Log Offr said:
Pretty sure that's what I said.
...
On the bright side, him and most others like him get caught. It's not as though the system is broken and open for abuse. It can just take longer to figure out that abuse is happening.
Broken? Yes it is imo, thoroughly broken. And the bureaucracy as I discussed above does not help catch them, it's part of the reason it took so long in the first place, imo.
Much of this is a direct result of downsizing and the various strategic efficiency projects over the years. Fewer layers of bureaucracy are great for effectiveness and productivity, but the downside is that it concentrates responsibility for execution into fewer hands.
I interpret this as stating the opposite opinion I hold: further layers of bureaucracy not only robs efficiency, it also consumes time supervisors could be using to check up on procurement substantiations. Layers of bureaucracy concentrate decision making with fewer people, further removed from actually understanding the real needs at the low end, and thus makes it easier for someone to run amok.
Supervisors for many functions either don't exist or don't have the capacity or time to manage all elements of their responsibility, so a smart, experienced and slimy staffer can run amok for a period of time without his bosses knowing something is amiss. Spot checks, attention to detail (although, good luck) and a formal audit process are the best defence these days.
Here I mainly agree with you, but these are the only methods that will work. They should be the primary method used. Layers of bureaucracy remove the supervisors ability to do them. Passing around piles of paper or emails with justifications to someone in another building in another level of organization create obfuscation that allows for these sorts of abuses.
The more bureaucracy you pile on the supervisors, the less time they have to verify. Therefore they have to trust more. For every hour a day of reports and substantiations crafted for the next level to compile, to pass up the next level to compile and so on, they have one hour less to actually do their job. Therefore they have to trust their employees more because they have less time to verify.
The hours a day I put into reports and returns to be compiled into increasingly meaningless fluff, to be passed up to satisfy the demands of ever increasing levels of bureaucracy so they can have "SA", is obscene. Especially since the information I need passed down to me seems to be a lower priority than collecting the fluff and everything ends up becoming a last minute emergency because the people holding the information don't have SA on why it's important, and don't have the ability to prioritize it correctly.
Provide me with direction and your vision, and accept my status reports. No I don't have the time or desire to enter metrics into a SharePoint excel sheet that's so devoid of details that it's essentially meaningless.
It's to the point that as long as enough fluff is compiled to make a pretty pie chart on a PowerPoint showing numbers getting bigger,
any numbers, the higher is happy. No one seems to give a frig that our efficiency is down and it's getting harder to do our jobs.
Then something fails and whoops, here comes another level of bureaucracy to add more checks and balances in the form of spreadsheets, and to hold onto vital information for another day cycle before it gets passed down to me.
We are all on the same page why the Soviet Union fell right? It was too centralized to function. Without money offered to allow suppliers to asses demand, there had to be an omnipotent central organizational bureaucracy to manage supply and demand. Since people, especially in large groups with political in fighting are far from omnipotent, failure was the only possible outcome. Why are we not remembering this.
