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The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

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Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#271

Post by kstrauser »

Synthetic7346 wrote: post #199
kerblang wrote: post #164

Under HIPAA requirements emailing personal medical info is a massive no-no. Admittedly, this is for the patient's protection, and of course being blind is not much of a secret... but it's completely understandable that email would be strongly discouraged. Nobody wants to get in trouble for breaking the rules. Honestly, being able to accept a fax is great, although I would think any properly outfitted modern office th…

Is this an outdated requirement? What's the attack surface of an email vs fax? Unless they ban phones at the office, someone could just take a photo of the documents the patient faxed or mailed them

It's a current requirement. (Source: I'm adjacent to a doctor's office.) Two big advantages of faxes are that 1) they're point-to-point, and 2) there's zero caching between the sender and receiver.

If everyone had a fax machine such that you'd commonly get a working fax receiver if you mis-entered the recipient's number, then #1 wouldn't be such a big deal. But in reality, if you enter a fax number, and the other end actually answers and responds with a screech, it's extremely likely that you're connected to the right party. (Also, I bet 99% of modern faxing is triggered by a nearby computer, or by pressing one of the preprogrammed speed dial buttons on the fax. There aren't that many opportunities to misdial the number in the first place.)

That second is also a big deal. There are no intermediate servers which may be caching and inappropriately storing the data, except maybe the NSA, but what can ya do. The sender may have a cache, in the form of a print spooler. The receiver may have a cache where it temporarily stores inbound faxes and prints them asynchronously. But since both of those devices are owned and controlled by the parties in the communication, that's not a legal issue.

I'm not advocating for faxes. They're a slow, clunky, lossy, pain in the ass. And yet, they do have specific properties that are pretty sweet. I guess the equivalent would be if I could ask you to send a PDF to my specific IPv6 address, and you could peer-to-peer shoot it directly to me. If I typoed the address at all, it's statistically "unlikely" that another person would be listening on that specific IP a that specific time. And if it were truly P2P, then you and I would be the only 2 who ever touched the file, except maybe the NSA, but what can ya do. Alas, I don't see that replacing fax machines any time soon.

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#272

Post by padjo »

CrzyLngPwd wrote: post #213

Plot twist: Karen's fax machine turns the incoming fax into a PDF, which is saved on the network, and an AI processes it, sending her a summary of 300 words or less. No government workers were harmed.

Yeah there's no way a fax actually gets printed for this. I worked in an admin role like this 25 years ago and incoming faxes went straight to PDF on a network share even back then.

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#273

Post by LeifCarrotson »

Etherlord87 wrote: post #112
wholinator2 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree wholeheartedly! This is exactly what i was thinking the entire time. Like, does this guy think this single woman is responsible for the kafka-esque trap they're both in? Will the 0.5% uptick in toner cost for the year cause the administration to rethink their requirements? He's just taken the immense weight and pain he holds for this process, undeservedly, and placed it upon another undeserving person, then l…

I see this type of an argumentation very often and I strongly disagree. You're removing all responsibility from an actor that is a part of a bigger thing. Imagine if you slapped someone on his hand for doing something wrong, and he or someone else argued what you did is wrong because it wasn't that hand that has offended. I'm an antitheist but the Bible (gospels) put it well "The student is not above his master" [tra…

I find it far more effective to make friends with and be kind to that employee, and then describe how I know it isn't their fault but this one aspect of the thing that their company does really sucks, right? They're then able to carry that specific complaint from one of their best customers up the chain.

There are a thousand reasons why someone might be miserable, might resign or ask for a raise, but at the next monthly meeting or whatever opportunity they have for receiving suggestions, an employee who actually likes you will be more likely to speak up and get something done.

This has worked for me at least in the B2B space, where I'm affecting one of 50 state applications engineers or something like that. I'm aware that this isn't exactly the same as the federal government that employs like 3 million people, but the principle is the same.

If you got on Karen's good side, she might grouse with you that sending and receiving faxes is archaic, that mail is slow, agree that printed paper's not that accommodating to blind people, and acknowledge that it's cruel and wasteful to ask people to prove their chronic, incurable disabilities every year under threat of taking away their benefits through these platforms. You could work together and laugh about how funny it would be to communicate the real costs and hardships with her supervisors if you literally faxed 1,200 pages of a PDF, wearing through multiple toner cartridges and reams of paper, generating a box that she could drop on the table with a "thud" to emphasize that they should stop doing that.

That might create change, especially if it happens for multiple employees multiple times a day.

Making a bureaucrat miserable because they have a lot of paperwork to do is not going to create change.

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#274

Post by stackghost »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #33

Karen woke up this morning in her run down, rented flat. She briefly looks at the collections letter that showed up yesterday due to an unaffordable repair she had to pay for on her credit card. Another letter from her ex-partner's lawyer. As she rushes out the door (she spilled coffee on her one nice sweater, her favorite) her mom flashes through her mind... "What about mum?". She arrives at the office. It is an opp…

I'm with you that TFA comes off as mean spirited and needlessly so.

But having worked in large orgs in highly regulated and bureaucratic sectors (aerospace), sometimes things don't change until the process fails spectacularly.

Policy like "we can't accept email for security purposes" comes from total fucking morons in sub-C level upper management who have no insight into how the business actually works, for whom it's easier to say "no" than it is to say "yes".

It's entirely plausible that this episode (which I bet blew through a lot of PPNS budget in toner) caused some mid level manager to report the process breakage, kicking off a review of whether they really need fax.

