‘Don’t be like Sisyphus, who to this day still hasn’t gotten that darn boulder up the hill!’
HAPPY birthday, US OF A!
ONE of our company lawyers shared on one of our many chat groups a news report from the Securities and Exchange Commission. The headline said, “SEC deploys help desk to cut red tape.” The story was about the establishment of a Public Assistance and Complaints Desk (PACD) at the SEC’s head office in Makati, which, the report explained, would be “operational even during the usual break time.”
Hallelujah.
It’s a nice idea to have a complaints desk in an office that does a lot of online dealings. If I am honest, it’s actually a funny idea to have a complaints desk in this age of information and social media and private messages and TikTok posts.
Seems that the SEC is still stuck in the 20th century?
But they’re not alone. How many times have we heard a government entity launch a “one-stop shop” program? Whether it’s the DTI, the BOI, the DENR, Customs and even the BIR – name an agency and most probably it has at one time or another announced a major effort to streamline operations, make processes more efficient, and cut red tape.
I’ve been hearing things like this since my high school days in UP in the 1970s. I am about to retire from over 30 years of corporate life, and still, government agencies make a big fuss about cutting red tape.
Sisyphus has company.
If every word in a press release is gold, we could have paid off the national debt from all such pronouncements.
In contrast, neighboring countries have actually done the work. One reason The Coca-Cola Company closed its “secret formula” facility in Canlubang in 2012 to move its operations to Singapore – and from there supply the Philippines (!!!) – was because the one-stop shop system in the Singapore Customs bureau was so efficient that all you need to do is submit papers and voila! You get your permits in no time.
No need for open drawers if you get what I mean.
So good luck, SEC. On the nth incarnation of the effort to improve service to the public, may this one be far more than just a press release not worth the ink it was written in.
Make it happen. But please make it happen in a 21st-century way, not with a “complaints desk” and maybe even a suggestion box that ends up gathering nothing but dust and cobwebs.
Don’t be like Sisyphus, who to this day still hasn’t gotten that darn boulder up the hill!
