Computers and efficiency: Here's my middle digit!

The curriculum proposal process at my university is now paperless and all electronic.  We upload documents, which are then routed through the process and the personnel ... all in the name of efficiency.

Is it really more efficient?

When it was time for me to submit proposals, I ran into dead ends, one after another.  And every time I had to email two people, who then spent time fixing the problems.

Another colleague wrote to me about his experience:

I was just about to email you that any frustration in my last email isn't directed one bit towards you but rather to this new "more efficient" process. What used to take me five minutes of behind the scenes paperwork will now take 30 mins of emailing and portal submission, plus waiting on the CC to meet etc. And that's going to be true for every dang term going forward. You and I both like reading articles about automation and the future of work, and this new process reminds me that just because a computer process can be programmed doesn't mean it's an improvement.

As if I needed more evidence that "digital" does not always mean more efficient.  I am all set to extend my middle digit to those who claim otherwise ;)

At least my work is not about life and death, which is the case in healthcare.  Atul Gawande writes about this in "Why Doctors Hate Their Computers."

Something’s gone terribly wrong. Doctors are among the most technology-avid people in society; computerization has simplified tasks in many industries. Yet somehow we’ve reached a point where people in the medical profession actively, viscerally, volubly hate their computers.

Welcome to the club, Dr. Gawande!

Questions that doctors had routinely skipped now stopped them short, with “field required” alerts. A simple request might now involve filling out a detailed form that took away precious minutes of time with patients.

Doesn't this sound similar to the experiences I described about the curriculum process at my university?

Gawande talked to others, like Susan Sadoughi, who is a primary care physician.  What was her experience?

Early on, she recognized that technology could contribute to streamlining care. She joined a committee overseeing updates of a home-built electronic-medical-record system we used to rely on, helping to customize it for the needs of her fellow primary-care physicians. When she got word of the new system, she was optimistic. Not any longer. She feels that it has made things worse for her and her patients. Before, Sadoughi almost never had to bring tasks home to finish. Now she routinely spends an hour or more on the computer after her children have gone to bed.

Efficiency,my ass!

The software “has created this massive monster of incomprehensibility,” she said, her voice rising. Before she even sets eyes upon a patient, she is already squeezed for time. And at each step along the way the complexity mounts.
“Ordering a mammogram used to be one click,” she said. “Now I spend three extra clicks to put in a diagnosis. When I do a Pap smear, I have eleven clicks. It’s ‘Oh, who did it?’ Why not, by default, think that I did it?” She was almost shouting now. “I’m the one putting the order in. Why is it asking me what date, if the patient is in the office today? When do you think this actually happened? It is incredible!”

Seriously, how and why do people so fervently believe that digital means more efficient?

Gawande reviews the research on computers and productivity and writes that "one of the strongest predictors of burnout was how much time an individual spent tied up doing computer documentation."

This is awful!  And we let this happen!

We can retune and streamline our systems, but we won’t find a magical sweet spot between competing imperatives. We can only insure that people always have the ability to turn away from their screens and see each other, colleague to colleague, clinician to patient, face to face.

Face to face, yes.

Recently, I met with a student who was trying to get transfer credits for a course he had completed elsewhere.  I told him to meet with the person in-charge.  "Email to set up the appointment, but discuss the issue in person," I advised.  He did.