenever I needed to install a new program (in Mac, you mostly just drag and drop a new app into the Applications folder); needing an Uninstall program to remove an application I no longer needed (in Mac, you just drag the offending application into the waste basket); and being bugged by pesky pop-up screens asking you to confirm this or that action.

I realized later that these little things added up to a painful experience I was not even aware I was going through! I was so used to being a forgiving Windows user (being Filipino added to this resilience) that I only felt the difference when I started using the Mac.

It was only then that I realized the care that went into designing the hardware and operating system of the Mac. The Mac seemed difficult to use at the start of my switch, but that was just my Windows-soaked persona struggling to compete against a much better way of doing things. Guess which side won out in the end?

It's a little thing, being able to rotate an image on my screen using a gesture that is closer to reality than clicking a series of menus. It is "mababaw ang kaligayahan". But it's the little things like these that will be difficult to explain to others until they experience it for themselves.

Design thinking, like all great art, has a way of not calling attention to itself. Like a great and unassuming artist, the design thinker works hard to evoke a certain emotion and then steps back to get out of the way to let the users enjoy.

Blenz Cafe Experience

I'm at Blenz Cafe, second floor of SM Megamall. This cafe is thoughtfully designed to encourage nomadic (aka "mobile") workers and entrepreneurs. Since it's in Megamall, wifi is free. But Blenz also offers its own free wifi service, whose password is printed on the receipt.

Blenz has plenty of electric outlets located near the tables, so no jostling for tables like in Starbucks. The sockets are also universal -- they can accept any type of plugs. Lighting and music is subdued, for a relaxed atmosphere that's great for non-sensitive meetings. The coffee and tea here is also good.

The design of the cafe itself makes things more efficient. Since the wifi password is printed on the receipt, the cashier simply encircles it. No need to spell it out and make mistakes. The electric outlets are obvious. You don't have to hunt for them (and cause traffic) and no need to ask the staff. There's nothing else to do in terms of customer experience when the basic structure itself already works.

Try it out, next time you wish to meet with clients, or just need to check email and you're running out of battery charge.

Anti-Money Laundering Comicbook

In 2007, our company was asked to develop an instructional CD-ROM to help the Anti-Money Laundering Council train the staff of pawnshop and money changers. We developed the CD-ROM using Flash, HTML and video, but we also threw in this low-budget comicbook.

To create the comicbook, I used screen grabs from videos shot by the crew and wrote my script around it. I used ComicLife in the Mac to do the layout, lettering and effects.

Starring some familiar faces.
Download the AMLC comicbook.

Humanizing Technology

When we were planning our wedding, my wife and I agreed that we had seen too many ceremonies ruined by technological attempts to immortalize the memory. We also wanted our wedding to be intimate and fun.

So we specifically instructed the photographers and videographers to stay out of the way. We didn't want them obstructing the view of the guests. We didn't want their assistants moving around too much, carrying blind-inducing lights.


We wanted our wedding to be experienced firsthand, remembered in human memories and not through images frozen on magnetized discs. That way, the guests experience would be truly unique.

Why am I rambling about our wedding? Today, I was browsing in a second-hand bookstore and discovered Turn Signals Are The Facial Expressions Of Automobiles by Donald Norman, he who also wrote The Design of Everyday Things which I think is one of the most inspiring books on design. The first chapter ("I Go to a Sixth Grade Play") got me all excited. Here's a quote:

"Ah yes, once upon a time there was an age in which people went to enjoy themselves, unencumbered by technology, with the memory of the event retained within their own heads. Today we use our artifacts to record the event, and the act of recording then becomes the event."

Spot on!

How many times have we fidgeted through the controls of our recording gadgets while that once-in-a-lifetime event passed us by? Is stupidly designed technology interrupting our ability to experience an event in more human form?

Here's more of Chapter One:

"Probably we've all seen a wedding reception, an event meant to be full of spontaneous expressions of joy, transformed by the photographer into a series of staged events. 'Kiss the bride.' 'Again, please.' 'Cut a piece of the wedding cake.' 'Would the bride feed the groom?' 'Move out of the way of the camera.' It is amazing how tolerant we have become of this manipulation of experience. The act of recording taking precedence over the event."

The setback, of course, is that having been trained videographers ourselves, we sometimes ask why we didn't have a clip of this scene during the wedding. But then we remember the basic principles we wanted to follow. It is the memory in our minds that is more important.

