In good times, it is customary not to pay attention to the rational use of goods and resources. The global crisis caused by the war in Ukraine has once again highlighted the need to control consumption and rethink some of the mental patterns that seemed unshakable. Right now, there is a certain feeling in society that we have done something wrong. We all face numerous cases of energy inefficiency every day: air conditioners with impossible temperatures that make us bundle up in the summer, suffocating heating that makes us undress in the winter, or turning on the lights without any objects or at unnecessary moments.

Public administration is not exempt from this sense of waste. Sometimes we are not careful enough to turn off the lights, air conditioning or heating in places or at times when there are no people. I believe we have been missing a general sense of energy efficiency in our workplaces, sometimes because of the organizational complexity involved in applying it, and sometimes because of the misconception that no one is responsible for these excessive costs. More effort has been put into ensuring the correctness of the contracting and billing administrative procedure than to assessing the correctness of use. And you must do both. One of the positive lessons of the current situation is that we are once again putting on the table the necessary energy conservation awareness in the Administration.

Simplification and digitization

But from the Administration, we can do more to improve energy efficiency. It’s more subtle, but worth mentioning. This is the impact on consumption arising from the complexity of some administrative procedures that are inefficient in terms of human resources for their management, as well as causing costs for citizens. We are talking about repeated visits to offices to solve the same issue at its different stages, pilgrimages to collect the necessary documentation for the process, making photocopies or paper certificates, among other things.

From public administration, we must seize this moment to give new impetus to administrative simplification and advancement in digitization, in that order. If, at the industrial level, companies are required to improve their infrastructure and processes to improve energy efficiency in order to survive, then at the Administration level, we must do the same with ours. If we want e-administration to be part of the solution, we must redouble our efforts to improve the usability of the tools we provide to citizens.

Stephen R. Covey said that “If I really want to improve things, I have to work on the one thing I have power over: myself.” Each organization must analyze its situation, develop an improvement plan and execute it by analyzing progress indicators. This is where artificial intelligence can help. Once relevant data is collected, AI algorithms can help guide decision making. There is nothing new in the method, we just lack the determination to follow this path. Let’s seize the moment.

Ramon M. Andarias He is the Head of the Department of Institutional Relations at the Suma Gestión Tributaria.