How Does One Measure Success?

In 'When SMS Messaging Is Planned For, It Helps People' over at MobileActive, I wrote about how a system in Indonesia has demonstrated success. It has, I think.

But how does one measure the success of such a system? You can't. Bureaucracy may count the success of it through how many people used it. They may get more complicated and actually try to derive even more numbers from the statistics. But what value, a system that allows one to communicate in a disaster - not from the top down, but where communication is centralized so that it is limited by our own ability?

I'm putting together another post for MobileActive - one which I'll try to post over there for Monday - but when dealing with bureaucrats, what I have found is that they always want some numbers to make their decisions. It's one of my inherent problems with a society ruled by bureaucracy... Perhaps I am wrong, and I'll ask for clarification... but perhaps one life is worth more than a bunch of crazy numbers, graphs and powerpoint presentations. It used to get me angry. Then I laughed. Now, I just smile - a knowing smile.

There's no measuring the success of some things in simple arithmetic. We have yet to understand the complexities of the human mind and emotions, but I offer that intuition and, perhaps, feeling, are the results of complex mathematics which our bodies process, and which we communicate most readily through our body language and touch, then verbally, then through writing and other things.¹ And in thinking of that, I realize perhaps why the bureaucrats don't understand the value of such a system. Maybe they've never seen human beings in true suffering, where the body language is unmistakable, where the scream signals a plea for help... where one can scream. And maybe, too, they don't see the value of digital (in electronic and finger senses of the word) communication. Maybe they don't understand. Maybe it's not something that they are capable of grasping, as they deal in numbers and have powerpoint presentations read to them even when it's on the screen in front of them.

Maybe we have to wonder at how we should measure their success, the success of the beaureacrats. After all, we do outnumber them. Democracy, anyone? Perhaps technology we have now requires a new balance to be struck. I believe so.

So, I don't know that I can communicate a level of success to a bureaucrat with numbers. I can convey feeling with words when I write, but perhaps they are immune? Maybe if it is numbers that they want, we should give them numbers in the sheer clamor of voices. Maybe that they can understand. But I acknowledge my limits here, I cannot make them see this system as a success unless they are more human than bureaucrat. And that... that is ever the problem with such systems.

How valuable is a doctor to you when you are not sick? How valuable is a doctor to you when you are sick? How valuable is a doctor to society when the society encounters disaster?

How valuable is a communications system when a society encounters disaster? We're not talking about 'broadcasts', so that the bureaucrats can calm us by reading numbers to us... no. We want to be able to talk, too. And that's what this whole 'eGovernment' issue is about - isn't it?

Another thread to pull to unravel the truth. Just smile when you do it.

¹I choose this order because this is how mankind developed; before we could talk we had to read each other's body language to understand. Then we started to speak (though even now we are not very good at listening), and we communicated that way. And then we learned how to leave marks on things so that we could communicate otherwise.