The problem with digital

The problem: as gadgets get smarter, they also become more difficult to use. Just look at your remote control and try to figure out your television menu.

In analog devices, we used to have buttons and dials that you can touch and feel. If you wanted to change contrast, you just had to rotate the dial. Feedback was tactile and instantaneous. Today, to do the same thing on our LG television set, we have to navigate a series of dropdown menus.

Standing between the gadget and the human is the user interface. Since more and more appliances are being implanted with microchips, the design of the user interface is transferred by default to computer programmers who know very little about user experience.

This really needs to change. The gadgets that are easiest to use will hopefully win out in the end.

Building the First LCD iTV

For four months, we teamed up with electronic engineers, industrial designers and software developers to build the prototype of an LCD interactive television (iTV). We dubbed the iTV "Ilumina" and our codename was "Project Faith".

We wanted to show that Filipinos have the creativity and the smarts to build an innovative product through "inovention" -- the fusion of innovation and invention. Hence the company name of the design firm is Inovent Inc. Our company, Dig It All Solutions Inc was asked by Inovent Inc to build the software and the interface for Ilumina.

So we brought in our CEO Val Gonzales and interface designer Jon Danao to solve the software problem. Val and I immediately agreed to build the operating system on existing open source software. It would allow us rapidly make a prototype by standing "on the shoulders of giants" so to speak. For the operating system/interface team, we decided early on to prioritize the following design principles for the OS/interface:

1. The OS/interface should work and it should work well (ie, not buggy, slow etc.).
   
2. It should be fast and impressive.
   
3. We should focus on releasing a working system (ie, we concentrate on the core functionalities and drop extraneous features that could be worked slowly into the OS, later).

I think that defining these three design principles early on helped us focus our energies on the things that matter for the prototype. And the team stuck to it and made it work.

The audience started warming up to the Ilumina LCD iTV as we did the demo of its features. From my vantage point, I could see people's eyes widening and the room temperature go up in all the excitement. They asked many questions about what it can do now and our plans for the future. Someone even chided that he couldn't wait to win an Ilumina in a raffle. :) We dropped hints that we plan to release APIs so that third party developers could add features and plug-ins to it.

People swarmed Ilumina prototype to get a closer look.
It was a very fulfilling night for us and credit must be given to the team that built it. Brian Quebengco, for leading everyone and cheering us on. Mark Ruiz for the brilliant thinking on marketing, Noriel Mallari for reverse engineering and building the prototype internals and Val Gonzales and Jon Danao for building the operating system and the interface. Brian worked with Jonas Prealta and Jaed Del Moral to create the beautiful, sleek white design of the Ilumina unit itself.

At the end of the unveiling, the crowd gathered to check out the unit up-close. Because they saw the potential Ilumina, they were willing to forgive the rough finish of the prototype. They saw instead what the real Ilumina set will look like in the near future.

IMG_1870.

What is equally important is that Ilumina sparked discussions among our guests after the formal program. Media people, bloggers, techies and friends struck up conversations about how Filipinos can do it, what environment is needed to support such an endeavor as Ilumina, and the need to help drum up support for such efforts. Potshots at our misearable political landscape were taken. But over-all, a positive mood was in the small theater where we held our little program. Which is good, because this was what we intended to do, to show that we could do it and to inspire more positively infectious conversations.

The Project Faith Team.

Another accident involving a dump truck

On our way to UP Village yesterday, we saw a large dump truck rammed into the frontage of Bo's Cafe at Katipunan. From what we could see at that time, the truck had crashed into several cars parked in front of the cafe. Data also saw a motorcycle pinned by the truck. 

A couple of people were hysterical and a crowd composed of curious and/or angry people had gathered around the scene. It looked like the truck driver was unhurt and if so, the mob would most probably give him a dose of "street justice".

Too bad we were in a hurry to take photos, but it was quite a disturbing scene. Data called our friend at the Inquirer so that the accident could be reported and added to the growing stats of recklessness among bus and truck drivers. 

Later, we read from the Inquirer that the driver had "lost control" of the truck. It's the standard excuse given by all truck and bus drivers. Harsher punishment must be meted out not just to the drivers but more importantly the truck and bus operators.

 

Read the Inquirer Story.

