Experts disagree with NEA

I read with interest the recent disagreement between an expert panel of drainage experts and the National Environment Agency (NEA) with respect to the annual rainfall trends. No discernable trend, sez the NEA. But the expert panel disagreed. You can almost see Prof Lui Pao Chuen shaking his head in disbelief. According to the panel, the annual rainfall has actually been increasing at about 15mm per year between 1968 and 2008.

And it's my turn to shake my head in disbelief. How can something so fundamental be in dispute? I mean, I can understand differences in scientific perspectives and theories, but the interpretation of hard numbers?? There is either a trend or not. How can there be such a fundamental disagreement about whether the rainfall is going up or not?

Intuitively, and not having access to the detailed data, I am more inclined to believe the expert panel. Global warming has been melting the ice caps. There is just so much more water circulating in the environment. Sea levels are rising and projected to rise even more. Surely more rain is cycling through the atmosphere. The increasing spate of ponding, oops, sorry, flooding says a lot about how much more rain has been falling.

It kinda makes me question what's happening at the NEA. How are they, and have they been examining the data they have been collecting? Can we trust their projections for the future? And can we trust any assurances that they are adequately preparing for the future?

This is just one of the indications that we really need our agencies to provide more publicly available information. Hitherto, the public has been trained to accept sanitized proclamations from our public agencies that all is well with the world, and Singapore, and that we should trust only their interpretation of fragmented and cryptic data shown to the public.

This is not acceptable any more.

This episode speaks volumes about why we need data to be made available to the public so that they can be scrutinized independently. More eyes are always better. French philosopher Henri Bergson said, “The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.” How true.

In this case, the NEA mind appears to have been conditioned to comprehend a rather fixed set of reality based on historical weather models; models which are not applicable in today's world anymore.

If it appears I am picking on the NEA, I am not. This problem exists in all our government agencies. They need to break free from historical models, and look at their data/stats with fresh sets of eyes. Today is a very different  world. Importantly, my plea to all the public agencies is that Singapore's interest is best served by placing much more institutional and government data in the public domain so that independent conclusions can be drawn about what is happening, so that more independent options for the future can be contemplated.

Black swans in Singapore?

The black swan metaphor was introduced to us by Naseem Nicholas Taleb to describe a high impact outlier phenomenon that no body expects and one that takes everyone by surprise. The recent global recession related to the collapse of Lehman Brothers was such a black swan event. And like all black swans it can be rationalized after the event, when everyone kicks themselves in the backside and wonders why they never recognized it coming.

Although not global in magnitude, there have been a number of black swans seen in Singapore recently. The GE2011 results for example, caught many people in the PAP by surprise. The flooding in Orchard Road was another such event. In retrospect however, these events could have been easily predicted, and now we have the unusual situation where many people in the gahment are kicking themselves wondering how they missed the picture.

Often therefore the black swans are not the result of extra-ordinary events but of a lack of foresight, and the reluctance to think outside of mainstream and traditional ideologies. The GE2011 black swanlette was I believe, very much a consequence the failure to really look at the signs, which in retrospect, was everywhere. There was much reluctance to listen to naysayers, and everyone was happy to fuel the emperor's vanity. The flooding story hasn't quite unfolded fully, but I believe the picture will emerge that the black swan really came about because of the reluctance to deal with changing weather patterns as a result of global warming. There was I believe, too much discomfort in wanting to move outside of traditional models looking at weather and flood patterns. After all, to do so would have been to abandon painstakingly collected historical rainfall and flooding data. Yet the world has changed, and these models need to change as well.

The increasingly recognized hospital "bed-crunch" is perhaps not unlike the flooding black swan. Caught everyone by surprise, did it? What absolute crock! The numbers were there for everyone to see. The population was growing at a phenomenal rate. People were aging. Medical tourism was being encouraged. But no one appeared to want to look seriously at the numbers. Either that or there was an absolutely wrong prioritization of healthcare resources to cater for medical tourism instead of community needs.

Doing the right operation..... ala Dr Vivian Balakrishnan

Dr Vivian Balakrishnan provided an interesting analogy of the consultative approach he advocated for the PAP in the future.

Stressing the value of communication, he said: "It's not good enough just to do the right operation ... It's very, very important to talk to the patient - to explain these choices and the different trade-offs and make sure the people of Singapore understand this and participate more actively in the decision-making process."

Words of wisdom. Lessons learnt .... apparently.... until you note the first part of what he actually said: "....It's not good enough just to do the RIGHT operation".

So what he actually meant was that the PAP was right all along, and that the electorate had misunderstood all along. The PAP only failed in so far as it did not persuade the electorate of its 'rightness'. Informed consent to him, is to persuade the patient to agree to the correctness of the solution administered. Really?

Sodesne !.... And all the while I thought they were going to be truly more consultative.

To be fair, his boss, PM Lee had in the post-election press conference hinted at a future more inclusive relationship with the electorate: "And that means not only the Government working hard on its own with a population of passive but engaging Singaporeans in the more difficult decisions and trade-offs which governing Singapore involves. There are often no easy choices and the more we can appreciate this and grapple with the dilemmas and the trade-offs together, I think the better the answers we'll come up with, and the more we'll be able to have workable solutions."

I for one am truly hopeful that there will be a reformed PAP that will seek to lead rather than rule. They have done a magnificent job thus far as rulers, but I want much more than that. I really want to see them enter into a new social contract with Singaporeans, one that includes a greater degree of engagement and involvement in decision making with respect to critical problems. But the real deal-breaker is whether they trust Singaporeans enough to be transparent in their decision making processes. Or whether they will just continue to pretend to be consultative, but secretly (well, not so secret...) go on believing they have the only truth and only real solution, and just work harder to convince Singaporeans to be compliant.

I think that would be a disaster.

Top down? Or bottom up?

I think most organizations have a similar vertical structure.

People at the top, stern countenance notwithstanding, tend to see life as being rather rosy, and the view below them as being populated by trouble-making, poo-heads. The view from the bottom, is really quite different. When they get to see anything through the droppings, all they see are contracting orifices.

The situation is clearly made worse by group-think at the top, and the propagation of a monolithic logic down the ranks.