The second parable of Erp

First, some brief background for readers who are not Singaporean:

Earlier this year, Singapore implemented the Electronic Road Pricing ("ERP") system. It's an electronic toll system for roads. Steel gantries were erected over major roads, mounted with radio transponders. Every vehicle in Singapore had a palm-sized device fitted onto its windscreen. This device communicates with the gantries whenever the car passes beneath them. The motorist has to keep a cashcard inserted into the device. This cashcard should have a positive cash balance, so that when the car is driven under a gantry, the toll can be deducted from the cashcard balance.

After a few months, complaints built up when motorists received summonses to pay fines. They were sure that they had cashcards inserted into their windscreen-mounted devices. The Land Transport Authority ("LTA") on the other hand, insisted that there were no cashcards in place when they drove through. The LTA said they were certain that there were no technical faults giving false readings.

Who was right?

For a few weeks, it was a complete muddle. Angry letters to the LTA and the press were followed by terse responses, giving precious little information about how the LTA could be so sure that a violation had occurred, and that the system was as reliable as believed.

A possible break came when one writer said that through a telephone conversation with someone at the LTA, he was informed that the cashcard had to be inserted 11 seconds before the car reached the gantry, for the transaction to be valid.

No, said the LTA. 11 seconds is not needed. Maybe the motorists didn't push in their cards deeply enough. You have to push it in until you get a click.

We know that! Of course we got a click. Yet the computers still recorded that there was no cashcard.

More exasperation.

Finally, on December 22, the LTA issued a lengthy explanation. The gist of it was this:

It is a rather satisfactory explanation. But were they right to treat the 10-metre zone as a minor detail and not tell the public about it when they implemented ERP? Debatable. I think there are three bits of insight from this saga.

(a)   What to tell the public when something new is implemented;

(b)   Learning and absorption;

(c)   Sensitivity to the learning process.

How much to tell the public when something new is being implemented is a perennial public administration problem.

In designing any system, certain givens, e.g. technical constraints, affordability limits, or available time, limit the possible solutions. Let's call these constraints, A, B, C and D.

These factors together may compel solution E, which is a set of do's and don'ts, in order to operate the system successfully.

In Singapore -- and I don't think Singapore is so unusual -- the tendency is to tell the public E, and generally keep mum about the preceding factors A, B, C and D. The public is simply told: do these steps. They aren't often told WHY they must do these steps.

Why can't they be told about the prior governing constraints A, B, C and D? Largely, there is an attitude that these are too technical for the layman, and would only serve to confuse. Underlying this there is also condescension -- that the layman WOULD find it too technical. Mr and Mrs Average, it is thought, are not smart.

There is another underlying attitude. It is that if the public were told about A, B, C and D, they might not agree that E was the optimal solution. Oh, blasphemy! Some might think that F would make a better solution. Others might go for G. This would make life very difficult for the civil servant. It's also unnecessary, because since laymen are not smart, their ideas of F and G cannot, by definition, be better than E. So why waste time arguing with them? Why give them a chance to propose silly solutions? A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. Just tell them to do E.

Yet, it is not entirely fair to just berate the authorities. Learning is a process. People WILL get confused when you give them information overload at the start of any learning process. Everyone of us have such experiences. Try teaching someone how to use new software. You can't tell him everything in one go. You can't explain the whys and wherefores of everything. You may very well say to the learner, if you want to do this, then follow these 11 steps. If you want to do that, then follow these 8 steps. You're behaving no differently from the LTA.

What you will also do, I'm sure, is to wait and watch for signs that the learner is ready to learn more. With a bit of use, he will want to know why, if he clicks this button, something like that happens. Or he may want to know about a few enhancements like increasing font size, or deepening the red. Then you tell him a bit more. He absorbs the new information better when it is given to him at a point relevant to his needs, or to solve a problem that he has faced.

So in a sense, what happened with the ERP is the most natural thing in the world. After a few months' experience, people found a problem and wanted to know more about it.

A good teacher does not expect his pupils to be dumb sheep. He expects that they have enquiring minds and that eventually, they want to know everything. The teacher is watchful of the progress and ready to provide more information.

The LTA, like almost all public authorities, do not have the teacher's approach. After they have told people about E -- that is, the steps you must carry out -- they assume that the good sheep (otherwise known as citizens) would follow faithfully and unquestioningly. Partly, it's the culture of this place. Top down. The command style. However it may also be because we have too many technocrats and engineers in our civil service. They are too used to expecting things to behave as planned, without the objects talking back.

