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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.'"
So, does that explain the rampant inefficiencies in Corporate America? The bigger *any* organization gets, the less efficient it becomes. There's a secretary sitting at a desk at Bank of America who knows how to cut her workload by 25%, but it'll never happen because her douchebag manager is out playing golf or banging the copy girl, etc. Such is life.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
You must not work in a company. Companies do the least they can do to get by, just like a lot of other places private or public. The fact that the government is forced to be transparent, to some degree, is at least a step in the right direction.
On the flip side, you'll almost never get fired for doing your work slow as long as you get it right and don't piss anyone off. Getting promoted for doing it quickly and correctly yes, but if you have no ambition, slow and never getting fired works great for lots of people just hanging around waiting for their (years worked=sweet gov't pension) to pay off.
moox. for a new generation.
I don't know what kind of insurance you have, but I think you need to look for a different provider.
None, because no one will sell it to me in the states.
I have what is probably pretty run-of-the-mill Blue Cross, and I've been through a couple of surgeries, my wife has been through a couple, and we both have prescriptions, as well as two kids that occasionally get hurt and need emergency room visits, etc. And in all those years, I've filled out very little paperwork.
Yeah, I used to have Blue Cross of Maryland, supposedly one of the best in the country because of stricter laws there. Then I experienced long term illness that wasn't one of the common problems, you know the couple dozen illnesses that make up 90% of cases. That's when the paperwork became insane. I wrote just my name address, phone number, and social security number on a sheet of paper almost every day for no reason whatsoever other than they needed me to write it for the twentieth time. That's annoying when you're well. When you're in and out of consciousness and vomiting all the time it's inhumane.
. The only thing I pay for up front is a co-pay for visits, surgeries, and drugs.
Yeah, thats fine until they start wanting multiple doctors to sign off on procedures and start denying procedures for no real reason. I ended up tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket for procedures it was too difficult to get them to pay for.
Just hope you never get sick to the point where the cost of your care starts to go above the profit them made from your premiums... you know what insurance is supposed to be for.
It's not just limited to government, either. You just adequately described my current employer - well, at least one of the acquisitions the company has made over over the years. This part of the business in question has been doing things the same way for 15 years, and has gobs and gobs of processes and gotchas and business logic wrapped into a tangled mess of manual and convoluted automatic processes. Trying to change *anything* to make it uniform with the rest of the company and more efficient gets major pushback.
I'd say bottom line is that NO organization that has been around for a large period of time can adapt. Everything and everyone will get stuck in their ways to the point where they can't manage and will get beat out by a smaller more nimble competitor. It's easy to see in the private sector, but I'm not really sure what the equivalent in terms of government will be.
I have an old friend who works for the post office (he repairs mail boxes), and your list is valid except for item 3. Mike's union is all for the government giving its members more training, as long as they're getting paid for the training. And they can't be "outright let go" without cause; layoffs must be by seniority.
He gets paid a lot better than me, I wish I had HIS union! Of course, his job is physical and not much fun, while I screw around with computers all day, so it evens itself out I guess. Money isn't everything.
Free Martian Whores!
I'm sure you're aware that WalMart makes extensive use of Communist China's slave labour pool. And a lot of that "efficiency" they force on their other suppliers results in off-loading infrastructure costs onto the taxpayer. And let's not forget their practice of keeping employees perpetually under the magic "full-time" level, where they'd get benefits. The cost of those benefits winds up being paid by taxpayers. That's particularly true in the US, where WalMart employees are famous for their reliance on emergency rooms and state health care programs.
I wonder if you were aware when you chose Wally World as your poster boy that you picked a company that more than almost any other has enriched itself by a particularly pernicious variety of corporate welfare, and an unbreakable liplock on the public teat.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.