Letter of the Day | Speed needs systems, not shortcuts

THE EDITOR, Madam:

T he Gleaner editorial, “Trash the rules, then” of Sunday, February 8, rightly defends the integrity of Jamaica’s procurement framework and highlights the dangers that arise when established boundaries between political direction and administrative accountability are breached.

The auditor general’s findings on emergency spending, missing assets, and broken inventory systems expose serious weaknesses in public financial controls.

On matters of governance principle, the editorial’s position is sound. The separation between elected officials and accounting officers exists to protect public funds, preserve institutional continuity, and prevent political interference in day-to-day administration.

When exceptions are normalised, accountability erodes and the risk of abuse increases. Yet the evidence outlined in the editorial reveals a deeper challenge beyond individual breaches.

The problem is not too many rules – it is governance systems that cannot move at the speed of crisis while preserving accountability.

Disasters demand rapid procurement, multi-agency coordination, immediate deployment of resources, and real-time oversight. Jamaica’s current paper-based, sequential processes were designed for slow administrative environments, not hurricane-scale emergencies. When urgency collides with manual controls, predictable failures follow – documentation gaps, blurred authority, untracked assets, and audit breaches – even when intentions are good.

This pattern is not unique to Jamaica. Governments worldwide are recognising that traditional compliance models collapse under crisis velocity unless supported by modern digital governance systems. These embed approvals, documentation, inventory tracking, and oversight directly into workflows, allowing speed and integrity to function together rather than in conflict.

Strengthening accountability, therefore, requires modernising the infrastructure through which those rules operate.

Without systems capable of parallel approvals, automated record-keeping, live asset monitoring, and continuous oversight, emergencies will continue to overwhelm administrative controls, regardless of how well-crafted the laws may be.

The editorial is correct that Jamaica does not need weaker procurement rules. But sustainable reform will come only when those rules are supported by real-time governance tools designed for the realities of modern crises.

As climate events intensify and emergency spending grows, the country must transition from paper-era bureaucracy to outcome-sensitive public management, where accountability moves as quickly as the disasters we face.

DUDLEY MCLEAN II

dm15094@gmail.com