Project Runway Philippines: Finale and Photos

Just came from Solar's special viewing-slash-party for the Project Runway Philippines (PRP) Finale. By now, you'll know who won. But before anything else, let me suspend you a little bit by discussing more detail. I previously wrote that Veejay's collection was a disappointment. I've since had a chance to take a closer look and I saw that his collection turned out to be elegant and well-made. The thing going against Veejay's work was his choice of fabric. Under the bright lights of the Runway, the fabric appeared washed out and failed to stand out.Philipp Tampus's collection was surprisingly fresh and his use of crochet was impressive. He went a bit too far on some clothes, but all in all, he also showed his mettle.


Aries Lagat's final salvo won over the crowd. As I mentioned earlier, he had a surprise twist in the end: an elegant short dress that transformed into three other pieces of clothing (see photos, below). I think this scored him a lot of points with the judges, and eventually got him the right to be hailed as the first winner of Project Runway Philippines. Congratulations, Aries!




And congratulations to the production team of PRP for neatly concluding the show.

PRP was able to successfully match the US version and even added its own flavor. Teresa Herrera is great as a host, the judges were smart and gave the contestants the right push, and Joji Lloren's mentorship added the humor and flirtatiousness that is missing from Tim Gunn. 

Here is another hallmark of PRP's Filipino-ness. In the US version, the stressful final round always brought tension among the contestants and even within teams. In PRP, however, the teams bolstered each other and the finalists were compassionate with each other.

Road Safety: Tighter Penalties for Transport Companies

Philippine buses are notorious for causing numerous accidents. Just yesterday, a Fermina Express (FermEx) bus trying to overtake at NLEX (North Luzon Express Way) smashed into a Toyota Revo. The impact was so great that it split the Revo in half and shrivelled the front of the bus to bits. (Inquirer story here)

I am not surprised. I have seen many FermEx buses driven by reckless drivers. But it's not just FermEx buses. Many other bus companies harbor reckless drivers.

A couple of weeks back, a speeding Joanna Jesh bus hit a car along EDSA, killing the car's passenger and burning the car. Unfortunately for the bus company, the victim of the accident was a doctor belonging to a prominent family (GMA News story here). This got the company suspended.

We need to make our roads more safe. To do this, good road infrastructure like lights and signs are not enough. We should also impose tighter penalties for the transport companies involved. Authorities should not just suspect the licenses of erring companies. They should also revoke those licenses and let better transport operators take over.

Process Management to Assist Government of Bohol

The Government of Bohol is intent on improving its services and it has sought the help of many experts in various fields. I'm helping them through process management: customer focus, process focus and continuous quality/process improvement (which involves process redesign). Let me jot down what I've been working with them in terms of process design.

My part on this is just a small one. There is a larger project that aims to reorganize the whole provincial government. It requires change management and reengineering. I was asked to help the change team to understand process management as one guide post for the reorganization.

The intervention chosen for me was through a series of workshops and consultations. My training partners asked me to give a 3-day workshop for the office heads, and a 1-day overview workshop for their key staff. The goal of the workshops was to let them become more process-oriented and to let them experience how to map, analyze and improve core business processes.

We connected their personal experiences on customer service to their own workplace. We taught them the value of customer delight. They learned about business pain and how it hints at the urgency to improve processes. When we concluded the workshop, we gave them assignment to continue mapping their core processes and suggesting how to improve them. It was tedious but fruitful as they started seeing their function from a process-oriented perspective.

Many of the sharp ones already started having insights on how to improve their office systems.

My next session came after two weeks. I flew in for three days of consultation. They gave me a table in the change management team's room at the Provincial Capitol. Office heads and staff came and showed their homework to me. A fraction of them obviously did not listen or did not care to listen in the workshops, since they submitted shoddy work. But many of them came up with nice, neat process maps. The sharp ones submitted excellent improvement proposals. You could really see that process thinking helped them gain deeper insights into management.

Today is the last day of the consultations. I am sitting at Brewpoint, which is the cafe of my impressive but inexpensive hotel (Soledad Suites). Tomorrow I'll go sight-seeing -- visiting the Chocolate Hills for the first time and am bent on meeting a tarsier too. I'll be missing this place but I'll plan to come back. Next time, I'll bring my wife and go to Balicasag to watch dolphins and whales.

Bohol needs a new airport

It was my first time to visit Bohol. I am working with the heads of the provincial capitol to help them improve their business processes and align them with their strategy. Here's what I noticed on the airport (see photos, below).

As you can see from the pictures, the airport badly needs expanding. It was packed with passengers of PAL and Cebu Pacific.

