A few years ago, the pandemic had prompted the authorities to come up with a host of measures to keep the spread at bay, including digital transformation. Quite a number of public members were hesitant at first but most of us accepted the new normal in the end.
However, now that the outbreak is a thing of the past, we seem to have reverted to the old way of doing things. For quite a number of public services, we can no longer make appointments online; instead, we have to visit the department in person, where we are told to fill out a physical form and wait for the application to be approved before we’re allocated a time slot to see an officer.
As someone with a demanding job, I often struggle to make time to visit these service counters. The COVID-19 outbreak, while tragic, showed us that we could do without mountains of paperwork. Yet, now that we’re out of the danger zone, we are almost functioning like the health crisis never happened.
We are living in a digital era now. We simply cannot afford to rest on procedures of yesteryear if our objective is to make our economy more competitive.
White-Collared Resident
