Written by Aris Abdul Rahman
In recent years, many organizations have worked their new media approach in order to increase openness and transparency in their image. New media are seen as a cost-effective and convenient means to connect, promote openness and transparency.
Today, everything is about new media. It allows organizations such as Public Service Department to engage in appropriate and direct contact with their clients at relatively low cost and higher levels of efficiency as compared to traditional communication tools. This makes new media to be not only relevant for large multinational firms, but also for small and medium sized companies, and even non-profits and governmental agencies. However, using new media is not an easy task as it may requires new ways of thinking, but the potential gains are promising.
New media encompasses a wide range of online, word-of-mouth forums including website, organization chat rooms, consumer-to-consumer e-mail, consumer product or service ratings forums, discussion boards and forums, mob logs (sites containing digital audio, images, movies, or photographs), social networking websites like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook.
According to Karehka Ramey (2013), the types of technology that can be related to Public Service Department are
- Communication Technology: This is a system that uses technical means to transmit information or data from one place to another or from one person to another. It can be used in social media, online shopping, government policies and many more. This communication can be used for many purposes such as conveying ideas, exchange information and express emotions. Businesses use communication technology tools to facilitate online shopping such as Facebook or Instragram, reduce bureaucratic in decision making, to serve customers needs and requests, to promote new products or services to targeted consumers and so much more; and
- Information Technology: Information Technology is a set of hardware and software tools used to store information. Information technology tools help in providing the right people with the right information at the right time. Banks uses information technology in their daily operation to serve their customers. Organization and huge companies use information technology to complete various tasks such as transferring of information which facilitates decision making within an organization, online feedback to improve customer service and so much more. In this information age, it is very important to manage information systems to ensure accuracy and efficiency.
Even though all the online system and new media is good, the greatest asset of any organization is still the people. A good staff can generate and improve the company’s productivity. As any organization grows, its members’ collective expertise and wisdom represent a vast treasure trove of knowledge.
However, finding this knowledge becomes much harder, making it difficult to leverage and exploit. This is where Instant Messaging app is used to connect within organization, for instance, Whatsapp and Telegram. The combination of e-government, social media, Web-enabled technologies, mobile technologies, and citizen desire for open and transparent organization are generating a new age of opportunity that has the potential to create open, transparent, efficient, effective, and user-centred ICT-enabled services.
This new edge technology is being applied in Public Service Department as they are the leader in driving public service transformation. Nowadays, governments, development agencies and organizations and citizen groups are increasingly linking investment, governance and support to the creation of more open organization.
In order to become excellent in Internet and new media, there are some challenges that Public Service Department needs to handle. It is the lack of staff knowledge and thus, proper training is needed. Many long serving staff is not equipped with information technology knowledge thus it requires training.
Whenever Public Service Department operates a new system, they need to call all the staff for in-house training and proper briefing. Funding and budgeting is also a significant challenge when developing a new technology. Public Service Department introduce online customer feedback called Sistem Pengurusan Aduan Awam JPA (SISPA) and this system increased their cost as they need to call all the relevant desk officer for proper training before answering the feedback. In an organisation, adequate planning is important because the budgeting will affect the whole organisation.
New media productivity is also a big question. First came minicomputers, PCs, the internet and the smart phone. Each technology created a tremendous increased of organisation productivity. What will be the next great productivity innovation? Perhaps virtual filing or robot customer service? Can these technologies deliver real and significant productivity gains for an organisation? Thus, it is important to both use technologies that are widely deployed to provide a broad base of technology access but there is also often a substantial need to provide training and engage in usability, functionality and accessibility testing to ensure the broadest ability to participate in e-services and resources.