4 ms·

Why can’t agencies always have easier access to funds and cooperate with less red tape? Seems more…efficient?

DrillShopper 2y ago
[flagged]
mort96 2y ago
I don't know the reason in this specific case, but sometimes, "red tape" exists for a reason. Things like documenting why things are done the way they are, why funds go where they go, going through ethics committees, etc has real benefits (including from an efficiency perspective; without oversight over e.g where funds go, you open up for both embezzlement and bad allocation). However getting rid of that stuff might make sense in situations where being able to rapidly respond is essential.
- ska 2y ago
  > but sometimes, "red tape" exists for a reason. Pretty much always. And a lot of the time, the reason (if not the implementation) was pretty good. But these things almost always grow, and interact, and are very hard to update with changing times. SO you get a mess, and you get friction, but mostly as you note, the friction is viewed as a brake on other undesirable outcomes. So people learn to work with it. I guess there aren't enough incentives for people to clean up/optimize it until well past when it becomes an obvious problem.,,
jfengel 2y ago
People keep making it harder to access funds. That adds red tape. Cooperation also means devoting money to a project. People already have work; there aren't bodies waiting around to be assigned. Usually that means getting a contractor, which takes time. It would be a lot more efficient if people trusted the government to make decisions. But we just elected people with the express goal of hating government, and that will as usual result on more red tape and more costs.
- fc417fc802 2y ago
  [dead]
llamaimperative 2y ago
People seem to forget this when their people are in charge, but a lot of the US governmental system is designed to be rather slow and limited in its power (both statutory and effective).
acdha 2y ago
Call your confessional representatives’ offices and ask them to allow that. Federal agencies can only spend money as directed by Congress, and there’s a lot of political fear and misrepresentation about money being spent improperly, which creates a ratchet effect where new layers of approval are created to prevent hypothetical waste even if the cost of the extra overhead is greater than the savings.
cududa 2y ago
You don’t want a central authority doing this nationwide. You want a central authority synthesizing results and setting minimum practices for states to adopt. But generally, each state already has bodies that are inspecting cows and chickens daily, with FDA representatives present. They’re experts at testing regularly to catch normal flu etc, and the data is shared. This happens and they’re still doing the same exact same thing - which we want. In these cases, there’s tons and tons of cooperation. Some folks are investigating cows independently. Some birds. All this research is shared federally and with all states. Then, CDC, department of agriculture, etc, all are activating their protocols to deal with their various parts of this. We actually have plans for this and haven been executing decently well. It’s called a Swiss cheese filter. If you cut one slice of cheese, there’s holes for things to slip through. Stack a bunch of slices on top, less chance of something to get through a hole. You want redundancy. Source: I worked on all sorts of COVID related data, and danced around CDC federal systems and state/ other partner integration API’s. In regards to testing and investigation, we want multiple layers

[flagged]

I don't know the reason in this specific case, but sometimes, "red tape" exists for a reason. Things like documenting why things are done the way they are, why funds go where they go, going through ethics committees, etc has real benefits (including from an efficiency perspective; without oversight over e.g where funds go, you open up for both embezzlement and bad allocation). However getting rid of that stuff might make sense in situations where being able to rapidly respond is essential.

ska 2y ago
> but sometimes, "red tape" exists for a reason. Pretty much always. And a lot of the time, the reason (if not the implementation) was pretty good. But these things almost always grow, and interact, and are very hard to update with changing times. SO you get a mess, and you get friction, but mostly as you note, the friction is viewed as a brake on other undesirable outcomes. So people learn to work with it. I guess there aren't enough incentives for people to clean up/optimize it until well past when it becomes an obvious problem.,,

jfengel 2y ago

People keep making it harder to access funds. That adds red tape. Cooperation also means devoting money to a project. People already have work; there aren't bodies waiting around to be assigned. Usually that means getting a contractor, which takes time. It would be a lot more efficient if people trusted the government to make decisions. But we just elected people with the express goal of hating government, and that will as usual result on more red tape and more costs.

fc417fc802 2y ago
[dead]

llamaimperative 2y ago

People seem to forget this when their people are in charge, but a lot of the US governmental system is designed to be rather slow and limited in its power (both statutory and effective).

acdha 2y ago

Call your confessional representatives’ offices and ask them to allow that. Federal agencies can only spend money as directed by Congress, and there’s a lot of political fear and misrepresentation about money being spent improperly, which creates a ratchet effect where new layers of approval are created to prevent hypothetical waste even if the cost of the extra overhead is greater than the savings.

cududa 2y ago

You don’t want a central authority doing this nationwide. You want a central authority synthesizing results and setting minimum practices for states to adopt. But generally, each state already has bodies that are inspecting cows and chickens daily, with FDA representatives present. They’re experts at testing regularly to catch normal flu etc, and the data is shared. This happens and they’re still doing the same exact same thing - which we want. In these cases, there’s tons and tons of cooperation. Some folks are investigating cows independently. Some birds. All this research is shared federally and with all states. Then, CDC, department of agriculture, etc, all are activating their protocols to deal with their various parts of this. We actually have plans for this and haven been executing decently well. It’s called a Swiss cheese filter. If you cut one slice of cheese, there’s holes for things to slip through. Stack a bunch of slices on top, less chance of something to get through a hole. You want redundancy. Source: I worked on all sorts of COVID related data, and danced around CDC federal systems and state/ other partner integration API’s. In regards to testing and investigation, we want multiple layers