What Can't Be Measured Can't Be Managed

Is one of the guiding principals of Government - which is why they want EVERYTHING to be measured so that somewhere along the line some section of Government can manage - tax - it.

Requiring reports to be sent to government is a subtle form of a tax - the business has to spend money to create something that is of no value to it at all and is often never looked at by government - it is just a checkbox on a person's desk that has to be marked (electronically more often than not) to fulfill a long forgotten requirement.

"... I have seen many workers continually exhorted to increase production, improve quality and reduce costs, thoroughly confused because they had no guidepost or measuring stick to go by. They did not have the facts as to their past performance, their current performance or the goals to shoot at. Because of this, it seems to me that providing this information to the people on the job who, in reality, are the only ones who can control production, quality or cost, is almost as important a function of paperwork as providing Management with the facts which it needs 1n order to make sound decisions. While no report ever increased production, improved quality or cut costs, the paperwork as the medium for transmitting the right information to the people who can control these functions directly . . ."  written by Ben S. Graham in 1950! http://www.worksimp.com/articles/paperwork%20simplification%201950.htm

The main function of paperwork in 2007 seems to not fulfill a specific useful goal - but just another piece of a process to prove to someone else that what was said to be accomplished - even when seen with own eyes - is only valid when it can be proved through an paper / electronic audit trail.

When I was working in a computer room we had a very simple way of running jobs. We had a run sheet for each night and all jobs came in on one or two carts on the right of the console We pulled the jobs off, ran the jobs, marked down the tapes that were created in the job log that came with each job, and when completed put them onto a cart on the left. Auditors came in and asked us how we knew a job was done - and we stated that if the cart on the left had the job sheet then they ran, cart on right - not run yet. Problem jobs were placed behind on a 3rd cart and the analysts contacted. The auditors did not like this and mandated that a complete paper audit trail had to be created and signed off when the jobs were delivered, what time the job started, what time it finished, and what time it was picked up, and a sign off on each step. The same was true for the jobs that were all run via a console - the automated log that I had created for them was no good - you had to have a paper log for each job run. The new rules added no value at all - it just added an extra set of steps and wasted time to a process that had worked with no problems for 12 years. But someone back in a Government office had mandated that you had to have a paper audit trail so they had to make it. Most of Government workers actually accomplish nothing of value - BY DESIGN. They process 'paper' to get 'something' from one place to another as part of this separation of duties.  It is a basic fact that modern US governments are supposed to be "transparent" so no one person is allowed to do all. What in private sector 1 person can do it take 3 to 4 people in ANY US type government to do due to the rules IMPOSED on them by citizens - to try and ensure no stealing occurs from the 'people'. A single person cannot decide what to purchase, run the checking account to pay for it, record the transaction,  make deposits, make withdrawals? Nope, you have at least 7 people involved in that in any Government - plus auditors to see if all the sign-off paperwork has been done.  If a person ran their household budget like a government it would need at MINIMUM 4 extra people to do it the way the government has evolved to  be run. And then people wonder why the cost of Government keeps going up! What is never looked at is that the cost of control steps (people) often way outspends the risk of theft. 4 Extra people means around $400,000 in total costs a year to prevent a POTENTIAL theft of $30,000. (Full time people.)

Good thing Government does not enforce the cost / benefit analysis on itself that it requires of anything a citizen wants.