Anyone with family or friends in the civil service hears about the hours wasted on bureaucratic wrestling with the guy who spends his energy crafting strategies to get you to do his work. My favorite came from a doctor in a prestigious department at a state hospital whose secretary threw out most of his mail, including all of the invitations, because answering it was too much work. He ended up getting his wife to come into the office and act as his unpaid secretary, because firing or replacing the secretary was way too much trouble.
I am not slamming all civil servants as lazy lackwits; these stories come from good civil servants who are endlessly frustrated by the obstructive and destructive minority. Turkeys in government are like prizes on Wheel of Fortune: Once you win one, it’s yours to keep. They can’t be fired, and they rarely quit; the best you can do is wait for a chance to transfer them somewhere else.
Because of the Universal Law of Turkey Accretion, the quality and effectiveness of a government agency’s personnel are likely to peak very shortly after that agency is established. HHS has been around for a long time, and so has its IT staff. Which means it has more than a few turkeys. Or, as David Cutler put it in a 2010 memo to Larry Summers, “The agency is demoralized, the best people have left, IT services are antiquated, and there are fewer employees than in 1981, despite a much larger burden.”
Megan McArdle, “Get Rid of Obamacare’s Turkeys”, Bloomberg.com, 2013-11-04
November 5, 2013
QotD: Accumulated bureaucratic turkeys
October 28, 2013
Mark Steyn on the Obamacare software
Mark Steyn’s weekend column touched on some items of interest to aficionados of past government software fiascos:
The witness who coughed up the intriguing tidbit about Obamacare’s exemption from privacy protections was one Cheryl Campbell of something called CGI. This rang a vague bell with me. CGI is not a creative free spirit from Jersey City with an impressive mastery of Twitter, but a Canadian corporate behemoth. Indeed, CGI is so Canadian their name is French: Conseillers en Gestion et Informatique. Their most famous government project was for the Canadian Firearms Registry. The registry was estimated to cost in total $119 million, which would be offset by $117 million in fees. That’s a net cost of $2 million. Instead, by 2004 the CBC (Canada’s PBS) was reporting costs of some $2 billion — or a thousand times more expensive.
Yeah, yeah, I know, we’ve all had bathroom remodelers like that. But in this case the database had to register some 7 million long guns belonging to some two-and-a-half to three million Canadians. That works out to almost $300 per gun — or somewhat higher than the original estimate for processing a firearm registration of $4.60. Of those $300 gun registrations, Canada’s auditor general reported to parliament that much of the information was either duplicated or wrong in respect to basic information such as names and addresses.
Sound familiar?
Also, there was a 1-800 number, but it wasn’t any use.
Sound familiar?
So it was decided that the sclerotic database needed to be improved.
Sound familiar?
But it proved impossible to “improve” CFIS (the Canadian Firearms Information System). So CGI was hired to create an entirely new CFIS II, which would operate alongside CFIS I until the old system could be scrapped. CFIS II was supposed to go operational on January 9, 2003, but the January date got postponed to June, and 2003 to 2004, and $81 million was thrown at it before a new Conservative government scrapped the fiasco in 2007. Last year, the government of Ontario canceled another CGI registry that never saw the light of day — just for one disease, diabetes, and costing a mere $46 million.
But there’s always America! “We continue to view U.S. federal government as a significant growth opportunity,” declared CGI’s chief exec, in what would also make a fine epitaph for the republic. Pizza and Mountain Dew isn’t very Montreal, and on the evidence of three years of missed deadlines in Ontario and the four-year overrun on the firearms database CGI don’t sound like they’re pulling that many all-nighters. Was the government of the United States aware that CGI had been fired by the government of Canada and the government of Ontario (and the government of New Brunswick)? Nobody’s saying. But I doubt it would make much difference.
October 9, 2013
Mismeasuring American poverty
It’s always headline-worthy to say that some absurdly high number of Americans are living in poverty — that the richest country in history still has desperately poor people in vast numbers. It’s shocking to see … and it’s mostly bogus:
We get told they do often enough I know, the latest example being this:
About 15% of Americans live in poverty, so why is no one talking about it?
