Biometrics and Us

It is an excellent idea to use a biometric system to keep tract of the arrival and departure times of employees, though their presence does not necessarily guarantee work output. But the chances are that a person forced to be present for the whole working day will do some work. It is quite possible some people will mark their arrival, go away, and come back at closing time to mark their departure. It is a bit inconvenient, but definitely effective for lazy bums who are not very accountable or when the disciplining authority is malleable. The biometrics cards were prepared. But the implementation was not even initiated because the middlemen did not want it implemented. Free minds do not like restrictions and compulsions like arrival at prescribed time and departure not before prescribed time. But some biggie at main office put his or her foot down, and the cards were distributed to the employees. It seems a large number of employees were shown to be in the department of Cardiology, while they belonged to a lot of other departments. Probably the person preparing the cards had a malady of the heart and wanted as many cardiologists around as possible. One of our employees had her first name OK, the middle name that of her husband, and the surname of her single days. Such a combination is being reported for the first time in the world literature. After receiving the cards, the employees tried them on the first available machine, which happened to be right outside the office of the chief. It was malfunctioning. No one had broken it intentionally, because a security officer is posted right there. His job is to guard the chief, but protection of the machine is a beneficial side effect of his duty at that station. So they tried other machines – it seems there are 30 such machines scattered all over the institute. The machines require the employee to show the card first, and then place his or her right index finger on a glass window when a red light flashes in it. It wouldn't work for one person, but it worked when she placed her thumb there. The machine has no method of distinguishing between arrival and departure. It will probably make a good guess based on the expected time of arrival and departure for a given employee. I had been religiously marking my arrival on a particular machine near the entrance, until a security officer noticed me doing that and told me the data cable of that machine had been stolen soon after its installation. So my attendance was not reaching the server. I changed over to another machine. The I went to see the engineer who installed the systems. He allayed my fear of my arrival time being marked as 4 P.M. and either not departing at all or departing at the same time as of arrival. He assured me that the system still did not have data on expected times of arrival and departure of all employees, which varied from department to department. The instructions from the main office were to install the machines and that had been done. It seemed the biggie at main office wanted clerks from different departments to go to a machine each and put in their pen drives to get data of attendance. When the engineer pointed out that a given employee could access any of the thirty machines randomly, and a clerk from a given department could not get data of employees of that department on a single machine. His statement was rubbished. But after discussion between the biggies, it was found to be correct. So the machines were connected by cables. The heritage building architect prohibited the engineers from fixing the cables in the heritage walls. So the cables are left hanging loose. Each machine has a time of its own like each person has a mind of its own. So people favor machines showing earlier time to mark arrivals, and machines with later time to mark their departures. People make a queue in front of the machines at departure time, so that they can flash their cards at the exact moment their duty ends. For that they leave their department well in advance. Some machines are near the ultrasonography department, where the patients' relatives and their children amuse themselves by punching the keys on the keyboards of the machines while they wait for the scan. That is expected to make the machines conk off earlier. It is not known what is to be done if anyone has an injury on the index finger and has a bandage there. The machines won't read bandaged finger prints. It is also not known what to do about people who work for 24 hours and continue working the next day. If they don't record their departure at departure time on the 24 hour duty day, they will be presumed to have run away before time. If they record departure, they cannot be working in the institute and cannot be medicolegally liable for any clams of negligence in patient management. The department heads and dean will probably have to keep sending corrected effective reports by manual method when the people have been present and working, but have been unable to mark their attendance due to various reasons. Most people in the know are predicting the machines will be killed by people so that the system dies. Since the machines are unguarded, this should not be difficult, they say.