Economic Fraud
ROBUST ONLINE, ROBUST FUTURE
ROBUST ONLINE, ROBUST FUTURE
That online is the future we have been talking about for more than a decade, while doing all our activities on a offline mode. A truncated online system. Online till the onset of COVID-19 meant working from a prescribed physical location, with biometrics, log in and long out and the location coordinates all in place. Work from home was for a few and far between. WFH’s complimentary role was not clearly spelt out. A comfort provided for the employee. The morning commute in Bangalore was for what reason, nobody knows? When the back office of the world handled calls globally, what was necessity of it to happen from one Whitefield center only.
The consultants and IT honchos filling up most of fights was essential or not in the pre-COVID-19 days was difficult to comment upon then. In hindsight it was not. Some of the top consulting companies used to fly officials by the dozens for attending a meeting. The cost at the end of the day had to fall on the customers. Zoom was an unheard name and other similar tools as well. The companies who were to usher in digital transformation were at the ppt level. The next generation in school and college were still fixed to their location while Byju’s and Co. were making top class digital content. Online exams were still a world away and keyboard would still take a long time to take over from the pen and paper exam. What an irony in an age when you can’t connect handwriting to an individual!
Online First means to get unconnected to the location, that gives the real advantage. The present work from home has provided the ideal opportunity to provide all the technical facilitation for this purpose; the right gadget, the bandwidth and the near failsafe cyber security. Left to the vagaries of the tech ecosystem it’s not going to survive nor will it sustain, if the inner urge is get back to Pre-COVID-19 working scenario, as soon as one can. Treating it either as a stop gap or as a big fixed cost is against this great proactive trend and also the industry. The cost cutting on major operations expenditure would be phenomenal anyway.
The next big ticket is education. Conventional as ever, they are not ready to take the plunge. It’s being treated as a stop gap arrangement. The parents also declare that online is not real. That the kids deserve an independent gadget from day one is still to be resolved. The bandwidth is also in question. A year’s bus fees can take care of all these. Board driven and guided digital content needs to created. This would be the digital textbooks to make it clear; multimedia by design. It should take learning to a different level. Digital is a value add and not just a replication. Proctoring has to be inbuilt. Wherewithal and operations capability in place, the decision makers can decide the manner; structure, pace and the mechanism.
A ROCK SOLID ONLINE MECHANISM WOULD CREATE A ROCK SOLID FUTURE FOR BOTH WORK AND EDUCATION.
Sanjay Sahay
Have a nice evening.
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