EASE OF DOING BUSINESS WITH THE GOVERNMENT

EASE OF DOING BUSINESS WITH THE GOVERNMENT

Dear Mr. President: What does “ease of doing business” mean? That is a very easy question to answer in relation to the private sector, but what does it really mean in relation to doing business with the government? Short of conducting a survey, I think that the general sentiment now is that it is very difficult to do business with the government, because most of the government services are still on a “face to face” basis and are therefore not online.

It is very easy to do business with the private sector, because most of the private companies have already perfected their Customer Relations Management (CRM) software and systems. As a matter of fact, it could be said that CRM is the life of every private company, because without good CRM, those companies could lose their customers, and therefore lose their market shares.

Among other “telltale” signs, one clear indicator that a government agency has very poor CRM is the fact that only their landlines in their websites or posters. That means no email addresses, no mobile numbers, and not even social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And even if they publish their mobile numbers, they do not even have Viber, WhatsApp or Telegram. What a disappointment that is, because these mobile apps are for free, therefore there are not procurement issues.

We are often proud to claim that the Philippines is the texting capital of the world. Assuming that that is true, why is it that we could not even text our own government, in the same way that we could text our own government, in the same way that we could text our family and our friends? What is even sadder is that the government agencies that publish their mobile numbers do not even bother to reply. I know that for a fact, because I send text messages to many government agencies all the time.

Mr. President, for so many months now, I have been sending letters to several government agencies via email and Facebook Messenger, but most of the time, I only get auto replies. Most of the time, the chatbots say that they will get back to me, but they never do. I am happy to inform you that your own Presidential Management Staff (PMS) has been very diligent in answering my emails to you, by referring these to the agencies concerned. However, I have never received a reply from your staff that is assigned to manage your Facebook Messenger account.

How I wish Mr. President that the time will come when any Filipino citizen could contact our government using any means such as via text, email, voice calls and social media. By the way Sir, I am one of those who designed and implemented the 8888 Citizen’s Complaint Center during the time of former President Rodrigo Duterte. If you wish to upgrade that system, I could help again by mobilizing the private sector to work with the government, as I have done before. The bottom line is, we should improve and upgrade the CRM infrastructure of the government. To that effect, you can even use the mobile apps that are already available for free in the market. IKE SENERES/09-24-2024

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