New digital reporting tool itself found to contain a hole
Reporting brought to you by Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat.
Pothole-Reporting Platform Develops Its Own Defect Within Hours Of Launch
MANILA, PHILIPPINES — A new government mobile application designed to let citizens report potholes has itself developed a metaphorical pothole within hours of its launch, with users reporting that the app for reporting holes contains a hole of its own, into which their pothole reports promptly disappear.
“We are pleased to launch the PotholeWatch app,” announced Assistant Secretary Grace Dimaculangan of the Department of Digital Roads at a ceremony hours before the app malfunctioned. “Now any citizen can report a pothole instantly, and the report will go directly to the relevant office for prompt action.” Within hours, citizens discovered that reports submitted through the app vanished into a void, the digital equivalent of a pothole, swallowing each report without trace, prompting citizens to file reports about the pothole in the pothole app, which also vanished.”
The Recursive Hole
According to the Institute for Digital Governance, the situation has achieved a troubling recursion. “Citizens use the app to report potholes,” explained Dr. Reynaldo Cruz. “But the app has a flaw, a hole, into which the reports fall and disappear. So citizens attempt to report this flaw, this hole in the app, using the app, which causes their reports about the hole to fall into the same hole. We now have a pothole-reporting app with a pothole in it, swallowing both pothole reports and reports about its own pothole. The recursion is mathematically elegant and practically disastrous. The tool meant to capture holes has become a hole.”
Users described their frustration with the self-defeating application. “I reported a big pothole on my street,” said tricycle driver Jun Aquino, 38. “And nothing happened. So I figured the report did not go through. So I tried to report that the app was not working, using the app, and that did not go through either. The app eats everything. Pothole reports, complaints about the app, everything goes into the void. It is a hole that reports holes by making them disappear. I have started reporting potholes by shouting at my phone, which is exactly as effective as the official app, and more satisfying.”
The Vanishing Reports
Officials have struggled to address the flaw, in part because the channels for reporting the flaw also rely on the flawed app. “We are aware that some reports may not be processing correctly,” said Dimaculangan, carefully. “Citizens experiencing issues should report them through the app’s feedback function.” When informed that the feedback function suffered from the same hole, swallowing feedback about the hole, Dimaculangan paused. “Then citizens should report the feedback issue through the appropriate channel,” she said. The appropriate channel, it emerged, was also the app. The hole, officials conceded, had no external reporting mechanism, because all reporting went through the app, and the app had a hole.”
Experts noted the philosophical dimension of the problem. “How do you report a hole in the hole-reporting system, when all reporting goes through the system with the hole?” asked Dr. Cruz. “It is a genuine paradox. The flaw cannot be reported because the means of reporting it contains the flaw. The app has achieved a kind of perfect dysfunction, in which it cannot even be told that it is dysfunctional, because the telling falls into the dysfunction. The potholes of Metro Manila remain unreported, the app’s pothole remains unreportable, and the whole system has collapsed into a single, elegant, all-consuming hole.”
The Citizens Adapt
With the app nonfunctional, citizens have reverted to traditional pothole-management strategies. “We just put a stick in it,” said community leader Lorna Sebastian, 47, gesturing at a pothole marked with a branch and a plastic bottle. “The old way. You mark the pothole with whatever you have, a stick, a tire, a banana plant, so people do not fall in. We do not need an app for that. We have been marking potholes with sticks for generations. The app was supposed to be better. But the app has a hole, and our sticks do not. So we are back to sticks. The sticks work. The sticks have never had a hole. The sticks are more reliable than the government’s digital pothole-reporting platform.”
The stick-based system, experts noted, has outperformed the app considerably. “The traditional stick method has a one hundred percent success rate at marking potholes,” said Dr. Cruz. “The app has a zero percent success rate, having swallowed every report submitted to it. So the citizens, sensibly, have abandoned the failed technology and returned to the proven one. The stick does not require a smartphone, an internet connection, or a functional government database. It requires a stick. And it works every time. The PotholeWatch app cost millions. The sticks cost nothing. The sticks won.”
The Hole Remains
The PotholeWatch app remains live but nonfunctional, swallowing reports into its metaphorical pothole, while citizens mark actual potholes with sticks as they always have. “We are committed to improving the digital reporting experience,” said Dimaculangan, as another batch of citizen reports vanished into the app’s void. “The app represents the future of pothole management in Metro Manila.” Behind her, citizens continued to mark potholes with sticks, branches, and plastic bottles, the analog system functioning flawlessly while the digital one consumed itself, a pothole-reporting app with a pothole at its center, swallowing everything, reporting nothing, a perfect monument to the gap between the promise of digital governance and the enduring reliability of a stick in a hole. For genuine background, see the Official Gazette of the Philippines, and for further detail, the Department of Public Works and Highways covers the real subject.
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SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/