The ISO Obsession

Hello everyone! I hope those who cared to read what I had written so far, knows that I write from the heart. I do not prepare drafts, which to me is the least important. What is ISO? I came across this term when I was on secondment to SIRIM from 1986 till 1988. It stands for an identification with regard to standards whih has its HQ based in Geneva. Their main objective is to ensure that every product or service conforms to a certain standard in order to make sure that it's quality is the same the world over. I paid a visit to the standards body in the UK which is on the outskirts of London, precisely in a newly built up area called Milton Keynes. It is built in a newly acquired area which housed the British Aerospace and many military hardware manufacturing industry of the UK. When I came back, at one of the senior level morning meetings chaired by the Comptroller of SIRIM, I asked this gentleman who was the deputy head of the Standards Division of SIRIM whether he had heard of the BSO. It stands for British Standards Office which has a Head Office in Central London. His answer was somewhat vague and opaque despite the fact that he's been there for umpteen years! The Comptroller was also wondering why his answer was non-committal. The Director of Standards SIRIM was away at that time and he was covering for him. I thought it was rather strange for him not to know his counterparts in similar bodies in the Commonwealth. I left the Standards body of which it is the only one found in our beloved Nation, way back in 1988 after a 28 months stint in what I believed to be one of the most enlightening experience of my career in Government Service. The wonderful people whom I met there were more than often willing to educate me on what they were doing. As an example one of the officers who were engaged in testing electronic goods and products which needed certification by law, befriended me till now, because his lab was one of those which made one of the most requisitions for testing equipments. When I came back to the mainstream govt service, the quality frenzy was in top gear. I was wondering why on earth, MAMPU was deep into this exercise which to me was totally superfluous and lacking imagination! I could still recall what the BSO official told us in his briefing that the ISO was confined largely to manufactured goods and services so as to provide the competitive edge for countries mainly from the industrialised world or even the developing countries who are obsessed with joining the club of a developed first world! I supposed no one advised MAMPU on the basic issues pertaining to ISO to be applied in government across the board. Even if there were, no one was hearing because almost the whole bureaucracy were obsessed and possessed by ISO as if it was a magic cure for all the problems facing govt depts and ministries. Actually when I first joined govt service, I was told that there's this division called O&M Office which is an acronym for " Organisation and Methods" found somewhere in the recesses of that old Secretariat Building fronting now Merdeka Square. Now the work was actually cut out for them because one of the first things that we are introduced when dealing with govt depts are filling of forms before any service could be rendered. Recently I went to perform the "Umrah" or the lesser Hajj through a Tabung Haji subsidiary company called " Tabung Haji Travel & Services " or in short only known as THTS. It has been conferred the certification of the ISO which was proudly displayed almost all over the country where Tabung Haji offices could be found. Although I enjoyed the relatively hassle free and a smooth journey to the holy land from 25 June till 05 July, but there were moments which could make me hit the roof owing to communication breakdowns and bad attitude of the people who manned some of the critical components of the Umrah Package. Upon my return from Makkah, immediately I called the CEO of THTS and related to him some of the unpleasent episodes to which he thanked me profusely.Later I came to know that he was in the Armed Forces with the rank of Major, and after 14 years he left to take up law and then joined the Legal and Judicial Service. He was seconded and later opted to remain in Tabung Haji ever since and asked to revamp THTS because it was focussing on the wrong things rather than satisfying the clients. The lesson here is that paper certification is only useful if it's translated into a way of life. The trouble in many organisations are that the ISO becomes an end in itself and not the means to an end. See you later alligator!