When Jacinta Adamson’s mother bought herself a new car, she gave her old one to Jacinta. However, the car was not actually registered in Jacinta’s name. Indeed, for more than two years, Mrs Adamson continued to pay most of the expenses apart from petrol. Then, with- out much notice, Jacinta was given a significant promotion by her employer and transferred from the local Bearbrass office to a new branch interstate. She enthusiastically packed her belongings and arranged to have the car transported.
Soon after her arrival, Jacinta had the car registered in Centralia and received new reg- istration plates. With the car now transferred into her name, she looked forward to exploring her new home state. Several months passed and everything was going smoothly when, late one evening, she received an anxious phone call from her mother. A letter had arrived from the Transport Department in Bearbrass demanding the return of the old number plate. ‘What have you done with the plates? We need to return them immediately,’ Mrs Adamson said to Jacinta. ‘Please sort it out quickly or I will be fined. I could even lose my own licence.’ Jacinta was perplexed. She had assumed that the plates would be sent back to Bearbrass by the Cen- tralian Department of Transport once the new plates were issued. ‘Surely this is something the state transport authorities do every day? We live in such a mobile society now, it’s hard to imagine why moving interstate should be a problem,’ Jacinta replied. She advised her mother to ring the state Transport Department in Bearbrass and get them to contact the Centralian office.
After negotiating a series of recorded messages and prompts, and then being kept on hold for what seemed like an eternity, Mrs Adamson was shocked by the officer’s abrupt and unsympathetic manner. ‘The fact that the plates are in Centralia is your problem,’ she was told. ‘We have no contact with them.’ When her mother told her about the call, Jacinta decided to take the initiative. She contacted the Centralian office again and was assured that the number plates would be on their way to Bearbrass very soon, although it was clear that the officer was uncertain about which department in Bearbrass they should be sent to. ‘You can relax now,’ Jacinta told her mother. ‘It’s all under control. You don’t have to do a thing. The plates will be returned in a day or so, I’m sure.’ However, the reality was that Jacinta could not drive her car, because the Centralian office still held her old plates and could not issue the new ones because the car was not in Jacinta’s name.
Three weeks later, Mrs Adamson received another letter instructing her to return the number plates urgently or pay $110. Failure to do so by the new deadline would result in court action and the possible loss of her licence to drive in her own state, she was warned. Mrs Adamson was now extremely stressed, and rather annoyed that her daughter had left her in this predicament. ‘It’s very unfair,’ she told Jacinta. ‘I gave you a car – that should be enough. The least you can do is sort out the paperwork and spare me all this pressure.’ Jacinta replied: ‘It’s very unfair of you to say that, Mum. It’s not my fault. I’m finding all this very stressful, too. While all these bureaucratic hassles are going on, I’m also trying to settle into a new flat and cope with a new job.’
M a n a g i n g s t r a t e g y 153
Over the next two days, Jacinta rang the Centralian Transport Department several times. She spoke with a different officer each time, and was again assured that everything was all right. However, on the third day she discovered that the plates were still in Centralia and that the transport officers could not hand them over until the necessary paperwork was completed transferring the car into Jacinta’s name.
Student projects
1 Identify the management deficiencies that are causing Jacinta’s ‘bureaucratic hassles’.
2 Design a customer-friendly process for dealing with interstate transfers of this kind.
3 Have you ever experienced problems similar to Jacinta’s when dealing with government agencies? If so, what management initiative would be required to prevent such problems occurring in the future?
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