[Themaintainers] Why does the IRS need $80 billion? Just look at its cafeteria. (M. Scott Ford)

[Brian Thomas]

As a government employee at a state level I can say that this type of
thinking problem cited by others is pervasive at the state level as well.
It isn't necessarily intentionally bad; it's a combination of being stuck
in a rut and having so much to do that you keep using the same method of
doing stuff and patching whatever pitfalls to keep going. Short term
production in the now trumps the potential for future improved returns (pun
not intended). I had to teach myself programming on my own and then apply
it on my own to work tasks to prove its utility over manual means of
accomplishing tasks at scale before someone could understand the value of
the R&D since that may or may not pay off. If you have more to accomplish
than someone can possibly do in the time allotted, it is really hard to
convince a manager to let you take 10-30% of your time that could be spent
on getting stuff done to research potential efficiencies payout of a better
process/technology when you are already using a proven method. Now that it
has been proven regularly I keep getting programming tasks to make
everyone's life easier, but that is a different story for a different time.
That's my insider perspective.

-- 
Brian Thomas
an Electronic Records Archivist and Preservationist
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.stevens.edu/pipermail/themaintainers/attachments/20220812/24e5f08b/attachment.html>