Looking for examples of comically inefficient local gov't processes
June 16, 2022 3:35 PM Subscribe
I need funny stories of byzantine, outdated, and inefficient processes in local governments that could be handled much more effectively with basic web technology.
I working on a writing project in which we'll poke gentle fun at some of the comically outdated and inefficient ways local governments operate. No shade to the good people working hard to get these jobs done on slashed budgets; we'll actually be trying to help them with new technology that makes their lives easier.
But in the meantime, I need stories for what actually goes down in these offices. Things like everybody handing in their budget numbers on print-outs, which somebody else then enters into Excel line by line. Or hand-delivering giant three-ring binders filled with this year's budget to all the stakeholders, wheeling it on a cart to various offices (instead of having it online, for example). Or maybe there's one person responsible for a certain process, and nothing can happen until it gets through that person, but that person is very idiosyncratic, etc. The more byzantine, the better.
I'm especially interested in stories about budgeting, procurement, and citizen services, but I'll take anything you have. Thanks!
I working on a writing project in which we'll poke gentle fun at some of the comically outdated and inefficient ways local governments operate. No shade to the good people working hard to get these jobs done on slashed budgets; we'll actually be trying to help them with new technology that makes their lives easier.
But in the meantime, I need stories for what actually goes down in these offices. Things like everybody handing in their budget numbers on print-outs, which somebody else then enters into Excel line by line. Or hand-delivering giant three-ring binders filled with this year's budget to all the stakeholders, wheeling it on a cart to various offices (instead of having it online, for example). Or maybe there's one person responsible for a certain process, and nothing can happen until it gets through that person, but that person is very idiosyncratic, etc. The more byzantine, the better.
I'm especially interested in stories about budgeting, procurement, and citizen services, but I'll take anything you have. Thanks!
In my experience (7 years in municipal government), there are three broad sources of government inefficiency:
1. The exact same sorts of inefficiency that any similarly large (and somewhat conservative) organization would/could have; for instance an inflexible IT department that is great at supporting their 500 clients that just need Office and Outlook, quite good at supporting their 1000 clients that need O+O and one other enterprise package like ArcGIS or PeopleSoft, and not good at supporting the dozen unusual clients that need a bunch of specialized software. For example see this recent Ask; is it from a government? who knows.
2. A lot of bureaucracy brought on by rules implemented because of a general public perception that local governments have byzantine, outdated and inefficient processes as well as comically outdated and inefficient ways and thus need extra rules to protect the public dollar; a simple expense claim that needed far more documentation than a similar claim from a private sector worker would. This also includes outsourcing internal jobs to contractors, taking the same work that was done internally and adding in both a profit margin and contracting/supervising work.
3. Bullshit systems and overhead created by consultants trying to add new technology to make their lives easier without even knowing what actually goes down in these offices.
To be fair, 1 and 2 greatly outweigh 3.
posted by Superilla at 4:45 PM on June 16, 2022 [11 favorites]
1. The exact same sorts of inefficiency that any similarly large (and somewhat conservative) organization would/could have; for instance an inflexible IT department that is great at supporting their 500 clients that just need Office and Outlook, quite good at supporting their 1000 clients that need O+O and one other enterprise package like ArcGIS or PeopleSoft, and not good at supporting the dozen unusual clients that need a bunch of specialized software. For example see this recent Ask; is it from a government? who knows.
2. A lot of bureaucracy brought on by rules implemented because of a general public perception that local governments have byzantine, outdated and inefficient processes as well as comically outdated and inefficient ways and thus need extra rules to protect the public dollar; a simple expense claim that needed far more documentation than a similar claim from a private sector worker would. This also includes outsourcing internal jobs to contractors, taking the same work that was done internally and adding in both a profit margin and contracting/supervising work.
3. Bullshit systems and overhead created by consultants trying to add new technology to make their lives easier without even knowing what actually goes down in these offices.
To be fair, 1 and 2 greatly outweigh 3.
posted by Superilla at 4:45 PM on June 16, 2022 [11 favorites]
well, if you're looking for a project, don't fool yourself on an easy sell.
- funding is year-over-year; maintenance and security updates are hardly ever approached.
