More Government Efficiency

In not firing consistantly missing employees:

Via ABC:

The federal government has 2.6 million civilian workers, making it the nation's largest employer. But, it turns out a growing number of these workers are not working.
"People have just flat not shown up for work," said Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla. "My question is: If people aren't showing up for work, why are they still employed by the federal government?"
Coburn commissioned the report "Missing in Action: AWOL in the Federal Government," which tracked the number of absent workers without leave, AWOL workers, across 18 government agencies from 2001 to 2007.
It found that federal workers missed nearly 20 million hours of work in the last six years, not including vacation time or sick leave. On average, 2.8 million hours of work are lost per year because of AWOL absences.
The numbers show the formation of a growing trend: Forty-five percent more workers are absent without leave throughout different government agencies than in 2001.

A massive government agency not noticing if some of it's employees are absent? Say it aint so!

How could this happen?!? Let's hear the explaination:

"To me it's a scathing indictment of the Bush administration, their total incompetence and mismanagement and disdain for government and running government," said Mark Roth, general counsel of the American Federation of Government Employees/AFL-CIO. "Apparently, they are so asleep at the wheel that they're letting people go for months without any consequences."

The head of these people's union passing the buck? Astonishing!

Realistically though, it's assinine to expect any one man to actively monitor 2.6 million people. It can't be done. Even if that person had no other responsibilities, it would be impossible to keep track of that many people with any real accuracy. Even expecting 535 people (Congress) to do it would be a daunting task. And since these people live lives and have other responsibilities, expecting the federal government to take care of problems that these agencies won't is unrealistic. If the agencies themselves aren't cracking down, and they have full legal power, what is any Congress or President to do? If these problems were being widely reported...they would be taken care of now wouldn't they?

The simple problem here is that the bigger any agency gets, the harder it becomes to micromanage. It's easy to look at one office with 10 people and determine waste or laziness. When that becomes 500 offices with 50,000 people that becomes harder still. If the company is not reporting the problems they know about to the higher ups, it becomes impossible to determine the problems. Ridiculously, the article quotes the biggest offender, the VA, as to what the solution is:

Also, the State Department and independent agencies don't monitor the number of AWOL workers, which could increase the number of lost work hours considerably, according to the report.
The Department of Veterans Affairs, the worst violator according to the report, has asked for more employees.

Of course the solution is to replace the people who don't work with people who do. Not simply to add more workers. Unfortunately, putting the people at fault in charge of the solution is more than a little like putting the Fox in charge of the Henhouse.

Of course this is nonsense. Would a parent accept "Well if my allowance was higher, the grass would get mowed better" as an excuse? Of course not. They'd demand the lawn was done or no allowance would be tendered. If you took your car to a mechanic and paid 100 bucks for a new tire, then found the tred worn bare...would you pay more money for a different tire? Of course not. You'd demand a new tire since you paid for a new tire. We should hold these agencies accountable like we would any business.