First of all, people do not behave as planned. Secondly, people talk back. And the LTA was aghast.

You may have told them to do E, with glitzy public education campaigns. But people being people, they will not always follow instructions to the letter. They will do all sorts of variations on E. Some of these variations will be harmless, and they still get the output they want. Other variations will come into conflict with one or more of the constraints, e.g. inserting the cashcard when they have already entered the 10-metre communication zone. And then they find bizarre results. And horror of horrors, they won't keep quiet. They won't quietly pay the fine.

Another thing about systems is that even when you have done 5 million tests you may still have overlooked certain situations, and it takes a while after implementation for the bugs to show up. The LTA should have remained alert to possible bugs. They should have remained humble about complaints. They should have readied task forces to check and double-check the system exhaustively.

The LTA was just not prepared for the follow-up. Their summonses were curt and uninformative. They served to offend rather than educate. When individuals called up to ask why they were considered a violation, the staff at the LTA had no ready answers either. Worse, they gave conflicting and confusing replies, all the while espousing complete faith in their own engineering. To insist on the infallibility of their engineering only infuriates people, the very people who feel victimised by this monstrosity they don't understand.

Singapore has a public administration that is well-stocked with clever manipulators of hardware and inanimate systems. You can see the results. Things work marvelously in Singapore. The ERP, for example, is an impressive piece of smooth engineering, some bugs notwithstanding. But the same public administration is deficient in humility and in people skills. And you see the results too. For all the efficient marvels that we have, ordinary citizens can end up just as irate with the government as anywhere else.

© Yawning Bread 

Footnotes

None

Addenda

I too was accused of not having a cashcard in my IU [the In-vehicle Unit] even though there was a cashcard in it.

LTA did not have any concrete proof of no cashcard in my IU (like a closeup photo of an empty IU). It simply concluded that I did not insert my cashcard into the IU because 1) the ERP system did not make a deduction, 2) did not detect a cashcard error and 3) did not detect an IU error. Therefore, I had failed to insert a cashcard into my IU.

But the fact was there *was* a cashcard in the IU when I rode past the Clemenceau ERP gantry. I did not know there was anything wrong until I received the notice to pay the fine. Fortunately, I was able to prove that I did have my cashcard in my IU when I started on my journey.

You see, that morning, I had entered the ERP zone from Victoria St. A deduction was made at that gantry. Somehow, in the same journey, when I wandered out of the ERP zone and made a U-turn under the Clemenceau ERP gantry, there was no deduction made.

The only logical explanation for that isolated incident was that there was a system failure which did not show up in the system. But LTA maintained there was no record of any system failure and therefore I must be guilty.

I was advised by a lady officer at LTA to have my IU checked. I told her I saw no point in doing that since my IU had not given me any problem since that incident. She replied that it was the only recourse I had. I then asked her what LTA's decision would be if the check showed that my IU was working. Her reply was that I would then have to pay the fine.

LTA just flatly refused to acknowledge that it could be a case of system failure that did not show up in the system. Their stand was that since they had no record of any system error, I must be the one at fault.

Even when I told the officer that it was drizzling that day and wondered if that could have caused the problem, the officer's reply (which really got me boiling mad) was there was no record of adverse weather condition that day (so my experience of the drizzle could not be true!).

So you see, whatever the truth is, as long as it is not corroborated by LTA's system, it is merely your assertion against their system record.

LTA seems to regard the claims of innocence by motorists who have been booked for cashcard violations with suspicion when it should be viewing them as useful feedback on the system's performance.

The officer I spoke with finally told me to make a second appeal in writing. She said this second appeal would be referred to the next level as it would be outside her capacity to consider.

I did that and a second officer then requested for a printout of my cashcard transaction. I was subsequently informed to just pay 75 cents for the Clemenceau toll. If not for the proof of a deduction at the Victoria ERP gantry, I don't think my appeal would have succeeded.

The next wave of complaints from the public will be when they have to pay ($150) for the repair or replacement of their IU. Right now, the IU is still under warranty so motorists are not charged for any repair or replacement. But LTA is not going to bear the cost after the warranty period. The IU is LTA's revenue collection tool and it is clearly LTA's responsibility to bear the cost of its maintenance. But Singaporeans will not be bothered to make a stand until they feel the pinch. The problem of faulty IU could be bigger than we know. A taxi driver who went for his IU check told me he waited two hours in a long queue to have it done.