- the people writing the reqs and doing vendor selection know jack shit about how the people doing the job do the job.
- entrenched processes. adoption is hard.
posted by j_curiouser at 6:03 PM on June 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
- funding is year-over-year; maintenance and security updates are hardly ever approached.
- the people writing the reqs and doing vendor selection know jack shit about how the people doing the job do the job.
- entrenched processes. adoption is hard.
posted by j_curiouser at 6:03 PM on June 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
Does court count?
We want to make an application. Everyone picks random date. Everyone shows up. Pick time estimate (people lie). Self represented family litigants in years long vindictive court battle say 10 minutes and mean 3.5 hours. Go from shortest to longest time estimate. You MUST sit there in person (now on the PHONE, not video) and listen the WHOLE TIME in case they find a judge suddenly. You do this for multiple days in the hope they'll hear you. Bill client $500/hour for sitting.
Alternative (if over two hours), everyone calls on second Tuesday of the month at exactly 8:30AM to book two months later. Whole office attempts calls. Call over 100 times in hope that get answer. Like concert tickets in 1985. Much of the time they're out of tickets (court time) by the time you get in.
Then you get to their date and no judge. Start over.
posted by lookoutbelow at 7:04 PM on June 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
We want to make an application. Everyone picks random date. Everyone shows up. Pick time estimate (people lie). Self represented family litigants in years long vindictive court battle say 10 minutes and mean 3.5 hours. Go from shortest to longest time estimate. You MUST sit there in person (now on the PHONE, not video) and listen the WHOLE TIME in case they find a judge suddenly. You do this for multiple days in the hope they'll hear you. Bill client $500/hour for sitting.
Alternative (if over two hours), everyone calls on second Tuesday of the month at exactly 8:30AM to book two months later. Whole office attempts calls. Call over 100 times in hope that get answer. Like concert tickets in 1985. Much of the time they're out of tickets (court time) by the time you get in.
Then you get to their date and no judge. Start over.
posted by lookoutbelow at 7:04 PM on June 16, 2022 [2 favorites]
Conference selection by hand. My team (1 person who struggles to delegate, and me) are dealing with this right now. State-level government.
A two day long conference with 3 sessions each day for 50 people (ranked choice for selection of session topic) is tabulated by hand.
Print the form, write a number in the corner for the order in which it was received, go through and fill in each person's session choice (with friend requests/buddy requests) . Congratulations! This takes 3 hours. Still gotta fill those next 5 sessions!
They make software for this. Which we aren't allowed to purchase. I might be posting an Ask about good, free, web-based options because this is mind-boggling.
posted by Guess What at 7:15 PM on June 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
A two day long conference with 3 sessions each day for 50 people (ranked choice for selection of session topic) is tabulated by hand.
Print the form, write a number in the corner for the order in which it was received, go through and fill in each person's session choice (with friend requests/buddy requests) . Congratulations! This takes 3 hours. Still gotta fill those next 5 sessions!
They make software for this. Which we aren't allowed to purchase. I might be posting an Ask about good, free, web-based options because this is mind-boggling.
posted by Guess What at 7:15 PM on June 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
I had to physically bring in my college diploma when I was briefly employed directly by a city government, to verify my credentials. Then my hiring paperwork sat on someone’s desk, so I ended up with an unpaid “vacation day.” I had already been doing the job, but my funding source was changing from an externally managed grant to an internally managed grant so I got to navigate the city bureaucracy, or rather my manager did (who felt terrible about the “vacation day” but couldn’t do much to physically move the right paper in front of the right person.
posted by MadamM at 7:22 PM on June 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by MadamM at 7:22 PM on June 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
I know someone who works as a researcher in a state university science lab. Lab notebooks are required to be written in a specific type of paper notebook. My friend uses software to compile the notes then prints them out on adhesive page sized stickers and pastes them into the notebook.
