Blog Creation Form 1044-6B

When a process first begins, someone decides that it might be easier to remember what to do or how to do it if there's a piece of paper explaining it. Then a smart-thinking bureaucrat determines that it would be useful if a form were generated, listing all of the information needed for the process. In later stages of the whirlpool of paperwork that is a government-run institution, the paperwork becomes more important than the task it is supposed to facilitate.

Consider this exchange, which is based on something that really happened to someone at GBC:

"Hello, professor?"
"Yes, student? How are you doing?"
"I'm fine. I'm over in Berg Hall. I need permission to get into your class."
"Oh yes, I know your work experience. You can add my class. Are you at Admissions & Records?"
"Yes, I'm standing right here."
"Please put them on.... Hello, A&R?"
"Yes."
"Hi, this is the professor. Please allow that student, Excellent Pupil, to enter my FAT 100 class."
"The student who is standing here?"
"Yes, that's her."
"You have to fill out the override form first."
"But the prerequisite is instructor approval, so it's not an override. I'm giving my approval."
"You still need to fill out the form."
"Do you doubt my identity -- that it's really me?"
"No, I recognize your voice."
"I thought the purpose of the form was to let you know that I approve."
"It is."
"Well, I approve."
"I still can't do it without the form."
"*Sigh.*"

Back in 1998, one fine blogger wrote, "Sometimes it starts to feel like the real purpose of the paperwork is to make it so complicated that the insurance companies in the end won't have to pay anything." (endsoftheearth.com) Isn't this how we often feel?

In "Techniques for Lightening the Load of Paperwork," from 1959, Ben S. Graham wrote:
"The purpose of paperwork should be properly understood. Too often the paperwork becomes the objective, the development of more and better paperwork for the glory of paperwork. Paperwork is only a tool to help accomplish the essential end results of the business organizations. Until we recognize that it should be considered only as a tool, we are going to build empires involved in paperwork which do not contribute to the end results."

That expresses the paperwork situation at Great Basin College rather well. In fact, an e-mail was recently forwarded to me that originated as an announcement from the people in Admissions & Records. This e-mail informed departments that they had run out of storage space for all of the paperwork they had been saving. Do you think they'd lighten the level of paperwork? No. The purpose of having the form is to have the form. Their solution? From now on, the departments must create forms on white paper only. That way, they would be able to more easily scan the paperwork into a computer. Couldn't we submit everything on the computer to begin with, avoiding the forms entirely? Of COURSE not!

We also have a "CLASS" form, the purpose of which is to praise someone's performance, professionalism, and/or kindness on the job. There is a committee that considers the "best" CLASS nominations every month and awards a prize. Someone told me recently that if you don't fill out the form correctly, the committee won't consider your nominee for the prize. Clearly, the form is more important than the praise merited by a great employee.

Whenever there is paperwork, the paperwork seems to proliferate to the point that it sweeps the process away. We become so bogged down in paperwork that we no longer remember what the forms are for. This fact became so apparent to our own politicians that the federal government enacted a Paperwork Reduction Act in 1980...and again in 1995. I wonder how successful these attempts have been. In 2003, UC Berkeley conducted a study that showed conclusively that paperwork production in offices has risen 43% (on average) since 1999. According to that study, over 4 billion pages of paper documents are generated in offices every year in the United States. Most of that paperwork is regarded as unnecessary, but it multiplies exponentially nevertheless.

Bureaucrats who resist change repeatedly utter the phrase "paper trail" in response to statistics like these. This is a concept created by bureaucrats in order to justify their own existence. For the same reason we need to keep our tax records for seven years "just in case" we are audited -- even though very few people are audited, we also need to keep every form that the college concocts. In triplicate, we maintain copies of the Form for Ordering More Forms. That way, if someone asks how busy I am, I can produce a mountain of paperwork to justify my position. "Yes, I'm positively overwhelmed. See?"

Secretly, most employees regret that their days are so consumed with filling out forms that they cannot get anything worthwhile accomplished. If there's ever a fire at Berg Hall -- something that would be terrible and which I hope never happens, I certainly wish for no one to be hurt. But I suspect that more than a few people from all walks of life would secretly smile when told that "All of our paperwork for the last 40 years was destroyed in the fire." If that does happen, though, I suspect that the first responders will hand someone a Form for Response to Fire. We'll need copies for the legislators, the regents, and of course the president will need to keep a copy in his new office. On the wall next to his diploma.