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#275

Post by leoedin »

masklinn wrote: post #244
johnnyanmac wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>No amount of beating low level employees will change whether they can accept pdf sent by email or not. I disagree. I'm sorry Karen here needs to bear the brunt, but if this kept up, at some point Karen's boss will take notice, And then it moves up the chain to someone who can affect that policy. Companies purposefully set us up to communicate bottom-up, so we can either play the game or break the law. >People who ar…

> I'm sorry Karen here needs to bear the brunt, but if this kept up, at some point Karen's boss will take notice, And then it moves up the chain to someone who can affect that policy. That’s a hilarious fantasy you have here.

If the author didn't abuse the fax, why would anyone notice the process was broken. It's only by abusing the existing process that change will be triggered.

You see this all the time in cybersecurity. Nobody cares until there's a breach. Nobody would care if he faxed 25 pages and mildly inconvenienced Karen, but by faxing 500 pages and inconveniencing the whole office, it's going to start something. Even if it takes them another 5 years to fix the process, it's a start.

Realistically, the change will probably be "no more than 25 pages of evidence required". But that's also a win for the person being asked for it.

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#276

Post by squigz »

scottlamb wrote: post #249
looperhacks wrote: post #50

I know it's fiction - but in reality, Karen is likely just as annoyed by this as the author. The spam should go to the person in charge, not the person who is forced to deal with this every day

> I know it's fiction Or semi-fiction? The author is actually blind and tagged it nonfiction, but I suspect some embellishment. > but in reality, Karen is likely just as annoyed by this as the author. When I'm frustrated talking with an agent of a big organization, I try to remember they probably didn't set the policy. But I also expect them to express some empathy for how I'm negatively affected by that policy. The…

> Maybe they feeling a bit of the pain themselves might make them more likely to speak up. If this becomes a miserable job that no one will stay in, that might provoke a change.

Unfortunately, it might also just cause anyone who wants to do good to leave, leaving people who just need a job and don't care about doing good.

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#277

Post by stavros »

afro88 wrote: post #101
cucumber3732842 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"cut those cops strangling that guy over bootleg smokes some slack, they have a tough job" These sorts of don't hate the cogs hate the machine takes are worthless because they create an instant exploit where the machine can be as bad as it wants as long as it hides behind the cogs.

What good does hating the cogs do though? Make noise to the people who can change the machine.

It increases costs for the machine, and eventually it realizes that cogs are cheaper when they're not getting yelled at all day.

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#278

Post by jt2190 »

Etherlord87 wrote: post #112
wholinator2 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree wholeheartedly! This is exactly what i was thinking the entire time. Like, does this guy think this single woman is responsible for the kafka-esque trap they're both in? Will the 0.5% uptick in toner cost for the year cause the administration to rethink their requirements? He's just taken the immense weight and pain he holds for this process, undeservedly, and placed it upon another undeserving person, then l…

I see this type of an argumentation very often and I strongly disagree. You're removing all responsibility from an actor that is a part of a bigger thing. Imagine if you slapped someone on his hand for doing something wrong, and he or someone else argued what you did is wrong because it wasn't that hand that has offended. I'm an antitheist but the Bible (gospels) put it well "The student is not above his master" [tra…

> if you make life of an employee miserable, the employee is more likely to resign or ask for a raise, this does apply some pressure.

Perhaps, but the question to ask is not “how to apply some pressure” but “how to apply pressure in the place where it’s most effective.

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#279

Post by catapart »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #257
catapart wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the author didn't make anything harder for anyone because the "fax" wasn't ever even printed, much less caused a backup or even a slowdown at all. the giveaway was having the karen call back to request the person stop. the initial phone call undoubtedly happened, but the fax was consumed by the same systems used in medical offices all around the country, which means that it arrived as a pdf in some repository and it…

>the author didn't make anything harder for anyone because the "fax" wasn't ever even printed, much less caused a backup or even a slowdown at all. You underestimate government inefficiency. You are correct, but I can also see a system that naively prints whatever is verified as a valid entry automatically.

possibly! but I'd put some actual money on it. when I was doing student loan collections for incarcerated (or assumed incarcerated) people, we had to deal with a ton of city and state offices to track down whether or not we needed to pause collections. there are plenty of software vendors offering services, but you tend to hear the same four or five from most places and the places that don't use them would usually reference them like "ours is like westfax" or whatever.

I'm not so naive as to think there's no podunk, crossroads "town" out there that has some mayberry-ass fax machine just spitting out whatever you send it. But given how attractive government offices are to people for either pranking or ...ahem redressing via their fax machines since the late 70's, it's more common than you might believe for even the smallest little townships to have a contract with a company that turns faxes into emails.

Re: The 'paperwork flood': How I drowned a bureaucrat before dinner

#280

Post by crooked-v »

raincole wrote: post #137
recursivedoubts wrote: post #33

Karen woke up this morning in her run down, rented flat. She briefly looks at the collections letter that showed up yesterday due to an unaffordable repair she had to pay for on her credit card. Another letter from her ex-partner's lawyer. As she rushes out the door (she spilled coffee on her one nice sweater, her favorite) her mom flashes through her mind... "What about mum?". She arrives at the office. It is an opp…

> She was talking to a blind man living below the poverty line. She assumed that "fax it" was an impossible hurdle. She assumed I would have to find a ride to a library, pay twenty cents a page, and struggle with a physical machine I couldn't read. She was counting on the friction of the physical world to make me give up. Does this author live in a country where the government staff has incentive to reject the dole?…

Mere disability re-verification is pretty minor when it comes to bureaucratic insanity. For comparison, in the UK, in recent memory almost a thousand postal service contractors were wrongly convicted of crimes based entirely on a broken government accounting system that constantly got tbe numbers wrong (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Post_Office_scandal).
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