I work in technology. My company still does not have a way for employees to enter their own time sheets. We send vacation/sick/jury duty to the dept Admin for her to enter it. Rumor has it that the groups which are unionized have much more complex time entry rules and that bogged down the design process. Who knows.
posted by CathyG at 8:04 PM on June 16, 2022
I work in technology. My company still does not have a way for employees to enter their own time sheets. We send vacation/sick/jury duty to the dept Admin for her to enter it. Rumor has it that the groups which are unionized have much more complex time entry rules and that bogged down the design process. Who knows.
posted by CathyG at 8:04 PM on June 16, 2022
The ATF's process for tracing the purchasers of guns found at crime scenes (thetrace.org):
"To perform a search, ATF investigators must find the specific index number of a former dealer, then search records chronologically for records of the exact gun they seek. They may review thousands of images in a search before they find the weapon they are looking for. That’s because dealer records are required to be “non-searchable” under federal law. Keyword searches, or sorting by date or any other field, are strictly prohibited."
posted by What is E. T. short for? at 9:32 PM on June 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
"To perform a search, ATF investigators must find the specific index number of a former dealer, then search records chronologically for records of the exact gun they seek. They may review thousands of images in a search before they find the weapon they are looking for. That’s because dealer records are required to be “non-searchable” under federal law. Keyword searches, or sorting by date or any other field, are strictly prohibited."
posted by What is E. T. short for? at 9:32 PM on June 16, 2022 [1 favorite]
I was waiting in the town building permits office trying to get a permit to install a sink in my house (long story), eavesdropping on other conversations. This is a multi-hour process where you get a numerical ticket and then sit for hours waiting for your turn hoping you have brought exactly all of the information they need so you don't have to come back. It turns out the guy next to me was from the city planning office, and even city employees doing city work had to take a ticket and wait in line to get a city permit to do that work.
posted by lab.beetle at 9:55 PM on June 16, 2022
posted by lab.beetle at 9:55 PM on June 16, 2022
Can you guess how long it takes to update a government office to have all machines on the newest version of Windows? This is not a joke. People have to deal with frustrating shit in government work, and they don’t have the play money that startups get from venture capital to fail, over and over again. They have to provide poison control hotlines and prosecute child molesters and decide where the city will fix the roads this winter and and and.
Have you actually talked to government workers about the feasibility of this sales strategy? Do you think they will chuckle knowingly as you poke even gentle fun at the constraints that many of them may have struggled to fix, only to be stymied by budget cuts or hiring freezes or burnt-out colleagues or arcane regulations or process rules or closed-minded leadership or any of the other thousand reasons they’re still in place? I sure as hell wouldn’t go through six months of clearance and fights with budget and contracting and front-office clearance to buy a product that thinks my job is a joke.
The people in my field who would find this pitch funny are the arrogant white men, of all ages, who think they know better than everyone else and that decades of process cruft and capacity disinvestment can be magicked away with the loading of an app. When they are able to
convince leadership to Transform and Innovate and Be Data-Driven, they will task their female and POC colleagues (who are being paid thousands less in salary) with procurement and implementation and teaching them how to do basic reports because they skipped the orientation to attend an HBR webinar.
If you really have something that can help, why don’t you pitch it based on respect and tangible value proposition, rather than taking the piss?
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 11:12 PM on June 16, 2022 [9 favorites]
Have you actually talked to government workers about the feasibility of this sales strategy? Do you think they will chuckle knowingly as you poke even gentle fun at the constraints that many of them may have struggled to fix, only to be stymied by budget cuts or hiring freezes or burnt-out colleagues or arcane regulations or process rules or closed-minded leadership or any of the other thousand reasons they’re still in place? I sure as hell wouldn’t go through six months of clearance and fights with budget and contracting and front-office clearance to buy a product that thinks my job is a joke.
The people in my field who would find this pitch funny are the arrogant white men, of all ages, who think they know better than everyone else and that decades of process cruft and capacity disinvestment can be magicked away with the loading of an app. When they are able to
convince leadership to Transform and Innovate and Be Data-Driven, they will task their female and POC colleagues (who are being paid thousands less in salary) with procurement and implementation and teaching them how to do basic reports because they skipped the orientation to attend an HBR webinar.
If you really have something that can help, why don’t you pitch it based on respect and tangible value proposition, rather than taking the piss?
