Locked-down but not knocked-down: Harnessing technology during the COVID-19 lockdown

By Chrispus Mayora

COVID-19 | TECHNOLOGY 

From March 30, 2020, President Museveni announced a ‘stay at home', as a measure to reduce the spread of the COVID-19 in Uganda. These measures have been extended until May 5, 2020.  

Individuals have since tried a ‘work-from-home' to continue delivering on particular work and business-related expectations and timelines. As a researcher, our routine has not changed, but rather the mode of operation.

Different research groups have shifted meetings and several engagements and activities to online platforms - thanks to Zoom, Microsoft Teams, WhatsApp Groups, GoToMeeting, Skype, etc.  I have also held a couple of lectures and attended some lectures myself, participated in online seminars, webinars, and other forums discussing one thing or another, but mainly around COVID-19.

Before the lockdown, it would take me an average of one hour to navigate the Kampala Traffic to be at my workplace in Mulago and this is on a good day. Sometimes it can take up to two hours.

The situation is the same after work going home or picking a child from school. A recent Kampala City Council Authority (KCCA) report (2019) indicates that Kampala loses 24,000 man-hour every day due to Traffic Jam. Another study in 2017 (Mwanje Dan, 2017), reported a monthly loss of between 8 -23 hours, depending on where you stay.

This finding is consistent with my earlier shared experience where I lose between 1 - 2 hours daily in traffic Jam. This has a great impact on individual and institutional productivity - the amount of work or output an individual can deliver in a particular period.

There are cases where I have lined up 3 -4 agendas to work on in a day and before you settle in the office, it is time to leave and pick the kid or something like that. I have seen colleagues who stay on certain Kampala roads and their worry is traffic Jam, that if they expect to reach home by 7:00 pm, they will have to leave the office by 3:00 pm. On many occasions, one arrives home when they are worn out and cannot focus on anything.

The experience from the lockdown so far is that it is possible to optimise production and productivity by utilising technology and virtual platforms. Technology can save valuable time and inconvenience.

Technology can enable one to concentrate on a task without having to worry about traffic jams. For researchers, take advantage of technology to make the best of the lockdown - including catching up research teams, work teams, and be on tabs with deliverables. The lockdown could be an opportunity to rediscover yourself and your capacity to harness Information Communication (IT) in the face of new realities. I envisage that virtual platforms will increasingly become popular for meetings, research, teaching and other engagements.

One must, however, recognise the challenges that could constrain optimising productivity while working from home and find ways to circumvent those challenges. From my experience, one challenge is "overbooking" the day for virtual engagements.

There seems to be a perception that when one is home, they are ‘free', and so can attend to any calls. You need to decide which virtual engagements you participate in - whether webinars or group meetings.

There are days where I have attended ‘marathon' zoom calls, as many as three a day, averagely two hours a call and you can imagine! There is also this temptation of checking on almost everything on social media and engaging in unnecessary debates.  

It can be really worse when you synchronise your phone and the laptop and access WhatsApp using the laptop! Working from home requires you to stay focused, make a daily plan of what you want to achieve each day, and stay on course.

The lockdown offers us an opportunity to think digital in our work environments - whether in teaching, research, business, transport, etc., because digitization can have real benefits for the labour market.  The lockdown is here with us, let's make the best of it. Even under ‘lockdown', do not allow to be ‘knocked down'.

The writer works with SPEED & the Knowledge Management & Evidence Response Unit (KERU), Makerere University School of Public Health.