Interestingly, when I checked in, the PAL plane I was supposed to board was already there, still being loaded with baggage. Here's the interesting contrast: Cebu Pacific arrived a bit later but left earlier than PAL.

Another thing I noticed: Bohol is very proactive in promoting tourism. They have some things in place, but much need to be improved further. I hope the project of which I'm a part may be able to help improve the services, just a wee bit better.

More expensive fuel means less traffic

On the brighter side of the perpetually rising cost of gas, Metro Manila's streets have become decongested. My proof is more anecdotal. I used to tear my hair out because of the craziness of the clogged and noisy streets. But now, even during rush hour, the streets are less noisy and there is less traffic when I drive out.

Of course, some of the decongestion can be attributed to the efforts of Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) to get rid of illegal buses, taxis and the lot. But even the MMDA cannot be that efficient and it only took high gas prices to achieve what the lack of political will could not. 

After all, the streets became almost quiet and empty in the span of a few days and there is an eerie feeling of being in a sci-fi movie-- one where aliens pointed a ray gun on Metro Manila and zapped three-quarters of the vehicles. This is an effect that the pitiable efforts of MMDA could lay claim to.

And now for a quick review of the rippling impact of this development:

• Less people will go out to the malls.
• More peaceful streets, smoother commute/drive.
• But will also mean less business for malls (notably restaurants and other shops).
• Still, food deliveries will thrive. 
• If we had a better e-commerce industry, this would have gained a needed boost as more people would prefer to buy things online and have them delivered.
• Yet, I hope there was better mass transportation. More people have now be forced to use public transportation but the MRT, as most of us know, cannot absorb this increase in volume. 

Standardizing the Prosecution System (Department of Justice)

Here are pictures of my recent work. This time, it's with the Department of Justice. I'm helping them standardize and improve their basic procedures for filing cases and complaints.

It turns out that in all these years, among all the prosecutor's offices, there was really no standard way to file cases and complaints.

I can validate this because several years back, a bus rammed into my car and I had to go through the process of filing a case. There would be days when the judge, the accused or I would not be available. Every time this happened, we had to postpone the hearing for another month. There were no options to allow us to find a closer, synchronized date. I've never heard from that case again.

I had no idea what the steps where and there was no Information Desk. Lack of clarity on processes is a fertile breeding ground for corruption. ('Nuff said).

Flash forward to today. DOJ is embarking on a project to change this. It set up a Technical Working Group (TWG) composed of senior prosecutors (aka senior fiscals) who put their heads together and steadily built the manuals from scratch. Then I reviewed the flowcharts they drew to describe their system. I also helped revise and simplify the manual that will be distributed to the administrative staff.

In revising the Administrator's Manual, the Technical Working Group asked me to simplify it further to a point where anyone can understand the steps.

Problems and realities:

• Shortage of staff in the prosecutor's offices.
  
• When they do have staff, the staff lacked the needed skills (eg computer skills, filing skills -- yes, lack of filing skills for staff who are supposed to do filing work, go figure).
  

Lessons I Learned about Government Employees:

• There are nice, hardworking government employees who are genuinely pushing for change (In most government agencies I've worked with, I've seen this pattern).
• These people are very driven, in spite of the general perception against government employees.
• In the DOJ TWG, for instance, they worked from 8:30 am until 7:30 pm for FIVE DAYS STRAIGHT. Meals and snacks were served while working. And this was not easy work -- the members had to read through each sentence to check the legality and fix loopholes.
• Despite being very driven, the fiscals and DOJ staff were actually fun to work with. They were very efficient and pleasant. We debated heatedly about the contents, but everything was kept at a professional level.
  

Lessons I Learned about Improving Processes:

• First, concentrate on mapping the whole process, from process start to finish. See the big picture first (by using boxes-and-arrows diagrams).
• Follow the steps and not the people. In DOJ, the first draft of the manual tended to follow the specific staff who were assigned to do each step. This led to dense sentences that were difficult to follow. It took me a couple of days to read through the intricacies. In the end, I simplified this by focusing on the steps, not the people.
• One sentence, one step. In the first draft of the manual, a step was often 2-3 steps subsumed in one sentence. I disaggregated these complex sentences and improved the readability of the manual.
  
• Rule of thumb: make sure that the first word of a step is a verb. (If you need to put the person who is responsible for the step, you can add this later.)
  
• Avoid complicated flowchart symbols. When drawing flowcharts, use boxes and arrows. Avoid additional "computer-based" symbols like diamonds, printouts, etc. They only add to the confusion.