Thursday, November 16, 2006

JPA Scholarship Questions?

Wow, students who want their queries on the Public Service Department (JPA) scholarships answered can now do it online. As reported in the Star today, they need to just log on to the PSD website, "post their queries on an interactive portal and chat with any of its 33 officers."

According to Head of Corporate Communications, Hasniah Rashid, queries would be answered "immediately by the officers or within three days, at least, for those requiring specific and detailed answers."

The system apparently is still in pilot stage, and the next session for the department’s online chat will be on Nov 24 from 8am to noon. The department plans to hold similar online chats every last Friday of the month.

Now, concerned parents and Form Five students out there, mark the date and do test the response from the Public Service Department. Or if you do have questions to ask and would like me to attempt the querying, let me have your queries. ;-) I'll see what I can do.

As far as I'm concerned, it's a great idea, it just needs to be implemented properly. Should the "tests" be successful, we should give the necessary kudos to JPA for making the effort. If however, there are shortcomings, we should provide the constructive criticisms.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

One question that i would like to raise is the effectiveness in incorporating such system. If they can't even provide satisfactory answers face to face, how can such virtual thing works?

The only positive reason i can think of with such system is that, we no longer need to see their face anymore. Civil servants' attitude in Malaysia are rather bad, forgetting that we, the citizen pay for their salaries.

Another thing is, what kind of answer can they provide, when a lot of things are not transparent at all?

Anonymous said...

You know one thing, our government and all its agencies are very good at this game. They give the impression of efficiency and root of complain and even have websites where you can lodge your complain. In the end what do you get?

A website which could not be opened up for its section on residents complains.

Try using the phone. You are lucky enuff if your calls get through. Even if it does you will be led on a wild goose chase being referred from one officer to another.

So much being said for all the customer service piagams or standards.

I treat the whole proposal as just another routine joke by AAB administration

Anonymous said...

I can understand why some people would be pesimistic to such ideas. Too often than not we have been let down, thus justifying future attempts/ideas as simply bogus.
But at the same time I think it is appropriate to welcome their effort with open arms and see how things go. I wouldn't be surprised if the replies are pretty standard, sharing doubts with the first anonymous. Then again, we have nothing to lose and if successful something to gain.

Anonymous said...

I have pose some questions on the web for jpa..

but 4 days has gone ..not a single reply heard...

another gimmick ?