Simplicity is the key to swift and straight data

ASSUMING THAT MOTORISTS change their vehicles – sell one and buy another - once every four years, Kenya now has more than 1,000 buy-sell transactions per day.

So it is important for the buyer, the seller and the registrar that the process is sure (for the legal and statistical record) and rapid (to spare all concerned a colossal number of non-productive man-hours). On both counts, it needs to be simple.

The trend towards e-government enables this, promises it, but does not yet deliver.  One day hopefully it will, in the many essential interactions between citizen and state. The old way wasn’t too bad.  Neither was it too good.  There was  a Form C for “Transfer of Ownership.” It was poorly designed with numerous typographical spacing  and grammatical errors. There was weak relationship between the information sought and the spaces allowed, and no provision for signatures more than 3mm high.

Never mind.  Most people concluded  the question “Expected normal company issuing third party vehicle”  actually means “Expected normal location of vehicle”, and didn’t waste much time wondering why the Registrar of Motor Vehicles needed to know the buyer’s occupation and the name of his employer. 

NORMAL LOCATION

Buyer and seller could readily complete Form C in about 10 minutes when they exchanged payment for the keys and log-book.   All the seller had to do was send a copy of Form C to the registrar and retain a windscreen sticker to cancel/transfer his insurance.

The buyer had more task of sending Form C, original log book, current certificate of insurance and a copy of his ID card to the Registrar.  And a fee which did more to discourage than ensure compliance.   And then hope the log book would come soon, to the right box number with the new owner information correctly transcribed and stamped.

Form C still rules but now also needs a copy of the  seller’s ID card,  copies of both parties’ PIN and, I kid you not,  their mother’s names;  a question uncomfortably close to a popular “secret” used by banks vide identity theft.

A quick cast of arithmetic suggests that just the documentation - collecting and completing forms, and compiling and distributing the dossiers -  imposes a national cost on motorists of around 2 million man-hours a year (work out that loss of productivity on an average of around Sh50 per hour and a cumulative annual expense on second hand motor vehicle purchase tax and transfer fees of around Sh1 billion.

It is hoped that as we transition to the computerisation and digitisation of e.government that the process will be streamlined, the quality of questionnaires will be improved,  and at least the time cost will be reduced. A further pay-back should be very much more comprehensive and accurate statistics and a website that makes that data public information. 

We don’t need to know each other’s mother’s names, but we would be delighted to give more relevant information on makes, models,  vehicle age, length of ownership, substantive class/category figures, and countrywide aggregation of “expected normal locations” of the national vehicle park.