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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

#331

Post by autoexec »

bambax wrote: post #233
Etherlord87 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Absolutely agree. Also, the kind of Karens described in the post usually enjoy their position and the meager power they hold over other humans. They need to get bitten sometimes.

> Also, the kind of Karens described in the post usually enjoy their position and the meager power they hold over other humans.

Do you have a citation for that or is that just an idea of a villain you've invented in your head? Karen doesn't hold any power whatsoever over anyone. Karen is a low level employee who has to answer the phones all day. She doesn't decide who gets benefits or not. She didn't create the Continuing Disability Review. She didn't create the security policy that said they should refuse to open PDF attachments from random people who email them. She doesn't need to "get bitten" any more than you do.

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

#332

Post by perching_aix »

snk wrote: post #311
perching_aix wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how does the author (or you) know she doesn't keep raising this? Edit: can't even confirm that it really is only fax and physical mail that's available; on a cursory search, tackling this fully online is already well possible: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47544562

You mean, Karen lied?

No, that is not what I meant. If anything, the blogpost author might have, but that's not what I mean either.

It is entirely possible for both parties to have simply missed thinking of this. Or for me to be missing or misunderstanding something.

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

#333

Post by squigz »

scottlamb wrote: post #322
squigz wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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. I don't think the author would have acted this way toward someone who said "sorry, I know it's a burden, I know it's stressful to be at risk of losing these benefits, and I've told that to everyone I can repeatedly." So how much danger is there really that the inconvenien…

> I don't think the author would have acted this way toward someone who said "sorry, I know it's a burden, I know it's stressful to be at risk of losing these benefits, and I've told that to everyone I can repeatedly." So how much danger is there really that the inconvenience of reloading the fax machine is pushing out someone who is trying to do good?

It's not just the faxing that causes people to act the way Karen (supposedly) acted - it's the anger and maliciousness being directed at them by numerous people, all day, every day, even when they do try to be sympathetic to the fact that the system fucks everyone. But there's only so much empathy one can muster.

(Not to mention the various other factors that push good people out of government, such as working for decades to make the systems better only for them to get worse.)

To be clear, I agree with you to an extent; if instead of being malicious and directing anger at the people doing their best to help, people like the author more calmly expressed their frustration with the system, maybe they can bring it up with their superiors, as you said.

All of it's a mess, and not a single facet of this issue is without blame - not the recipients, not the bureaucrats, not the politicians, and certainly not the voters.

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

#334

Post by masklinn »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #266
masklinn wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

I'm open to options. Not doomerism "the system can't be fixed" mentality. I don't like to think of myself as combative. Ideally we get listened to in council and they properly pull what strings are needed to help. But this has been my reality. Employees can evangelize for months for better security, but then a (very avoidable) hack happens and suddenly the budget for it appears out of thin air. Being a nuisance (or l…

> But this has been my reality. Employees can evangelize for months for better security, but then a (very avoidable) hack happens and suddenly the budget for it appears out of thin air.

So your lived experience indicates that harassing front-line low-level employees about it does not work because they won't be listened to. Why, then, are you advocating for harassing front-line low-level employees?

Go for the people who can actually set policy: ministers, representatives, council, agency boards, managers. When you call, rather than take it out on the employee request to be transferred up.

And even if you don't have the energy to keep fighting after your own case has been fixed (a very common remedy when it's usually much easier to grease the squeaky wheel than to actually fix the axle), try to leave information on your process and contact points in accessible locations so that those afterwards can start a step or two ahead.

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

#335

Post by autoexec »

callmeal wrote: post #236
watwut wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No amount of beating low level employees will change whether they can accept pdf sent by email or not. And also, they are not supposed to use their intuitive ideas about what is and what is not dangerous use of software. When they do use their intuitive ideas, hacks happen. Karen here doing what she was told and accepting only formats that her organization security team told her to do is Karen doing the correct thing…

>No amount of beating low level employees will change whether they can accept pdf sent by email or not. Yes, but a boss being unable to receive a fax because the machine is "otherwise occupied" may do that.

I highly doubt it. Not accepting PDF files from random email addresses that send to your very publicly listed email address is a smart policy. One angry jerk trying to DoS the fax machine is not going to change the policy. At best, it'd cause them to ditch the paper and toner and upgrade so that all incoming faxes are automatically scanned and sent to an email box.

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

#337

Post by autoexec »

cortesoft wrote: post #317
watwut wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No amount of beating low level employees will change whether they can accept pdf sent by email or not. And also, they are not supposed to use their intuitive ideas about what is and what is not dangerous use of software. When they do use their intuitive ideas, hacks happen. Karen here doing what she was told and accepting only formats that her organization security team told her to do is Karen doing the correct thing…

> We are on HN. People who are responsible for overreaching unreasonable security rules ... are basically us. I don’t think that is true. Rules that you have to use a fax machine are enshrined in outdated laws. No IT professional is going to say to use a fax machine for security. The same thing is true for a lot of security practices. Our company had silly password rotation policies because of certification requireme…

> No IT professional is going to say to use a fax machine for security.

An IT professional will say don't open PDF files from every random email that comes into your publicly posted email address though.

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

#338

Post by idle_zealot »

nickff wrote: post #324
tyingq wrote: post #18

Sounds like it's not real but... It reads like an indictment of the government employee personally, rather than the rules and constraints that employee is forced to use. Probably fair to comment on the interaction, whether the person was rude, and so on. But blaming them for not accepting email is kind of silly. They are not empowered to do that kind of thing.

I've heard this justification many times, but it's highly questionable. Imagine someone works for an organization, and 'the rules and constraints' require them to murder (without legal consequence) innocent people on a regular basis; is this morally justifiable? What if their 'job description' does not include 'murder', but they do indeed have to murder an innocent person each month because of the 'rules and constrai…

This isn't a hypothetical, you're just describing social murder. What do people do about it? Usually shower the perpetrators with money and peace prizes.

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

#340

Post by yonatan8070 »

kstrauser wrote: post #271
Synthetic7346 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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.

That's not exactly complicated if either party owns a web server. Which - last I checked - the government has.

Just give the person who needs to send the sensitive documents a short link like uploaddocuments.gov, have that page ask for some basic identifying info, and have a box for the user to drag and drop a file. At which point the browser will p2p upload that file over HTTPS.

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