It isn’t true.
In a nation where, according to the US Census Bureau’s poverty statistics released last month, 46.5 million people (roughly 15%) of the nation’s population lives in poverty,
Sorry, but their repeating it does not make it true.
The correct formulation is that 15% of Americans would be living in poverty if it were not for the things that are done to alleviate poverty.
There are two things that make this correction really rather important. The first being that everyone else measures poverty after all the things that are done to alleviate it. Thus any comparison across countries is going to leave the US looking very bad indeed: for others are talking about the residual poverty left after trying to do something about it and the US is talking about the poverty before alleviation. Very different things I hope you’ll agree.
There are reasons why this meme won’t go away (aside from it being a handy eye-catching headline to attract readers for newspapers and websites), including the fact that many civil servants are employed in federal, state, and local organizations to work on programs intended to alleviate poverty. If they are too successful, their caseload goes down and so will their budget and headcount. Any bureaucracy has a prime directive quite separate from their original reason for existing — organizations have primal motivations for surviving and growing. Their incentive is thus merely to ease the problem, not to solve it, or else they’re working to put themselves out of business.
October 6, 2013
Any GMO-labelling compromise is a win for big business and a loss for everyone else
Baylen Linnekin explains why compromise in the battle over genetically modified food ingredients is likely to be heartily supported by big business — because they can easily cover costs that their smaller competitors will not be able to afford:
Like it or not — and I’m in the not camp — a mandatory, uniform national GMO labeling scheme appears increasingly likely.
[…]
Major players on the business side, including Walmart, America’s leading grocer, and General Mills, which bills itself as “one of the world’s largest food companies,” have publicly tipped their hands that they’d support some sort of mandatory labeling.
As I noted this summer, Walmart held a meeting with FDA officials and others from the food industry earlier this year where, it was alleged, the grocer and other food sellers that have opposed state labeling requirements would push for the federal government to adopt a national GMO labeling standard.
And just last week, Ken Powell, the CEO of General Mills, announced at the company’s annual stockholders’ meeting that the company “strongly support[s] a national, federal labeling solution.”
Powell’s comments are a game changer.
But do they mean that anti-GMO activists and food companies are on the same page? Not by a longshot. Powell made clear in his remarks that the company supports “a national standard that would label foods that don’t have genetically engineered ingredients in them, rather than foods that do.” (emphasis mine)
I suspect that anti-GMO activists would hate that solution because it wouldn’t provide the “information” they want and because all of the significant testing and labeling costs of the mandatory scheme Powell suggests — along with any liability for not testing GMO-free foods or for mislabeling — would be borne by the GMO-free farmers and food producers they frequent (and by their customers, in the form of higher prices).
October 4, 2013
October 1, 2013
No mistakes were made, no problems uncovered, but 19 firefighters died
The official report on the Yarnell Hill fire which claimed the lives of 19 firefighters has managed to find no issues whatsoever with the incident. Apparently no mistakes were made by any of the firefighters or their leadership, and there are no lessons to be learned from this tragedy.
Nothing went wrong in the Yarnell Hill Fire, which killed 19 wildland firefighters in June.
This according to the “Serious Accident Investigation Report” into the fire, released this weekend by federal, state, and local firefighting officials in Prescott.
“The Team found no indication of negligence, reckless actions, or violations of policy or protocol,” the report states.
It certainly seems that something must have gone wrong when 19 men, most of them young men, are dead.
In fact, certain fire officials who now say everything went according to protocol had been among those assessing blame and pointing out mistakes leading up to the deaths of the Granite Mountain Hotshots.
Arizona Deputy State Forester Jerry Payne previously said it looked like Eric Marsh, superintendent of the hotshot crew, had violated basic wildfire-safety rules, although Payne added that many decisions made by those leading wildfire-fighting crews are calculated risks, rather than strictly rule-book decisions.
