This post is then a report about a report about a report about a report. Infinite regress is one step closer. :)
Udhay http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2009/sep/01/improbable-research-texas-reports The report to end all reports The state of Texas requires a report on all the reports produced by its own agencies – all 1,600 of them – not forgetting the one by the chief inspector of tomatoes * Marc Abrahams * The Guardian, Tuesday 1 September 2009 We need fewer reports, finds report This – what you are reading at this moment – is a report about a report about reports. Specifically, it's about the official report that the state of Texas requires about all the reports it requires from its own agencies. The 2009 edition delivers 580 pages of tidy bureaucratic reading (including six pages that identify themselves as "intentionally left blank"). That's 84 fewer than the previous edition. Called Required Reports Prepared by State Agencies and Institutions of Higher Education (Fiscal Year 2009), the tome is compiled by the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. It took over the task from the State Comptroller of Public Accounts. The library and archives people seem a bit startled at their newly adopted baby. They lament that: "The commission and others involved in the preparation of this report were confident that the number of state reports listed by the state comptroller was close to accurate. That assumption proved to be wrong. Rather than the approximately 400 reports included in the state comptroller's report, this report lists over 1,600." Gamely, they vow that: "The next edition of this report will contain a full assessment of all required reports." For now, they recommend abolishing 318 reports, and either consolidating 58 others or producing them less frequently. For some, the report says, the need has passed. For others, the legal requirements have over the years grown into "a mishmash of contradictions". And there are still other reports, they say, for which the agencies charged with writing or receiving them no longer exist. Accordingly, the report recommends continuing to require the annual Abolished Agencies and Advisory Committees Report. Among the reports reported in the reports report, one finds dozens with the simple title "annual report". But others sport good, colourful names, in the style of a state that prides itself on being big and bold and memorable. One is called the Report on Persons Found Not Guilty by Reason Of Insanity; another the Audit Report of Records of the Chief Inspector of Tomatoes. There's also the Report on Crumb Rubber and Shredded Tire Pieces. The state of Texas requires two reports of this name, one by the Commission on Environmental Quality, the other by the Department of Transportation. This is the first time that the Required Reports report is itself legally required. Until now, the bureaucracy produced it by custom rather than mandate. The 2009 report contains at least one notable omission. The Required Reports Prepared by State Agencies and Institutions of Higher Education is not itself listed in the Required Reports Prepared by State Agencies and Institutions of Higher Education. • Marc Abrahams is editor of the bimonthly Annals of Improbable Research and organiser of the Ig Nobel prize -- ((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
