For a while now, the Singapore Government has relied increasingly on the use of surveys and polls to shape and determine their policies. While a better understanding of the populace is important in the crafting of better policies, the tendency to base policy-making on social norms and dominant strands of thinking among the populace is misguided at best, and lazy and self-interested at worst for the following reasons: - Any sitting Government is here to serve the entire populace, not merely the majority. Any tendency to do so smacks of vote securing. And of course theres the much touted tyranny of the majority. - Part of the sitting Governments job must be the setting of future directions, as well as the brokering of common ground among different lobby groups. Taking sides with the group that has the largest clout is NOT part of this description. Surveys and polls are excellent tools to aggregate the *needs* of a population, data a tremendous resource for teasing out issues that sometimes that lie just under the surface. However, over-reliance on data as a policy-making (and justification) tool is an indication that the policy-maker is not as close to the ground as he/she should be, or is acting in the interests of the polity as a whole.
Posted on: Tue, 05 Aug 2014 04:54:35 +0000