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 11:12 PM on June 16, 2022 [9 favorites]
To be productive: why not ask for stories of low-stakes SUCCESS at transforming crufty and arcane processes? There are people out there who really do come up with One Weird Tricks that really shifted the way things got done in their office - why not celebrate *those* stories and position the company you’re working with as a partner to the kickass people who *actually manage to make positive change* despite having the deck stacked against them? Appreciative inquiry yields better results than auditing.
I am certainly not representative of all government workers. But jiminy CRICKET the news for the past two years has felt like an endless stream of snark about government incompetence, and I and all my government-job friends who are trying to make things better are fucking sick of it.
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 11:17 PM on June 16, 2022 [11 favorites]
I am certainly not representative of all government workers. But jiminy CRICKET the news for the past two years has felt like an endless stream of snark about government incompetence, and I and all my government-job friends who are trying to make things better are fucking sick of it.
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 11:17 PM on June 16, 2022 [11 favorites]
The thing about comically inefficient governmental processes is that almost all of them are already fictional, and that the main use that those fictions have historically been put to is beating government workers over the head, purportedly justifying the cutting of public service budgets in pursuit of "efficiency dividends" or privatizing essential services on the spurious ideological basis that private enterprise is always and everywhere more efficient or both.
Go carefully with that writing project, because it might well turn out that what you're actually doing is constructing yet more propaganda to be misused by self-serving swine with not a milligram of public service motivation in the whole boiling of them. Where public service protocols are slow and frustrating, that's far more commonly because they're actually dealing with complex issues affecting large numbers of interested parties in an atmosphere of general underfunding than because they're amenable to obvious streamlining.
posted by flabdablet at 2:41 AM on June 17, 2022 [13 favorites]
Go carefully with that writing project, because it might well turn out that what you're actually doing is constructing yet more propaganda to be misused by self-serving swine with not a milligram of public service motivation in the whole boiling of them. Where public service protocols are slow and frustrating, that's far more commonly because they're actually dealing with complex issues affecting large numbers of interested parties in an atmosphere of general underfunding than because they're amenable to obvious streamlining.
posted by flabdablet at 2:41 AM on June 17, 2022 [13 favorites]
Agreed with flabdablet.
As additional context - and as a government technologist - I've seen and heard a lot of "we'll actually be trying to help them with new technology that makes their lives easier" actually manifest as white knights coming in, saddling an agency or program with some fresh new technical debt, and leaving. And it winds up massively contributing to the spiraling challenges in govtech and digital services, instead of the solution.
posted by entropone at 5:43 AM on June 17, 2022 [4 favorites]
As additional context - and as a government technologist - I've seen and heard a lot of "we'll actually be trying to help them with new technology that makes their lives easier" actually manifest as white knights coming in, saddling an agency or program with some fresh new technical debt, and leaving. And it winds up massively contributing to the spiraling challenges in govtech and digital services, instead of the solution.
posted by entropone at 5:43 AM on June 17, 2022 [4 favorites]
Reading the comment above about gun tracing (which isn't local government, but is astonishingly inefficient) made me think there had been a blue post on the subject some time in the last several years, and here it is.
(It is worth noting that gun tracing has been deliberately crippled for political purposes.)
posted by jackbishop at 5:50 AM on June 17, 2022 [1 favorite]
(It is worth noting that gun tracing has been deliberately crippled for political purposes.)
posted by jackbishop at 5:50 AM on June 17, 2022 [1 favorite]
I’m a federal employee who works in tech, who interacts regularly with state and local practitioners. The tone of this post…worries me.
I highly, highly, recommend stopping this writing project for a day or two and reading A Civic Technologist’s Practice Guide.
There have been a lot of lessons learned about how to do civic tech well, and you don’t have to relearn them from scratch.
posted by rockindata at 8:50 AM on June 17, 2022 [3 favorites]
I highly, highly, recommend stopping this writing project for a day or two and reading A Civic Technologist’s Practice Guide.
There have been a lot of lessons learned about how to do civic tech well, and you don’t have to relearn them from scratch.
posted by rockindata at 8:50 AM on June 17, 2022 [3 favorites]
Response by poster: Hi, Folks --
Thanks for all the feedback, and I apologize for the tone. I was trying not to reveal too much about the project, and in doing so I displayed my own ignorance. I own my blindness here, and again, I am sorry.
