Abandon All Common Sense, Ye Who Enter Here

I used to revel in retelling the old line about how I hoped that when my time comes, that I would go like my grandfather — peacefully and in my sleep, not screaming in terror like everyone else in the car. It made for a light laugh and the hope of a peaceful exit, which, now that I think on it, would be a great way to depart stage right.

Alas, it’s becoming increasingly clear that I will instead likely shed this mortal coil with my butt planted in front of a computer while trying unsuccessfully to access a series of healthcare portals, each requiring a stupefyingly complex series of digital gymnastics and a new password containing at least 24 characters, a hieroglyph, the maiden name of my third-grade teacher, and one character not currently recognized by any code known to man. Upon finally passing through that particular gate, I will be informed that my session has expired.

Dante’s hell contained nine circles. Bureaucracy has an ever-expanding number of portals, each more tedious than its predecessor. When I hung up my uniform (23 years ago) in favor of work in the private sector, the official email system required an assigned email address and a password of eight characters. Since then, the evolution has evidently gone from 8 to 12 characters, then to a combination of uppercase and lowercase characters, next a number, then a special character, and eventually no password could resemble a previous password.

Having returned to government work some months back, I can safely report that we are about two inspection cycles away from a requirement that passwords must have 36 characters, contain one uppercase letter, two numbers, an ampersand, one previous unpublished Hemingway manuscript, the maiden name of a Byzantine empress, and the precise location of Jimmy Hoffa. “ERROR: Password may not contain the precise location of Jimmy Hoffa used during the previous 24 months.” And they wonder why people drink.

Bureaucracies have always operated in a manner that transcends mere common sense, and now they’ve reached beyond the digital divide to include brick-and-mortar projects as well. In fact, the closest thing to eternal life in this world is now a government construction contract.

A new building is constructed several years late, the building is still incomplete when its occupants are ordered into the place, and the results are predictable. The elevator works except when required for reliable vertical transportation. The doors not only malfunction when people attempt to enter or leave, they also open and close without anyone being near them. The plumbing appears to be under the control of a poltergeist, and the fire pit outside whistles like incoming artillery whenever it is in use. You may rest assured, however, that someone, somewhere in the middle levels of this bureaucratic edifice, is in possession of a three-ring binder labeled CONTINUITY OF OPERATIONS PLAN.

Somewhere along the way, employees acquire a Bureaucratic Stockholm Syndrome in which they no longer ask, “Why doesn’t the elevator work?” Instead, they ask, “Has anyone submitted the elevator non-functionality acknowledgement form?” At some point they become alarmed when something actually works the first time because that clearly indicates that a vital procedural step has been overlooked:

Stage One: You notice something is broken.

Stage Two: You report that it is broken.

Stage Three: You discover the system for reporting broken things is broken.

Stage Four: You report the broken reporting system through a second reporting system.

Stage Five: Someone creates a committee to study why employees aren't using the first reporting system.

Stage Six: Mandatory training.

Having spent some 22 years in the private sector before returning to government work, I’ve picked up on an important distinction between the two. It is practically a law of physics that bureaucracies everywhere inevitably expand and become increasingly inefficient. That little axiom has been around since Hammurabi’s Department of Motor Vehicles lost his paperwork. The interesting thing here is the difference between government bureaucracy and that of, say, a department store. In competitive enterprises, dysfunction eventually sends an invoice to the organization. In government bureaucracy dysfunction sends the invoice to the user.

In the world of retail, eventually a manager can say, “This is stupid. Give the man his refund.” In a sufficiently mature bureaucracy, saying “This is stupid” might merely initiate the process by which a working group is established to determine whether a feasibility study should be commissioned to consider possible revisions to the Stupidity Management Plan (Estimated completion: FY29, assuming the portal is working).

It’s not that government employees are themselves stupid. Quite the contrary, actually. One of the greatest absurdities is watching perfectly intelligent, conscientious people forced to perform elaborate stupidities because the system requires them to do so. The employee knows it’s ridiculous. The supervisor knows it’s ridiculous. The customer certainly knows it’s ridiculous. Presumably, somewhere fourteen organizational layers up the food chain there exists another person who knows it’s ridiculous. Yet everyone solemnly continues because Procedure 52.147 Paragraph 7.4.3(b) has spoken.

Which brings us back to our portal and the ever-growing list of impossible authentication factors and gyrations required for me to so much as view my medical referral this morning. Every additional authentication requirement, password reset mandatory training module, inaccessible menu, nonexistent email address to request help can be justified as enhancing security, compliance and accountability. Yet the cumulative human cost is largely externalized. The bureaucracy doesn’t spend 45 minutes trying to get into its own portal. The customer does. In retail, stupidity ultimately encounters the customer, the balance sheet, the owner, or bankruptcy. Official stupidity, however, will require the customer to complete Form 17-B explaining why the stupidity inconvenienced him.

Then Form 17-B gets rejected.

Wrong Portal.