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.'"

Comments

Re:Possibly another reason

[OpieTaylor]

phantomfive wrote: "we have Republicans who say, 'government is too big, we need to either cut it or cut its budget'"

You didn't put enough emphasis on the word SAY. Republicans **say** government is too big, but what they mean is: give some of that money to our interest groups (defense, fossil fuel, financial, health insurance, etc. companies). I'm not defending Democratic spending--I'm just saying at least they don't lie about it.

Look it up: spending under Republican presidents Reagan, Bush1, and Bush2 all went way up.
Reagan - 80% increase
Bush1 - 30% increase
Bush2 - 67% increase

source: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2010/assets/hist.pdf