A few clarifications:
1) The product already exists. It was built by a team of people who used to work in local government, and it's been used successfully by municipalities for a number of years.
2) The people who built the product have given me a bunch of stories about what they had to contend with, and we also have before/after stories from their customers. I'm trying to get as big a picture as possible, so I thought to come here to solicit more of the same.
3) I'm learning a lot from these posts, and I appreciate the input.
4) The project's concept came from the people at the company, so I took it as a given, but your comments are showing me that I'd be wise to ask them whether they've considered how it could land.
Thanks again.
posted by MelanieMichelle at 9:27 AM on June 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
Thanks for all the feedback, and I apologize for the tone. I was trying not to reveal too much about the project, and in doing so I displayed my own ignorance. I own my blindness here, and again, I am sorry.
A few clarifications:
1) The product already exists. It was built by a team of people who used to work in local government, and it's been used successfully by municipalities for a number of years.
2) The people who built the product have given me a bunch of stories about what they had to contend with, and we also have before/after stories from their customers. I'm trying to get as big a picture as possible, so I thought to come here to solicit more of the same.
3) I'm learning a lot from these posts, and I appreciate the input.
4) The project's concept came from the people at the company, so I took it as a given, but your comments are showing me that I'd be wise to ask them whether they've considered how it could land.
Thanks again.
posted by MelanieMichelle at 9:27 AM on June 17, 2022 [2 favorites]
How many steps does it take to open a business in a city? A recent article on the barriers. May have some consideration of already pointing out what doesn't work and ways to improve in your writing project. (via Inc.)
What does it take for the FAA to allow a space launch? According to one, this has a few outliers I would consider less than helpful. (via MR)
posted by brent at 12:08 PM on June 17, 2022
What does it take for the FAA to allow a space launch? According to one, this has a few outliers I would consider less than helpful. (via MR)
posted by brent at 12:08 PM on June 17, 2022
“Whenever the time came to elect a new doge of Venice, an official went to pray in St. Mark’s Basilica, grabbed the first boy he could find in the piazza, and took him back to the ducal palace. The boy’s job was to draw lots to choose an electoral college from the members of Venice’s grand families, which was the first step in a performance that has been called tortuous, ridiculous, and profound. Here is how it went, more or less unchanged, for five hundred years, from 1268 until the end of the Venetian Republic.
Thirty electors were chosen by lot, and then a second lottery reduced them to nine, who nominated forty candidates in all, each of whom had to be approved by at least seven electors in order to pass to the next stage. The forty were pruned by lot to twelve, who nominated a total of twenty-five, who needed at least nine nominations each. The twenty-five were culled to nine, who picked an electoral college of forty-five, each with at least seven nominations. The forty-five became eleven, who chose a final college of forty-one. Each member proposed one candidate, all of whom were discussed and, if necessary, examined in person, whereupon each elector cast a vote for every candidate of whom he approved. The candidate with the most approvals was the winner, provided he had been endorsed by at least twenty-five of the forty-one.”
— Anthony Gottlieb, "Win or Lose," The New Yorker.
https://www.theballotboy.com/electing-the-doge
posted by at at 8:16 PM on June 17, 2022
Thirty electors were chosen by lot, and then a second lottery reduced them to nine, who nominated forty candidates in all, each of whom had to be approved by at least seven electors in order to pass to the next stage. The forty were pruned by lot to twelve, who nominated a total of twenty-five, who needed at least nine nominations each. The twenty-five were culled to nine, who picked an electoral college of forty-five, each with at least seven nominations. The forty-five became eleven, who chose a final college of forty-one. Each member proposed one candidate, all of whom were discussed and, if necessary, examined in person, whereupon each elector cast a vote for every candidate of whom he approved. The candidate with the most approvals was the winner, provided he had been endorsed by at least twenty-five of the forty-one.”
— Anthony Gottlieb, "Win or Lose," The New Yorker.
https://www.theballotboy.com/electing-the-doge
posted by at at 8:16 PM on June 17, 2022
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Someone decided that was the best way to file this stuff, probably when the population was much smaller and everybody knew everybody. But it's never been changed! My head exploded.
posted by BlahLaLa at 4:45 PM on June 16, 2022 [4 favorites]