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CIVIL SERVANTS IN the early 1980s were plagued by the introduction of a new technology which they feared was increasing their workload and slowing down productivity: the word processor.
In 1980 the Department of the Taoiseach agreed to lease word-processing equipment at a cost of £8,000 per annum, or over €36,000 a year in today’s money.
However the introduction of the new equipment was not welcomed with open arms by all civil servants.
Workloads and delays increased as there were not enough people trained in the new equipment to use it effectively.
Simultaneously, there was only a limited amount of time for workers to spend learning how the new system worked, while also balancing the rest of their work that needed to be completed. There were also complaints that printing took far too long to do.
The documents were made public by the National Archives this month under the 30-year rule.
According to one employee of the Department of the Taoiseach the new word processor forced her to work through lunch breaks and stay late.
“I find myself having to work through most of my lunch hours and late in the evening in order to alleviate some of the pressures caused by the installation of the Word-Processor”
“At the moment I think the Word-Processor is creating more work than it is alleviating, but maybe with time and patience the position will improve.”
Even though workloads were increasing in the departments over the following years the the department heads were determined to continue to introducing these workstations.
It is easy to take for granted how routine this all is today but back then it was brand new territory for office workers.
So in order to help employees get to grips with the software user manuals were introduced that walk people through basic concepts that is not given a second thought today.
One of the manuals was entitled ‘An Introduction to Word Processing’ which contained detailed descriptions of technology which seems run-of-the-mill by today’s standards.
In the manual, a keyboard was described in this way: “Input keyboards are usually designed after the fashion of the ordinary typewriter and are operated the same way. As each individual key is depressed, the character to which it relates is retained in the machine’s storage medium.”
One of the more surprising elements of this quaint instruction manual was just how prophetic it was when it came to predicting where computing might go.
In the section entitled ‘Future Developments in Word Processing’ it suggests a likely move towards ‘electronic communication between word processors” which it goes onto say “could be used as direct alternative to sending mail through the post”.
It also suggest that speech recognition could be a future development as well as paper filing systems and printed paper being replaced by other storage means.
However it did get one thing wrong: we are still using the QWERTY keyboard.
“The predominant trends outlined above will require equipment capable of greater input and output speeds. Therefore, it is possible that alternatives to the conventional QWERTY keyboard will be further explored and brought into use
See National Archive file 2016/51/1454
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Ah it’ll never catch on.
New technology into the civil service!…ching ching.
Probably still paying €36,000 a year lease on the equipment, And they will start using it after the 1980s tender is agreed.
And they still complain and look for more money any time they make them use new technology or do anything to speed up the actual process
That keyboard you use every day. It was me. I am the inventor.
The QWERTY keyboard was introduced to slow typists (good typists!) down. With the original alphabetical version, the keys kept getting jammed. Bring in computers and everyone is so used to QWERTY (or in Europe AZERTY) that changing it now would cause total chaos
That makes no sense. If the alphabetical typewriter was slowing everything down by jamming then surely the qwerty keyboard increased the amount of documents by not jamming. You even mentioned this fact.
The qwerty keyboard was brought in because with an alphabetic keyboard there was an over reliance on one hand, so they randomised the key orientation.
The qwerty keyboard separates letters that are used more often together thus reducing jams in the original typewriter
Typical. Bring in the technology first and then train people to use it. The other way around and we wouldn’t be reading this article.
The government brought in water charges in the last few years too and neither civil servants or the rest of us were too happy. It’s their job to piss people off every few years
Indeed dessie, there’ll be an article in 30 years time about water charges… and people will wonder why there was such a fuss.
@Malvolio32: And why other countries followed the Irish lead. Imagine wasting billions on metering.
This article has events slightly out of order… email wasn’t “the future” in the 1986… email was invented (CTS mail, unix mail, ARPNET) in the 60′s and already in usage in the 70′s.
And then Windows 95 came along and everyone got to do their own typing. Well maybe not everyone…
Productivity and civil service in the same sentence.
Is it the 1st of April already.
Lame
SMALL STORY JOURNALISTS NOT TOO HAPPY AFTER BEING REPLACED WITH AI GOOGLE ANDROID APP
@Donal Proctor: You ok, Hun?
Marvelous! You?
Bid deal in the then Dept of Public Service in 1976 over the purchase of IBM Golf Ball typewriters for Embassy Staff. It had to be approved by the Assistant Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs . No sign of computers bin those days as all calculations were carried out by adding machines which could not carry out division or multiplication calculations.
How things have changed!
@Irish big fellow: In other Depts. at that time purchase of golfball typewriters which were a typists dream required sanction from the Dept. of Finance
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