TERRITORIALITY
LAST week, when I started this three-part series on advancing intersectoral initiatives, I dealt primarily with the technical or technological infrastructure necessary for this to happen. It appears as if the intervention was timely.
According to a newspaper report, published during the past week on the administration’s e-government project: “By June, Government Administration will be fully supported electronically, effectively lowering the cost on data connectivity.
“Some of the positive aspects of this project will include security approaches being centralized and accessible through high-speed networks; doctors engaged in consultations in remote areas; e-libraries and data centres for academic institutions, students, adults, and engineering firms; video conferencing facilities between the University of Guyana Turkeyen and Tain Campus.  Additionally, the OLPF hubs can be utilised by having access to e-libraries and other data centres.”
This week, I want to deal with what I identified in my last article as the key hurdle, in my opinion, facing the advancement or enhancement of intersectoral initiatives: The issue of territoriality.
There is this story I think most people my age grew up hearing about; the one with the dog in the manger (although for years I had no real idea of what a manger was) that would bark ferociously at any cow coming to eat the grass stored there, although he couldn’t eat it himself.  That is basically the territoriality I’m talking about; one in which people occupying a certain space prevent access to that space by others who could better utilise it.
I believe that there are three factors at work within the movement toward intersectoral integration in Guyana.  The first is the political will for it to be done, and while the process is realistically going to be occasionally contentious, while ‘teeth and tongue will clash’ as the old people say, I am confident that our political leadership possesses the collective will and interest in moving this country forward, and cohesiveness in the administration of the public sector is a key element of that progress.

The second factor, as I alluded to at the beginning of this article, is the fact that the infrastructural capacity is there, as supported by the technology of the day.  We are slowly moving away from dusty government offices staffed by frustrated workers rummaging through dog-eared files and miles of red tape to get information from one area to the other, to one in which documents can be transferred, literally at the speed of light, along fibre-optic cables.
The third is that of territoriality; and whereas the other two factors are a plus within the dynamic, the latter is a negative. As someone involved in several areas within the public sector, I believe that this phenomenon is rife enough to be considered a developmental problem when it comes to the evolution of government administration in Guyana.
Let me be frank, I believe that there are two types of behavioural territoriality within the public sector in Guyana: The first is political; the second is bureaucratic. With regard to the first, I believe that there are people, from both sides of the political divide (and particularly within the current political dispensation) who believe that access to what they think are their personal territories within the public service administration is premised on which card you carry. It doesn’t matter to them that the people at the top have been moving towards increasingly conciliatory actions (even as the rhetoric has admittedly been heightened); for them, their political allegiance is tied directly to their particular public service position, and anyone seen to be encroaching on their space who is not politically qualified is either rejected, bullied, undermined or frustrated.
The problem with this type of territoriality is the arrogance with which it is executed or practised by little Caesars who believe that in their respective spheres, they have more power than the President himself.
And it is precisely because of this you find that not only do they reject people they believe to be of an opposing ideological position, but they also refuse to cooperate with people who are, for all intents and purposes, nonpartisan.  In short, it doesn’t matter if you are simply there to do your job properly for the better of the country; if you’re not of us, then you are against us.
The second behavioural territoriality factor is that of a bureaucratic mindset that focuses more on personal professional protection than it does on getting the business of government done.  As with the first type of territoriality, it is a historically conditioned behaviour.  In this case, the bureaucrat says to himself or herself that the best posture to take when it comes to dealing with departments or sectors they are not familiar with is that of a default distrust; and you don’t cooperate with someone you don’t trust, because when the proverbial faecal matter hits the fan, there is no guarantee that you are not going to be put to front to take the brunt of it.
How do we deal with both? I don’t believe that there are any clear solutions readily available; there rarely are when it comes to culturally defined behavioural factors. With regard to political territoriality, I suppose the will to change will have to come from within internal political structures first, before it is filtered into the public service.
With regard to bureaucratic territoriality, I believe that as technology increases the speed, reliability, and integrity of communication, the distrust which buttresses the bureaucracy in Guyana will eventually be eroded.
Next week, now that we’ve examined the factors which act against intersectoral integration or cooperation, I’m going to close off this series by looking at some of the key benefits that can be accrued from it.