The Question We Are Not Asking: Why Do We Do It This Way?

Every country that has transformed itself has done so on the back of an unglamorous habit: the discipline of examining how work gets done, and refusing to accept that the current way is the only way.

In my book ‘Digital Namibia: From Paper to Progress’, I traced our journey from paper administration towards digital government, and the opportunities that still lie ahead.

But digitisation, on its own, is not transformation. If we take a broken process and put it on a computer, we have simply built a faster way to frustrate people.

The technology conversation in Namibia has matured. The process conversation has barely begun.

A business process centric mindset starts with three questions that every worker, from a clerk in a regional council to an executive in a boardroom, should ask daily: why do I do it like this?

Is this the best way to do it?

How can I make this faster, simpler and better for the person waiting on the other side?

These questions sound modest. They are not.