Commenting on the woes of the new banking app at a private bank which stalled due to high traffic, it was said that that the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) must find another opening. Is the CTO culpable for every tech fiasco or an ineffective system by default?

Some large banks with a massive turnover and an IT spend of over 2 per cent of sales experience server, connectivity or ATM downtime due to lack of effective redundancy, leading to hardships, aside from risks due to the adoption of stop gap manual methods. On the other hand, many manufacturing firms with an IT spend of just 0.5 per cent operate complex IT systems covering several factories and branches with no perceptible downtime or disruption. Apart from poorly configured or maintained systems, disruptions can also be caused through absence of redundant systems due to budgetary or cost considerations as also indifference at the business heads’ level.

At banks, data entry at several points such as KYC data of customers or TDS paid to Income tax department is done manually, which are prone to delays and errors. In better systems, primary data are generated directly on portals with rigorous validations to ensure data integrity. At a time when the Railways is updating train status close to real time, the I-T department updates tax payments on their site with a lag of several days. Timeliness and accuracy are yet to feature as basic requirements, which is more to do with attitude than technology.

The I-T department routinely sends automated reminders for shortfall in advance tax payment based on the previous year’s payment levels. This ignores specifics such as a one-time spike in past payment due to say, a house sale by individuals.

Taxpayer responses needlessly flood the department and engage personnel in non-productive work. Why not send such notices specifically for high value property sales in the current year which is more relevant for advance tax?

Efficient corporate systems intelligently filter noises such as the one-time house sale in the tax system. Delivery of appropriate information on a focused basis may be more effective than carpet bombing notices based on brute tech power.

In case of a resource crunch to develop systems, sound organisations prioritise actions to quickly cover vulnerable areas. Thus, sensitive systems such as emoluments, payments, receipts and reconciliations overtake applications such as employee assessment, preventive maintenance or monitoring of low value spares.

Thus, often, a botched delivery or an ineffective system is more due to lack of perspective at business and board levels rather than incompetence at nerd and geek levels. Failure within the business to crystallise its pain areas and articulate specific deliverables contribute to poor end result and in such instances, the business head or CEO is culpable rather than the CTO.

The audacious train heist was dramatically solved recently, two years after the crime was committed. Travelling on the roof top of the Salem-Chennai Express, a gang had sawed their way to chests of currency in transit and passed the booty to mobsters stationed along the track. The breakthrough was achieved when ISRO cameras in space revealed the stretch where this took place and call data analysis at that location and instance cornered the quarry. Excellence in all of concept, architecture, application, data integrity, infrastructure and delivery produced symphony. Both ISRO and the cell company ensured the end result through vision and anticipation. Who provided these, the CTOs or the minions among the machines?

The writer is a retired executive. Views expressed are personal.

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