I spent a career as a gummint bureaucrat. I have stories.
Most identities are disguised for all the usual reasons. Some details have been elided or adjusted for similar purposes.
Sarah asked me to dust off one of my pet projects so Poco could sink her teeth into something more satisfying than bug squishing. I’d been campaigning for a rewrite of the supporting code for a process I’d worked when I was part of the clerical staff. Much of that work was painfully routine, and moving the boring part of it out of the office and into a program would have positive impacts in all sorts of places. I’d first written a proposal while I was a clerk, and had rewritten it a couple times since. Sarah set me a couple design parameters for another revision, and handed that version to Poco.
Filed under
Bureaucratic Whimsy
Posted on
August 16th 2004
Greg’s perspective is very different from mine, but we seem to be watching the same issues….
Filed under
Bureaucratic Whimsy
Semi-Geekery
Posted on
July 27th 2004
In short, all the failings attributed to government happen in private enterprises too. These failings are a fixture of human nature and organizational dynamics.
Filed under
Bookworm Alley
Bureaucratic Whimsy
Politickin'
Posted on
July 27th 2004
Dear old Rands is at it again.
Filed under
Bureaucratic Whimsy
Posted on
July 12th 2004
The legal changes gave us reason and opportunity to rethink and rebuild our processes. First we implemented a jury-rig on the old system; it was clumsy and ignored the spirit of the legal changes, but adequately met the intention of the law. More or less simultaneously we began work on an Invitation to Bid for a replacement system which would meet our “corporate” needs. Much of the planning effort went into improving process flows, of course; another intention was to move much of the activity to the state website, so our customers could interact directly with the system. While adapting the old system to the new law was not considered feasible, it contained millions of data records and microfilm images, so moving the data and the images to the new system would be a major part of the undertaking and was a major cause for concern.
Filed under
Bureaucratic Whimsy
Posted on
July 8th 2004
As I was completing my analysis of my data, the PM authorized a mailing based on an 80,000 estimate. I hit “reply to all” and opined that the estimate was low, and supported the opinion with “better” data. I also pointed out that there were three estimates available and suggested that someone ought to figure out why we differed before committing to any of them.
Filed under
Bureaucratic Whimsy
Life's Stories
Semi-Geekery
Posted on
June 24th 2004
One lesson: Even without marketing (or political) pressure, the development team has to find a way to balance passing time with the imperative to ship a useful product.
Filed under
Bureaucratic Whimsy
Posted on
June 23rd 2004
Margie was tracking down a lost transaction this morning when she noticed a hole in the logs for May 18, and asked me to verify. I looked, and agreed: There was a four hour stretch–basically, all afternoon–when the web app wasn’t working. Near as we can tell, the back end was accepting transaction information from the web, but wasn’t doing anything with it. While that’s technically harmless behavior (ignoring a couple problem cases just as the system fell apart), it must have been pretty annoying to our customers.
Filed under
Bureaucratic Whimsy
Semi-Geekery
Posted on
June 9th 2004
Our press office announced our web app’s existence today. Since we’ve already got a couple thousand users registered, the announcement’s a bit of an anti-climax. Regardless, we’re planning to celebrate. To our amazement, and to our dismay, we’ve been working on this for two full years. It’s about time we close this project down.
Filed under
Bureaucratic Whimsy
Semi-Geekery
Posted on
June 2nd 2004
Meantime, the folks around me were running through the same routines for the servers they watch. Alice is responsible for three systems, but only one was affected. Christine’s main damage was the (same) lost sub-net, so today she got off easy. From outside our group, I had a brief contact with Lucy, who runs another FileNet system, and wanted my take on something; from Will, who was echoing me on his efforts to recover our COLD system (running OK in different server room, but on the lost sub-net); and from Tina, who was coordinating with the network people and calling whichever of us she supposed might need help. We’ve all been here before; we know the drill, have checklists to guide our actions, have routines to follow.
Filed under
Bureaucratic Whimsy
Semi-Geekery
Posted on
May 25th 2004
