Government Bureaucracy at Work

Government Bureaucracy at Work

By Matthew Edward Hayward on Monday, October 8, 2012

This morning while waiting for my boss to show up and tell us what the plan for the week is, my co-worker and I made a list of things we need around the shop. Mostly items like hand soap, trash bags, extra.

In past years I was given authority to make small purchases like this myself, not anymore. Now because of the new guidelines I am being asked to follow, my co-worker and I first went and talked with the procurement officer, then spent the rest of the day researching information on the products, talking with our boss and his boss, only to finish the day by sending an email back to the procurement officer with an itemized list of products we need and where we found them.

At the end of the day we still don’t have any of the things we needed and in order to save a few cents on a couple of products a full days wages of several employees were spent. We are really nipping fraud and waste in the butt aren’t we? Instead of dealing with specific instances of abuse and over spending, we have created a system that guarantees inefficacy and waste.

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