On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 2:21 PM, Cameron Childress <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 5:15 PM, Judah McAuley <[email protected]> wrote: >> Seems to me that that sort of inefficiency is rife in both the public >> and private sector and that as a company/organization grows, the >> ability to be nimble and go in new, more effective, directions >> decreases. I'd say that the problems with government agencies tends to >> be more with their size/age rather than the fact that they are public >> agencies. Could be wrong though. > > Certainly, there is plenty in big corporate America too. But when I > enter a government building and interact with government employees it > is painfully obvious that they have barely progressed since the > 1960's. Very few companies are as far behind as government, though > they do exist. > > There is probably some correlation between size and waste, but in my > experience, even small government agencies have a ton of waste.
This just seems very anecdotal to me. Take the IRS for example. I'm able to file my taxes online easily. Yes, a lot of that is done by 3rd parties, but that is because we wanted money going to private companies competing rather than the IRS building their own system. But the actual e-file portion of things is done by the IRS, as is the automation of electronic collection of payments and the electronic dispersal of refunds. I'm able to find past year's forms on their site easily and they are available in pdf format for ease of printing out if I need to. The one time I needed to go into a physical location to talk to them, it wasn't bad at all. I had to wait 10 minutes or so for a person to help me after taking a number but then they got me dealt with quickly, were quite pleasant and I had no problems at all. The security check to get into the federal building was a pain, but that isn't their fault. Contrast that with my experiences with, say, T-Mobile or Comast. I've had horrible times with their self-service websites and woe betide you if you need to actually get on the phone with them. I'm on a family plan at T-Mobile and my sister is the primary person on it as she set it up first. I needed to recover my website login. You can't do that online. I was hoping that I could at least have them send the change request to my cell phone. Nope, no luck. You have to call in. And in spite of the fact that it was *my* account password and that I am authorized to do anything on the account, I had to have my sister's social security number. I ended up being a couple weeks late paying my portion of the bill because of their messed up procedures and spent long periods of time on hold. I've seen some great use of technology and efficiency by private companies. Almost all of it by small companies. When it comes to large companies versus the government...I've had better luck, in general, with the government. Anecdotal, but my experience so far. Cheers, Jud ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~| Order the Adobe Coldfusion Anthology now! http://www.amazon.com/Adobe-Coldfusion-Anthology/dp/1430272155/?tag=houseoffusion Archive: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/message.cfm/messageid:337416 Subscription: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/subscribe.cfm Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/groups/cf-community/unsubscribe.cfm
