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INSIDIOUS · #1 03-23-2014, 07:08 PM

Sinkhole of bureaucracy | The Washington Post

SwampYankee · #2 03-24-2014, 09:30 AM

OMFG. Unbelievable.

Admittedly, or ostensibly

, there are/must be some parts of the federal govt that are efficient and work well. This would be the poster child for those of us who see govt inefficiency as the rule rather than the exception.

Quote:

In most cases, however, Step 2 can be completed without a walk. The retiree’s files have been scanned into a digital archive and can be looked up on a computer.

But there’s a problem: All the information must go in the retiree’s manila folder.

And you can’t put a computer file in a manila folder.

“We do print them out, right now. But we won’t in the future,” said Doug Berger, who supervises this operation. The printed-out documents are put in the folder, and it continues.

Quote:

This is Step 4.

Now that all the retiree’s digital data have been turned into paperwork, these workers turn that paperwork into digital data again. They type all the pertinent information into a computer, by hand.

“You can do a case in as little as an hour,” said Bonnie McCandless, the president of the center’s local labor union, whose job is entering this data. “Or you can do a case as long as eight hours, or two days.”

The task takes so much time in part because Congress has made the federal retirement rules extremely complex. The center’s workers must verify and key in information that answers a huge range of questions: What were the retiree’s three years of highest salary? Was the retiree a firefighter? A military veteran? A cafeteria worker at the U.S. Capitol? What about part-time service?

Quote:

In the winter, employees enter the mine in the dark and leave in the dark. Food must be brought in from outside, because you can’t have an open flame in a mine. So there is a pizza guy, with a security clearance, who arrives every day at 11:30 a.m. Another vendor, Randy Armagost, trucks in hot lunches and an assortment of at least four deep-fried items every day.

“People are crabby. They’re miserable. I mean, you can’t blame them. They never see any sunlight,” Armagost said. “I’m only down there for 2 ½ hours a day, and I can’t stand it.”

JB3 · #3 03-24-2014, 10:17 AM

not a surprise. This reminds me of my 32 step process to get a certificate of occupancy and business license in Central Falls RI. Everything by hand, everything by paper, every step or piece of paper cost 75 dollars, and every step takes place in a different office or building in a city that is techincally 1 square mile total.

I think I spent a solid week of my life walking or driving 500 feet down the street to a different city office to have a form stamped, ect, then back to the first office.