Vivek Kundra On US Government Inefficiency 306
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.'"
Re:Possibly another reason (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Possibly another reason (Score:2, Interesting)
I work in a similar environment at the moment, except, I'm a co-op student and am not sure that I can ask other people to do extra work to "do things right". Why? Because we're already working overtime just to get things done.
Though changing processes might make things more efficient in the future (and we have had large projects that are made to do just this, going on even now...) we can't seem to afford the time to fix *everything* at once. The result? We're waaaaay behind.
Is there some kind of solution to this problem that anyone has found? How can I navigate around the bureaucracy and make things better? I work for an organisation that holds about 40,000 employees with a large mash-up of aquired businesses.
My work involves working with Intranet applications (still on IE6 ;)), and currently our processes are very inconsistent. Because of this, I've decided to write better documentation and introduce policies for future co-op students to improve consistency and give them more time to focus on improving processes. Am I going about this the right way?
Re:Possibly another reason (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Healthcare (Score:2, Interesting)
Yeah, I don't want a faceless government bureaucrat to get in between me and my doctor. That's what private sector bean counting bureaucrats are for!
Unfortunately for you, the facts about socialized medicine are in. They're in from Canada, Europe, Asia, even right here in the USA with Hawaii ("This is a state where regular milk sells for $8 a gallon, gasoline costs $3.60 a gallon and the median price of a home in 2008 was $624,000 — the second-highest in the nation. Despite this, Hawaii’s health insurance premiums are nearly tied with North Dakota for the lowest in the country, and Medicare costs per beneficiary are the nation’s lowest. Hawaii residents live longer than people in the rest of the country, recent surveys have shown, and the state’s health care system may be one reason. In one example, Hawaii has the nation’s highest incidence of breast cancer but the lowest death rate from the disease. [nytimes.com]"), and the facts are that it costs less and improved access to healthcare improves the health of the population.
Meanwhile, the status quo has lead to us having the highest spending in the world [wikipedia.org], yet getting nothing for it [fivethirtyeight.com].
The current system is fundamentally broken and doesn't achieve it's social purpose. Scrap it.
Re:Nailed it. (Score:1, Interesting)
The problem is that implementing that IT costs money above and beyond what they've got right now. How to pay for it?
This becomes an especially thorny issue when you have a bunch of nutjobs with teabags glued to their heads picketing your workplace.
Re:Better reason is that Govt Jobs are a job progr (Score:1, Interesting)
I am a government worker. Foreign Service. You my friend are spot on. But I'd extend your jobs program definition to the military as well.
I am a liberal. I was very excited by Obama's election. I'll vote for him again. But, I have to say that since I started working for the Governemt I've become disillusioned. I now believe we need 50%+ cuts in ALL federal agencies. 30% isn't enough. It wouldn't go noticed. We need MASSIVE reductions. I come from the software industry (granted it was Microsoft but still) innovation is rewarded in technology. In government it is to be avoided. We really need massive cuts, so that the good people (and there are many) are forced to think on their feet and come up with better solutions.
Re:Possibly another reason (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Healthcare (Score:3, Interesting)
You, sir, have no idea what you are talking about. The parent is right. The process is anything but automated, and deliberately geared to make it difficult for vendors to process claims and receive compensation. I work in the industry and have first-hand knowledge. I see these deliberate inefficiencies heaped upon the vendors (who get the blame for rising costs) every day. You truly have no idea about what really goes on. Alas, you have lots of company at the "private insurance must be more efficient" kool-aid dispenser.
Re:Healthcare (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Possibly another reason (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Possibly another reason (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Possibly another reason (Score:3, Interesting)
Just let time take its toll on you. Young people think they can do anything, wise people know they can't. I'm still in that transitional phase.
Most of the time, it's easier to get a new smarter dog (or business), than to teach an old one new tricks. Sometimes you just have to let the big guy collapse under his own weight, then rise up with a new solution.
Re:Possibly another reason (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Failed Logic (Score:2, Interesting)
that's taking money
All that evil taking. You know it just disappears!
We don't need building inspectors to ensure our buildings don't suddenly collapse.
We don't need public safety either.
Public Schools are no damn good anyway. Just put those kids who can't afford a private education to work.
Power? Who needs regulated power providers? Check out the history of California's power supply deregulation efforts some time.
Yeah, all that evil taking is just not necessary.
Re:Failed Logic (Score:3, Interesting)
That's not the same as the government, and is probably a public benefit corporation [wikipedia.org]. There's lots of public benefit corporations out there that are fairly successful at what they do, such as the MTA in NYC, which runs the subways there.
These companies are run much like other corporations, except there's more government oversight (since the government owns them), and there's no big profit motive to please shareholders like publicly-owned corporations have. They don't have the power to levy taxes or anything like that, so they're not subject to the same abuses the regular government is.
They're actually a really good idea because they separate an essential function (like water, public transport, mail, etc.) into a separate entity where it's run like a normal business but keep it under government oversight. It's a much better model than just having some government agency run things, because then it gets much more political; this is the way they did things in the Soviet Union, for instance.
Re:Possibly another reason (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Possibly another reason (Score:3, Interesting)
I've only recently discovered him, but man...a lot of what he's talking about makes sense to me. Especially with Federal govt spending, etc...
Re:Apples and Oranges (Score:3, Interesting)
If there is a real competitor. If they are more efficient. If everything else is equal.
That's a lot of ifs, 3 is a particularly uncommon and is in fact undesirable for investors. 1 is horrible for customers if the entry barriers are high.
And even if all of the above holds true, sort term efficiency is easier to gain by underpaying and overworking employees, not reorganizing to avoid bottlenecks. Reorganization by virtue of new players without encrusted processes bankrupting older players can be hardly called efficient either...
Re:Apples and Oranges (Score:4, Interesting)
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.