Due Diligence

It's interesting to read official documentation. In the transition period between a closed and secretive system and an open and informative one, stuff falls into the cracks. In 1997, the 7th International Conference on Thinking was held in Singapore. Shortly thereafter, Singapore's Ministry of Education began to put all speeches, press releases and other documents online. The same thing began to occur at other institutions in this country.

This change was profound because some decades prior to this, founding father and leading politician Goh Keng Swee had already vented his spleen at the two things which, in his view, were retarding the progress of the country: the 'cult of secrecy' and the 'cult of obedience'. His venting did not change things much, outside his own offices.

But what I think is the problem is that a culture that is not used to information handling tends to fall into two kinds of error. In the first kind, the lack of sufficient information (or the tradition of providing such) makes people think that information is being concealed when actually it isn't. The second kind is that the information provided may be copious and yet presented badly, thus giving a false impression of incompetence or incoherence.

It is not that this happens a lot. It's just that when you look at the documents produced by certain institutions, you are irritated to find yourself asking questions like, "Who on earth vetted this?" or "Who did the proof-reading?" or "What is this person trying (not) to say?" The underlying problem is one of narrative; people are so concerned with getting the facts out that the story connecting them and making them relevant is totally missing.

Purveyors of information really ought to exercise due diligence in their craft. Errors of fact are one thing; errors of presentation leading to a presumed state of factitiousness are quite another. This is especially relevant now.

Why the increased relevance? Obviously, with the economy the way it is, anything that shakes confidence is a BAD thing. If people knew exactly how much they could rely on information, and how much not, then confidence would be more stable. In an information vacuum, or perceived vacuum (such as that caused by a can't-believe-everything-they-say attitude), erratic behaviour dominates and confidence is unstable.

This is one reason why people are cynical when they look at institutions calling themselves 'world-class'. The world is not in such a good shape, it seems — and 'world-class' tends to put such institutions in the same class as Citigroup and General Motors (and Lehman Brothers, and AIG, and so on).

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Update:

Some people have pointed out that this post is evidence that I am some sort of demented anarchist who is seeking to haul down the venerable institutions of our time. I don't think so, for two reasons.

Firstly, none of these venerable institutions started out by claiming 'world-class' status. They earned their own recognition based on the sound vision and policies of their founders, and were only later labelled 'world-class' by others. Being 'world-class' is not an intrinsic property of a successful organisation, but an extrinsic one, sometimes attached by libellous associates who are in the habit of using ill-defined labels. I don't think that removing this label makes an institution less worthy.

Secondly, the damage that some of these institutions have suffered (in terms of reputation, worth, quality, prospects etc) is mostly of their own making. Anyone in his right mind would agree. Or anyone in the real world.