Solving the Problems of the Developing Countries with Technology & Methodology
The stigma of the third and second world countries lies in the fact that the government authorities in these countries are not mindful of doing things smarter, which perhaps we all agree. But another factor largely contributing to the situation is the lake of a proper methodology to run variety of government departments or ministries. Lack of equipment or funds, whatever is the case, has made the third world problems multiply in years that could have overpowered with a proper strategy to cope them. The term “Developing Countries” has been used by many across the world to identify the countries that are still under the process of making a mark economically. Methodically country’s economy decides the category of a country on the world map.
Government officials are not paying a heed to many of the issues faced by people in these countries. Rights are not protected; the ones below the poverty line are going further down under while the elite class is thriving socially and financially. Out of many of the social evils in these societies, the one that has crept in the most and poisoned the very structure of it is corruption. Justice is sold in many of these countries and nobody takes care of the poor and fragile strata of the society while the powerful enjoy committing corruptions of different forms and freeing from all dues. It is an irony that every sector in these countries has been destroyed to this menace. A threat to the society, corruption has by and large made every government organization fall from its grace and nobody feels wrong about it.
Even in ministries and departments of state, ‘lack of attention’ and ‘NO will to change’ is the cause of such a sad state of affairs. Health, finance, education, railway, natural resources, all the sectors are being used for their own gains. None of the funds and taxes paid by the citizens is put to a good use in the respective sectors. No proper infrastructure is made available to the doctors so that they can work on diseases and their treatments. People cannot even get a proper treatment for the minor illnesses in many such countries. In the education sector, quality is deteriorating with each passing year. Nothing on reality has being done to look after the different setups like railways, roads and all the transportation and constructions are in an unimpressive condition if compared those with the developed or even semi-developed countries.
The fact is, no proven working methodology neither an efficient technology ecosystem are accessible in such countries by any of its governing bodies to ensure an economically thriving and a technologically significant society. With many countries now a days working hard to make sure that their citizens are getting every facility in their homeland somewhat similar to the developed countries, are completely neglecting this truth that it’s Right Technology along with Right Methodology indeed has the potential to bring the changes and can help achieving such heights.
We will be discussing primarily the Methodology part of the mystery in this article and the technology part will be discussed in my upcoming articles.
A swift and affective plan should be employed by the governments of such countries with latest technologies like Artificial Intelligence & Cognitive and working methodologies like Agile, Lean to ensure that whatever these government departments are doing has some effects on the real economic growth and betterment of the society.
Taking a cue from different industries like IT, Manufacturing, Automobile, Aviation etc.; researchers propose technology and methodology like Agile & Lean together to solve third world country problems on a larger scale. The structure of working in these methodologies makes them efficient in almost every industry. And they have been employed in many developed countries in different formats to solve real world problems. Just as in a software development process, the agile development ensures a quick and effective solution of software development problems, the same methodology, if applied by the government, can bring about a lot of changes and make it a much better one. Agile is an iterative process where the workers review and repeat their actions in order to reach a final goal. Reviewing is a great practice to help enhance a project and make it stand out even in the context of any government projects.
This can be adopted in all government departments and projects where incremental, iterative and interactive approach will largely increase the probability of success, of course the other factors discussed above can nullify the positive move. Likewise, government should adopt this approach in Railway, Construction, Oil & Natural Gas, Mining, Heavy Industries, Agriculture and other departments and Govt. sponsored projects to keep a check and balance on the proceedings of the project and working of different departments. The “Sprint” approach ensures that the project is being supervised effectively and kept an eye rather than running the entire marathon and looking at the project once it has completed. Agile methodology ensures a check and balance of every step due to its iterative nature, which is good for every single project that should be installed for the betterment of the developing nations. This will prove to be a smooth process for the authorities since it will enable them to complete every project in a more deliberate manner.
Now talking about the waste and delay in processes across all government projects in most of the third and second world countries, it is astonishing to see that how governments of these countries leave no stone unturned to keep every project of theirs hanging in balance for a longer period of time until the ones affected by it either give it up or are no more in this world. Ironically, many developing countries are facing these crises for ages. Why? This is because of huge wastes, loopholes in the planning and working methods of the governments which seriously demands an introspection.
Six Sigma and Lean methodologies were two entities, Lean manufacturing introduced by Toyota to make sure that there is reduced wastage in manufacturing as much as possible and Six Sigma introduced by Motorola advocates reduction of defects. How is this methodologies going to help improving government projects and departments of developing countries? The idea of lean six-sigma is to ensure less waste and added quality in every step of the process. This practice is believed to change the behavior and thinking of an organization. A transformation in perspective ensures that people are doing better and bigger. This methodology can also help in other important projects like road, railway, construction, mining etc. Different types of lean methodology like Visual Stream Mapping (VSM) and the 5s System has proven to be effective methods in different government projects of many developed countries.
Lean Six-Sigma has been adopted in the healthcare by the governments of many countries. It is supposed to be the best and most promising methodology in healthcare since Six-Sigma works on the principle of reducing defects. These defects might include the difference between life and death. Such life-threatening errors can be eliminated with the help of Lean Six-Sigma and patient health and safety are kept intact.
You must have heard about agile and lean implementation in many different industries, but directing this concept toward the government departments and projects as a hybrid framework is something that is completely new. Similar approach has already been implemented successfully in a small scale construction project in India under my supervision.
Six Sigma Lean methodology is something that is already been applied in the some of the government departments in few developed countries, but hybridizing it with agile powered with different technology platforms is what makes it unique. So, the framework which I recommend for these countries is a hybridized version which leverages the best of Agile and Lean techniques which can be tailored to certain extent as per the need of the domain and scenario of implementation.
Finally, these methodologies may not directly be applied to all types of Government projects or for that matter any project, in their original form and may need some amount of thoughtful tailoring to make those perfectly fit for the specific scenarios. But it’s guaranteed that a step towards implementing those even in their crude form can bring numerous benefits and confidence.