Prescott Wildland Division Chief Darrell Willis suggested in an interview with ABC News that the crew “could have made it” had the U.S. Forest Service delivered all the air-tankers that were requested for the Yarnell Hill Fire.
Neither of these findings was included in the report, despite Payne and Willis’ prescence among fire officials presenting investigators’ conclusions at Prescott High School on Saturday.
Not everyone is convinced, however:
Here is my analysis of what is going on with this report: Substantial mistakes were made by both the fire team and by their leaders. Their leaders wrote the report, and certainly were not going to incriminate themselves, particularly given that they likely face years of litigation. They could have perhaps outlined the mistakes the team made, but the families and supporters of the dead men would have raised a howl if the dead firefighters were blamed for mistakes while the leadership let themselves off the hook, and surely would have pushed back on the culpability of the firefighting effort’s management.
So this report represents an implicit deal being offered to the families — we will let your dead rest in peace by not highlighting the mistakes they made if you will lay off of us and the mistakes we made. We will just blame it on God (I kid you not, see Prescott chief’s statements here). Most Arizonans I know seem willing to have these folks die as heroes who succumbed to the inherent risks of the profession, rather than stupid errors, so we may never have an honest assessment of what happened. And yet again the opportunity to do a major housecleaning of wildland firefighting is missed.
September 30, 2013
September 28, 2013
QotD: Sir Humphrey Appleby on discrediting an expert report
Sir Humphrey: There is a well established Government procedure for suppress… deciding not to publish reports.
Jim Hacker: Really?
Sir Humphrey: You simply discredit them.
Jim Hacker: Good heavens… how?
Sir Humphrey: Stage one, you give your reasons in terms of the public interest. You hint at security considerations — the report could be used to put pressure on government and could be misinterpreted.
Jim Hacker: Anything could be misinterpreted. The Sermon on the Mount could be misinterpreted!
Sir Humphrey: Indeed — it could be argued that the Sermon on the Mount, had it been a government report, would almost certainly not have been published. A most irresponsible document. All that stuff about the meek inheriting the earth could do irreparable damage to the defence budget.
Sir Humphrey: In stage two you go on to discredit the information you’re not publishing.
Jim Hacker: How, if you’re not publishing it?
Sir Humphrey: It’s much easier if it’s not published. You do it by press leaks. Say it leaves some important questions unanswered, that much of the evidence is inconclusive, that the figures are open to other interpretations, that certain findings are contradictory and that some of the main conclusions have been questioned.
Jim Hacker: Suppose they haven’t?
Sir Humphrey: Then question them. Then they have.
Jim Hacker: But to make accusations like that you’d have to go through it with a fine-toothed comb.
Sir Humphrey: Nonsense — you can say all that without reading it. There are always some questions unanswered.
Jim Hacker: Such as?
Sir Humphrey: The ones that weren’t asked.Antony Jay and Jonathan Lynn, “The Greasy Pole”, Yes, Minister, 1981-03-16
September 24, 2013
A new “Laundry” story by Charles Stross
Charles Stross writes many things, but what first alerted me to his writing was The Atrocity Archives. TOR.com has a new story called “Equoid” online for your reading pleasure:
Charles Stross’s “Equoid” is a new story in his ongoing “Laundry” series of Lovecraftian secret-agent bureaucratic dark comedies, which has now grown to encompass four novels and several works of short fiction. “The Laundry” is the code name for the secret British governmental agency whose remit is to guard the realm from occult threats from beyond spacetime. Entailing mastery of grimoires and also of various computer operating systems, the work is often nose-bleedingly tedious. As the front-cover copy line for Ace’s edition of The Atrocity Archives noted, “Saving the world is Bob Howard’s job. There are a surprising number of meetings involved.” Previous “Laundry” stories on Tor.com are “Down on the Farm” and the Hugo Award finalist “Overtime.”
Like some other stories published on Tor.com, “Equoid” contains scenes and situations some readers will find upsetting and/or repellent. [—The Editors]
This novella was acquired and edited for Tor.com by senior editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden.
