This is not an uncommon question for me to hear from my new clients. As we start digging into how they manage data, a lot of oddities and unusual practices are discovered (often along with a lot of GOOD practices!). Very often, as we dig into a particularly unusual process, someone on staff will say “This is terrible! Are we the worst you’ve ever seen?” My stock answer is “No, I’ve seen worse.” Which is true, since there can only be one “worst.”
In yesterday’s Washington Post, there was an article called “A Sinkhole of Bureaucracy,” which focused on an underground office operated by the Office of Personnel Management. This office employs 600 and processes all federal employee retirement paperwork. And it is all still done manually. As the article points out, there are 28,000(!) file cabinets to house all the paper being processed.
Think your office is bad? Read the article, and know that it isn’t nearly as bad as it could be…
I read that same WP article. It is crazy! From my read, it will never succeed until a bold leader with the support of the legislative branch manages to change the outdated laws that seem to be holding them captive in a time warp. Only then could a technology overhaul even begin to have a chance. Talk about a major change management case study failure, it is the perfect storm.