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Understanding how bureaucracy develops

(dhruvmethi.substack.com)
192 points dhruvmethi | 1 comments | | HN request time: 0.277s | source
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GlenTheMachine ◴[] No.41889866[source]
Here's an example from my corner of the Defense Department:

In order to publish a research paper, it has to be reviewed for suitability for public release. This process is more than a little silly, because it requires seven levels of review, of which exactly one - my immediate supervisor - will have any idea what the paper is about. But fine.

There used to be a paper form. You'd fill it out and either route it around for signatures, or if you had a time crunch, walk it around yourself. Eventually they replaced the paper form with a web form, so now there's an automated queuing system that emails people when they have a paper waiting to be reviewed.

The web form has all of the same info as the paper form, with one addition. They scanned the paper form and turned it into a pdf, and they make you fill out both the web form AND the pdf version of the original paper form. So to sign off on a paper, you now have to download the pdf, digitally sign it, upload it again, and hit the "Approve" button on the web form.

Because God help us if anybody does an audit and we don't have all of the forms correctly signed.

replies(2): >>41890269 #>>41890420 #
toomuchtodo ◴[] No.41890420[source]
Is a list or inventory maintained of research papers that aren’t published? What happens to those papers?
replies(2): >>41890906 #>>41895378 #
1. SiempreViernes ◴[] No.41895378[source]
The list is probably not very interesting, the main benefit of these sort of censorship systems is that every knows of them and thus self-censor their output ahead of the explicit review step.