The horrors of Greek Austerity strike!
Those poor Greek civil servants … this is so hard on them:
In a sign of just how hard the austere financial climate is hitting, it has been reported that the Greek government has been forced to put an end to one of its civil servants’ most treasured privileges. We speak, of course, of the Hellenic Sir Humphreys’ entitlement to an extra six days a year paid holiday if they are compelled to work with that frightful engine of misery, the computer.
Reuters reports that the long-standing regulation, in which all Greek government workers compelled to use a computer for more than 5 hours a day get an extra day’s leave every two months, was axed in an official announcement on Friday.
September 21, 2013
Big government – “smart guys rob taxpayers because that’s where the big money is”
Mark Steyn on the quick route to banana republic status:
As the old saying goes, bank robbers rob banks because that’s where the money is. But the smart guys rob taxpayers because that’s where the big money is. According to the Census Bureau’s latest “American Community Survey,” from 2000-12, the nation’s median household income dropped 6.6 percent. Yet, in the District of Columbia median household income rose 23.3 percent. According to a 2010 survey, seven of the nation’s 10 wealthiest counties are in the Washington commuter belt. Many capital cities have prosperous suburbs — London, Paris, Rome — because those cities are also the capitals of enterprise, finance, and showbiz. But Washington does nothing but government, and it gets richer even as Americans get poorer. That’s very banana republic, too: Proximity to state power is now the best way to make money. Once upon a time, Americans found fast-running brooks and there built mills to access the water that kept the wheels turning. But today the ambitious man finds a big money-no-object bureaucracy that likes to splash the cash around and there builds his lobbying group or consultancy or social media optimization strategy group.
The CEO of Panera Bread, as some kind of do-gooder awareness-raising shtick, is currently attempting to live on food stamps, and not finding it easy. But being dependent on government handouts isn’t supposed to be easy. Instead of trying life at the bottom, why doesn’t he try life in the middle? In 2012, the top 10 percent were taking home 50.4 percent of the nation’s income. That’s an all-time record, beating out the 49 percent they were taking just before the 1929 market crash. With government redistributing more money than ever before, we’ve mysteriously wound up with greater income inequality than ever before. Across the country, “middle-class” Americans have accumulated a trillion dollars in college debt in order to live a less-comfortable life than their high school-educated parents and grandparents did in the Fifties and Sixties. That’s banana republic, too: no middle class, but only a government elite and its cronies, and a big dysfunctional mass underneath, with very little social mobility between the two.
Like to change that? Maybe advocate for less government spending? Hey, Lois Lerner’s IRS has got an audit with your name on it. The tax collectors of the United States treat you differently according to your political beliefs. That’s pure banana republic, but no one seems to mind very much. This week it emerged that senior Treasury officials, up to and including Turbotax Timmy Geithner, knew what was going on at least as early as spring 2012. But no one seems to mind very much. In the words of an insouciant headline writer at Government Executive, “the magazine for senior federal bureaucrats” (seriously), back in May:
“The Vast Majority of IRS Employees Aren’t Corrupt”
So, if the vast majority aren’t, what proportion is corrupt? Thirty-eight percent? Thirty-three? Twenty-seven? And that’s the good news? The IRS is not only institutionally corrupt; it’s corrupt in the service of one political party. That’s Banana Republic 101.
Justin Amash on congressional classified briefings
In The Atlantic, Garance Franke-Ruta has transcribed some of Representative Justin Amash’s comments on the ins-and-outs of confidential briefings offered to congressmen:
Amash, who has previously butted heads with Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers and ranking member Dutch Ruppersberger over access to classified documents, recounted what happened during remarks before libertarian activists attending the Liberty Political Action Conference in Chantilly, Virginia, Thursday night. I quote his anecdote in full here, because it’s interesting to hear what it feels like to be one of the activist congressmen trying to rein in National Security Agency surveillance:
What you hear from the intelligence committees, from the chairmen of the intelligence committees, is that members can come to classified briefings and they can ask whatever questions they want. But if you’ve actually been to one of these classified briefings — which none of you have, but I have — what you discover is that it’s just a game of 20 questions.
