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Vivek Kundra On US Government Inefficiency
parkland writes "Federal CIO Vivek Kundra described some dismaying government inefficiencies in a speech on Thursday at the University of Washington's Evans School of Public Affairs in Seattle. It takes 160 days to process benefits for veterans, he said, 'because the Veteran's Administration is processing paperwork by passing manila folders from one desk to another.' Another example bound to make you grind your teeth is why it takes the Patent and Trademark Office 3 years to process a patent. 'One reason,' says Kundra, 'is because the USPTO receives these applications online, prints them out, and then someone manually rekeys the information into an antiquated system.'"
What's the use of all the private-insurer "efficiency" if they prefer to use it to screw you over for one more dollar?
And I say "efficiency" because health insurance companies in US already have one of the highest overhead costs in the world, so you can hardly called it efficient.
In a normal company, if you're inefficient, you make less money.
You could not be more wrong. In most large companies, what passes for efficiency is neither faster nor cheaper. Success is based mostly on being the loudest with the deepest pockets.
In small companies, it is merely the persuasive abilities of the customer facing people and the rare pragmatic customer.
Seriously, it it time for this doublethink to die.
The government never makes money
Yes, they do. Fees? Penalties? Taxes? It's time for the "Government is the root of all inefficiency" to die.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
The Patent Office does not do that and hasn't for years, except of course for papers that are mailed or faxed in. The Patent Office's Electronic Filing System is an end-to-end electronic system for the most part.
Now, the EFS system does convert searchable PDFs to bitmap PDFs, which causes them to lose their searchability and greatly increases the file size, which is still incredibly backwards, but not quite as bad as printing things out and scanning them back in.
You would think the entity in charge of keeping things running would want them done quickly and accurate.
Large organizations don't have collective will. They consist of huge numbers of people, each with their own agenda. And it doesn't help when the organization reports to elected officials who need to bring home the pork in order to stay in office.
Bad as the current federal bureaucracy is, it actually used to be much worse. Before civil service rules (the same ones that make it so hard to fire people), government jobs were filled by "patronage" meaning that the politicos used them to reward their supporters. Up until the 60s, the chairman of the party that held the White House was always the Postmaster General, the Post Office being the single biggest source of patronage in the U.S. government. The PO was finally so badly run that they reconstituted it as the semi-autonomous Postal Service.
Yes, let's.
Medicare overhead - ~5.2%-8% (depending on whose numbers you use)
Private insurers' overhead - ~16%-35% (depending on whose numbers you use)
So keep your government hands off my Medicare...
Oh. Wait...
It's a perfect example of untrue but widely believed anti-union propaganda. This cop's union didn't help him, nor should it have. If your're caught stealing office supplies, your union won't help you. If you're reprimanded or fired for smoking in a no-smoking area, your union won't help you. If you're a "no call no show" your union won't help you. If you show up for work drunk your union won't help you. If your boss trumps up some bullshit charge because he just doesn't like you, then your union WILL help you.
This is an example of an untrue statement being widely believed simply because it's been parroted so many times. If you work for a paycheck, you're probably better off with a union.
Free Martian Whores!
That's exactly true. People in the U.S. dislike unions because they've been brainwashed into believing statements like "Unions protect the employees against any kind of common sense options".