You ask a question and if you don’t ask it exactly the right way you don’t get the right answer. So if you use the wrong pronoun, or if you talk about one agency but actually another agency is doing it, they won’t tell you. They’ll just tell you, no that’s not happening. They don’t correct you and say here’s what is happening.
So you actually have to go from meeting to meeting, to hearing to hearing, asking asking questions — sometimes ridiculous questions — just to get an answer. So this idea that you can just ask, just come into a classified briefing and ask questions and get answers is ridiculous.
If the government — in an extreme hypothetical, let’s say they had a base on the moon. If I don’t know that there’s a base on the moon, I’m not going to go into the briefing and say you have a moonbase. Right? [Audience laughs.] If they have a talking bear or something, I’m not going to say, ‘You guys, you didn’t engineer the talking bear.’
You’re not going to ask questions about things you don’t know about. The point of the Intelligence Committee is to provide oversight to Congress and every single member of Congress needs information. Each person in Congress represents about 700,000 people. It’s not acceptable to say, ‘Well, the Intelligence Committees get the information, we don’t need to share with the rest of Congress.’ The Intelligence Committee is not one of the branches of government, but that’s how it’s being treated over and over again.
September 18, 2013
Reason.tv: Detroit’s Operation Compliance
“Someone breaks in, they never show up. Yet still, they want to come and blackball you and close your business,” says Derek Little, owner of an auto shop along Detroit’s Livernois Avenue.
He’s one of many business owners in Detroit who’s faced what he says amounts to harassment from the city’s overzealous code enforcement. Amidst a bankruptcy and a fast-dwindling population and tax base, the city has prioritized the task of ensuring that all businesses are in compliance with its codes and permitting. To accomplish this, Mayor David Bing announced in January that he’d assembled a task force to execute Operation Compliance.
Operation Compliance began with the stated goal of shutting down 20 businesses a week. Since its inception, Operation Compliance has resulted in the closure of 383 small businesses, with another 536 in the “process of compliance,” according to figures provided to Reason TV by city officials.
But business owners say that Operation Compliance unfairly targets small, struggling businesses in poor areas of town and that the city’s maze of regulations is nearly impossible to navigate, with permit fees that are excessive and damaging to businesses running on thin profit margins.
September 11, 2013
What do libraries have to do with rent seeking?
As Logan Albright explains, quite a lot:
Libraries are wonderful places. There is nothing like a vast repository of knowledge, filled with undiscovered treasures for anyone who cares to look. They provide free access to information, both in book form and over the internet, to people would otherwise not be able to afford it. All in all, it’s a lovely service. But as much as I enjoy them, libraries also provide a useful example of the inefficiencies of the public sector and the numerous problems with government funded programs.
You may not realize it, but most librarian jobs these days require a specialized education – a master’s degree in the field of Library Science. The curriculum of such a degree varies from school to school, but the main focus is on using a variety of complex databases, as well as interacting with the public. Why is such a specialized form of education required to work in a library? It’s not like a degree in aeronautics or medicine where actual lives could depend on your competence. A quick search for the job duties of a reference librarian turns up the following: “A reference librarian provides assistance to users of a library who need help locating resources and information.” The average salary for a reference librarian? $39,659 – $55,008. Other library science related jobs can make as much as $100,000 a year.
Of course, it’s not as simple as all that. Locating information in a library database is not like searching Google. It requires specialized skills. You can’t simply type in what you want and expect to get it. The obvious question here is: why not?
The simple answer is that the public funding structure of libraries provides no incentive to improve things. In fact, it encourages just the opposite. Since the library’s budget does not depend on how many customers it pleases, there is no compelling reason to make things easier. Since a library’s revenues come from the public coffers and not from the pockets of voluntary patrons, there is no competitive pressure to keep costs low.
